Roof Rat & Mouse Control in Peachtree Corners, GA

Rodents in your Peachtree Corners home

Roof rats need food and a dry place to live, and Peachtree Corners provides both. The food comes from the commercial side: restaurant dumpsters at Town Center and the shopping centers, and the trash and landscaping around the office campuses. The shelter is the attic of a nearby house. Roof rats are slim, dark and active at night, and they're good climbers. They go up trees, fences, utility lines, and even brick and siding, and get in high, at gable vents, roof seams and the spots where pipes and wires go through the eaves.

House mice work from the bottom up instead, through gaps around pipes, under doors and along the foundation. Both breed year-round in Georgia's mild climate, so a few rodents become a lot of rodents quickly. Poison feels like the quick fix, but it leaves every opening in place and often leaves a dead rat inside a wall. The fix that lasts is finding every opening, sealing it with metal, and trapping out the rodents already inside.

Rats, mice or squirrels? Timing tells you

When you hear the noise is the best clue. Roof rats are active at night, scurrying and gnawing in the ceiling or walls after the house goes quiet. Squirrels are active in the early morning and late afternoon. Mice are also nocturnal but stay low, and you're more likely to find their droppings in a drawer or under the sink than to hear them. Droppings are the other clue: rat droppings are about the size of a raisin, and mouse droppings are the size of a grain of rice. The answer changes where the pro looks for openings.

Why cutting down trees isn't enough

Trimming limbs off the roof is good advice, but roof rats don't need trees. They climb brick, siding, downspouts and the utility lines that run to the house. Plenty of Peachtree Corners homes with trimmed yards still have rats in the attic. The openings are what matter: gable vents, foundation vents and construction gaps left where the house was built. That's where the work goes.

Why bait alone fails

Bait does nothing about the next rat. Every vent and gap stays open, and the dumpsters down the road keep producing more rats to come through them. A rat that eats poison usually dies where it lives, inside a wall or deep in the insulation, and a few days later you have a smell you can't get to. Trapping removes the rodents you can see and count. Sealing keeps new ones out. You need both.

Health risks

Rodents leave droppings and urine wherever they travel: insulation, ductwork, pantry shelves, stored boxes. They foul far more food than they eat, and they're linked to salmonella and other illnesses. In the Southeast, roof rats are also associated with murine (flea-borne) typhus. That's why a finished rodent job includes cleaning and sanitizing where they were living, not just removing them. Only the contaminated material needs to go.

How the job works: seal first, then trap

The pro inspects from the ridge down to the foundation and marks every opening: high ones for roof rats, low ones for mice. Each one is closed with metal, using hardware cloth, steel mesh and flashing, because rodents chew through foam, plastic and wood. Then traps go in, and the pro checks them until the catch stops. Sealing without trapping traps rodents inside the walls. Trapping without sealing means new ones keep arriving. How long it takes depends on how many there are, and the technician should be able to give you an estimate up front.

Mice need the small gaps sealed

A mouse can get through a gap about the width of a pencil. The usual spots are where the water line enters, around the dryer vent, the gap under the garage door, and cracks in the foundation. Inside, they nest behind the stove, under cabinets and in wall cavities. The plan is the same as for rats, seal and then trap, but it takes a careful look at ground level, where the gaps are small and easy to miss.