Muscogee County, Columbus Rat Control Situation:
Hello David. We live in Georgia in a double-wide mobile home, & are having a problem with rats underneath in our insulation. A few years ago, my daughter lived in our mobile, & when we moved back in, we discovered that, because of her habits of leaving food & garbage around, our house was terribly infested with roaches, & that we also had rats in the house. After trying lots of roach traps & sprays, we still had roaches, & finally got rid of them with boric acid. Now we turned our attention to the rats. My husband came home with poison & snap traps, but because of fear for my pets, & also not wanting to kill them because I keep pet rats, I bought a humane trap. Well, we caught a couple of babies, but because I tried to transfer them to another container so I could catch more before trying to release them, they escaped, & then they became too leary of the trap, so we caught no more. Then I bought an electronic zapper, which does kill them quickly, but only one at a time, but it seemed to have gotten them out of the house, that & cleaning up food messes. Now we are having a problem again. I have them in a small travel trailer, & also in the insulation under our mobile home. They must also be in the walls because I found droppings coming out of the crack between my tub & shower wall. Since there are many openings in the skirting, it is easy for them to come & go, & even if we were to fix the skirting, I'm sure they would find a way in. It is very difficult to go under the mobile because it is not very high, & you have to snake crawl most of it, & a lot of the insulation is torn down. Another problem is money. In these difficult times, money is very scarce, so we don't have hundreds of dollars to pay a pro. Treating this problem in a mobile home is a lot different then treating an attic. Do you have any suggestions as to how we can handle this problem?
Columbus Rat Control Tip of The Week
Are rats hibernating creatures?
Rats are nocturnal:
Rats sleep a lot even without cold conditions. The average rat will sleep between 12 to 15 hours a day and in colder conditions they will often seek warmth so that they can sleep safely for this amount of time. Because rats often walk around at night, detecting them can be somewhat difficult. Making sure that you can detect them often means checking into areas where they could nest or remaining somewhat attuned to what is going on in the night time when they are most active.
Rats breed throughout the year:
Even in the wintertime rats are continuing to breed, make their nests, and live without any issues. They don't hibernate during winter. Instead, rats will continue to breed. Most rats are able to wean a litter in about one month and leave the babies to fend for themselves after that period of time.
Rats will seek spaces to live:
Even though they don't hibernate, rats will seek warm and safe conditions. This means that in the wintertime it's likely that they will be looking for space inside your home where they can spend time sheltering throughout the winter. Spotting areas were rats can get into your home can be important to preventing an infestation.
Food gets scarce in winter:
If you are in an area where the climate gets cold this can lead many rats to find an area where they can access food much easier. Rather than getting stuck with very little food supply over several months, they can detect food that's in your home and then stay close to it.
