Greene County, Springfield Rat Control Situation:
Hi I saw your website and hope u can help. My neighbors with the cold weather the mice have came. This has been ongoing battle for a couple months. My cat has caught almost 11 , poison killed the rest, along with traps, now it seems there are some new ones in my ceiling, they have chewed so far three holes through my ceiling, I can hear them at night running and scratching, I detest rodents but am at my wits end just when I thought I had them beat they are back in the ceiling where I cannot get to them. Should I put out another round of poison and traps or call a professional! Help at this rate I will have holes all over my ceiling and need a lot of drywall patches!! I am at my wits end can u suggest anything?
I found your website and thought you might be able to help me with a problem I've got here. I've had a lot of my stuff in storage for a few years whilst traveling, and have just returned and found that rats got into a fair bit of it. Some of it I was willing to throw away. However, there's some books that I'd like to be able to salvage which have soaked up rat urine. Or if not the urine itself, the odour of it. Do you have any suggestions? You might need to be aware that I live in Australia, so some of the chemicals or products you may recommend may not necessarily be available to me here. But whatever you recommend would be greatly appreciated anyway! My husband and I are experiencing a foul smell in the ceiling closer to our car port area. It smells the worst outside. There was a Possum in the ceiling but fortunately it fell out of the roof siding outside but I think it may have carried something up there and now there are a million flies and a bad smell up there. Can you please help.
Springfield 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.