Kalamazoo County, Kalamazoo Rat Control Situation:
Hi David, I came across your website and found it extremely informative. We are in the process of home inspections on a house we want to buy. It is in a great neighborhood at a fair price. The homeowner died recently so there is no one with any knowledge of the home's current condition and history. Yesterday we had the general home inspection and found piles of rat droppings underneath kitchen drawers and under the kitchen sink, dead rats and piles of droppings (I mean tons!) under the house, a two-foot pile of attic insulaton under the house where the rats were carrying it out of the attic via inside the bathroom wall, and depositing it down there. When the inspector opened the attic crawl space door, piles of droppings fell out. The house has a faint bad odor. There are entry holes all over the house. We will be bringing in a rodent expert for an estimate. My question to you is, when is this too much to clean up and disinfect? We have two young children 5y and 7y, and I worry about the residual health impact of the droppings and urine. Can we ever live in this house and not worry about our health? Also, will the clean up cost add thousands of dollars to our home cost? Thank you! I am looking forward to hearing from you! Sincerely, Heidi
Kalamazoo Rat Control Tip of The Week
Can A Rat Have Rabies?
Rats have powerful bites:
Rats can have very powerful bites and are capable of damaging the skin quickly. A rat can bite through cinderblocks to get into an area if it needs to. Rats could bite through clothing or manage to break the skin even unintentionally with a very quick bite. Handling rats with care or using heavy gloves is recommended if you have to remove one or relocate it. It is ultimately best if you avoid handling rats whenever possible.
Many people are bitten each year with low rates of infection:
Rats bite over 50,000 people in the USA each year. Rabies vaccine shots are very rarely delivered in these cases and the risk for other types of diseases that rats carry can be far greater. Going to see a doctor about a rat bite can be wise if you are starting to feel some of the secondary symptoms or it looks infected.
Rats do spread disease:
Rats do spread a series of diseases including rat-bite fever. It can be transmitted through a bite or through pets. Rabies can be a deadly disease but most of the diseases that rats pass on are only able to cause the chance for fever and infection which carry lower rates of mortality.
Other animals can be much riskier to receive bites from:
If you are bitten by other animals like raccoons, coyotes, woodchucks, or skunks, this will give you a much riskier chance of receiving something like rabies. When bitten by a rat, you should be concerned but you may not have to run to get the bite checked out with the same urgency.
The main theory of low rabies cases:
A rat would have to survive a bite from a predator in order to become a carrier of rabies. As coyotes and larger animals will be likely to kill a rat in an attack, this leads to the chance of rats not being able to spread rabies at all.
