Roof Rat & Mouse Control in Fayetteville, GA

Rodents in your Fayetteville home

Fayetteville homes get two kinds of rodents, and they get in at opposite ends of the house. The roof rat is slim, dark and a strong climber, and it comes in high: through a gable vent on an older home near the courthouse, a construction gap where the roof steps on a new home near the studios, or the eaves of a house on a wooded county lot. The house mouse comes in low, through a gap around a pipe, under a door or through a ground vent into the crawlspace. Gable vents, ground vents and construction gaps are the three entry points pros find most often.

Rodents breed most of the year in Georgia's mild climate, so a couple of rats turn into a colony quickly. They chew wiring and stored boxes, tunnel through insulation and leave droppings and urine everywhere they go. Bait alone doesn't fix it, because it does nothing to keep new rats from coming in, and a rat that eats poison often dies inside a wall. The fix is to find the openings, seal them with metal and trap the rodents already inside.

Rats, squirrels or mice? Check the time and the droppings

The two best clues are when you hear it and what it leaves behind. Rats are active at night, so noise in the ceiling after the house goes quiet usually means roof rats. Squirrels are active early in the morning and late in the afternoon. Mice stay low, and you'll find their small droppings in drawers, under the sink and along baseboards, while rat droppings are larger and turn up in the attic. Each animal gets in through different openings, so a pro identifies it before setting anything.

Trees help them up, but brick and siding do too

On a large wooded lot it's tempting to think cutting the trees back will solve the problem. It helps, because limbs touching the roof make it easy to get on. But roof rats also climb brick, siding, downspouts and utility lines, so trimming alone won't keep them off. The older brick homes near downtown are easy for them to climb. What actually keeps rats out is closing every opening at the top of the house.

What they leave behind

Rats and mice contaminate much more than they eat. Droppings and urine collect in the insulation, in wall cavities and in the pantry, and they're linked to salmonella and other illnesses. In the Southeast, roof rats are also associated with flea-borne (murine) typhus. A thorough job includes cleaning and sanitizing the areas they used. Full insulation replacement is only needed when the contamination is widespread, not every time.

Why bait alone keeps failing

Bait seems like the obvious fix, but it does nothing to stop the next rat from coming in through the same gap. On a wooded property, there's always a next rat. And a rat that eats poison often dies inside a wall or under the floor, where you can't reach it, so the scratching turns into a dead-animal smell that lasts about two weeks. Sealing the openings and trapping avoids both problems.

The exclusion-first sequence

The pro inspects the whole house, from the roof down to the foundation. That means gable vents, roof returns and pipe stacks up top, and ground vents, gaps around pipes and wires and the garage door seal down low. Every opening is sealed with metal, such as hardware cloth, steel mesh or metal flashing. Traps are set inside and checked until they stop catching. On some jobs that takes a while, depending on how many rodents there are. Seal without trapping and the rodents are trapped in your walls. Trap without sealing and new ones keep coming in.

Mice and the crawlspace homes

Many older homes near the courthouse are built over crawlspaces, and that's where mice get in. They go through a torn vent screen, a gap around a pipe or a loose crawlspace door, then up through the walls to the kitchen. A mouse can fit through a gap about the size of a dime, so the inspection has to be careful at ground level. On newer slab homes near the studios, check the garage door seal and the spots where utility lines enter the house.