Rodent Extermination in San Tan Valley, Queen Creek, and Surrounding Cities
Serving San Tan Valley, Queen Creek, Mesa, Tempe, Ahwatukee, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Gilbert, and Chandler
Rats and mice are the most commonly-seen rodents in Arizona homes. They cause damage throughout properties and are carriers of diseases harmful to humans. In addition to sewers, drains, and garbage dumps, rodents live where the conditions are moist, and a ready supply of rotting food is available. They are unsanitary pests that leave their urine and droppings wherever they go.
A rodent-infested home is susceptible to all the diseases the vermin carries. Homeowners who notice the signs of rodents in their home must understand that there is never just one—rodents multiply at an alarmingly fast rate.
Rats are responsible for several diseases. Rat bite fever, caused by bacteria, is transmitted to humans who come in contact with a rat or through contaminated food or water. They may experience fever, headache, vomiting, muscle or joint pain, and a rash. Leptospirosis is a more severe rat-borne disease that causes jaundice and liver problems.
In addition to their detrimental health effects, rats’ habit of chewing on electrical wiring can cause an electrical short circuit, often resulting in fires. They gnaw and chew at anything they can, including bags, clothes, and shoes. If they access the kitchen pantry or cabinets, they destroy foodstuffs and other stored items.
Few DIY rodent traps and poisons are effective at resolving any sized rodent infestation as they only kill one rat at a time. The other rodents will learn to avoid the area.
If a professional rodent exterminator is hired, it will prevent unpleasant encounters with mice and rodents. The experts have a way of dealing with such critters and won’t back away from the challenge, no matter how severe the threat may be. Also, certified technicians know all about rodent behavior patterns and hiding places, allowing them to track the pests down in each corner of the house. After their work is over, the home will be a wholesome, rodent-free environment again.
For best results, contact San Tan Pest and Weed Control. Our experts use advanced processes and equipment to eliminate rodents of all kinds.
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Rodent Control
Chances are high that most homeowners will experience a rodent problem at some point. Once rodents move in, they build a large nest and expand their family. Therefore, homeowners should contact a professional rodent extermination service to eliminate them before they can move in and multiply.
Rodents pose a serious health hazard to residents because they can harbor diseases, including:
Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome
Lassa Fever
Leptospirosis
Plague
Salmonellosis
Rat-Bite Fever
Tularemia
Even if a rodent doesn’t carry a disease, they are unsanitary and unsafe in the home. Rodents will raid food stores and may contaminate them in the process. They will also chew through anything for food. Along with this damage, they leave their excrement throughout the space, another common way to detect rodents.
In addition, rodents also can carry ticks, fleas, and lice into the home and produce hundreds of offspring in only a few months. Although many home remedies exist to help rid the place of mice and rats, homeowners should use professional pest control services to alleviate the problem.
Preventative measures
Experts often recommend preventative pest control treatments for those living in high-risk areas. Homeowners concerned with toxic chemicals can breathe a little easier. Chemicals used to exterminate rodents are far less toxic than in years past. Most treatments are safe to use around children and pets, and some are even safe to use around people who suffer from severe allergies.
Professionally treating the home and surrounding landscape routinely prevents rodents and other pests from inhabiting the property. Furthermore, most pest control companies offer the guarantee that if the initial treatment is ineffective, they will re-treat the property at no additional cost.
Rats and mice will chew through walls, and since they can squeeze through minute holes, they don’t have to do much damage to reach their goal. Typically, to access the space, they have squeezed through some tiny hole no one noticed. That is why any rodent control measures must include finding the gaps and holes that allowed entry in the first place.
Following are the common areas where rodents like to inhabit:
Lower attic corners
Around doors
Around water pipes
Around the fireplace
Inside the attic
Under kitchen cabinets
Fill any small holes and gaps with steel wool kept in place with caulking around the edges. Metal sheeting, lath metal, or hardware cloth is the most effective for large holes. Flashing near the base of the home is another available alternative.
Although prevention is never fool-proof, there are measures a homeowner can take to reduce the likelihood of an invasion. One simple measure is to keep their homes clean. Rodents like cluttered, dark places, making cupboards and closets ideal living quarters. Because mice and rats gravitate to standing water, keeping areas underneath the sink clean and dry is essential. Repairing damaged pipes under the sink can also help prevent rodents from accessing the home.
San Tan Pest and Weed Control can help
Since it may be difficult and anxiety-provoking for the homeowner to mitigate rodent infestation, many choose to turn a rodent problem over to our expert team before rodents advance to an infestation stage or enter the home. Our expert team can make the process easier.
Our Rodent Control Process:
Inspections
Once San Tan Pest And Weed Control arrives on site, the exterminators start inspecting the household from the outside. They try to locate any cracks or holes rodents may have used to get in the house. Later, they look for additional signs of rodents, such as gnaw marks, nesting signs, teeth marks on food packages, droppings, and urine. The final inspection area will most likely be the basement or the attic since these areas are quiet and ideal environments for rodents.
Trapping & Removal
San Tan Pest And Weed Control employees use strategic methods to exterminate mice. They place traps in places around the house that experience high rodent traffic. Outdoors, the technicians typically use rodenticides, which are the most effective solution for complete extermination. Once all the rodents have been eliminated, San Tan Pest And Weed Control removes them from the premises without endangering anyone’s health.
Bait Stations
San Tan Pest And Weed Control uses sealed packages with pellets or meals called bait stations, or bait boxes. They generally come in cellophane, paper, or plastic wrapping rodents can gnaw through to reach fresh bait and die in the process. These boxes, placed outside the house, encourage rodents to enter and feed on the bait inside and leave afterward. As a result, having bait boxes outdoors lowers the number of rodents that enter the house.
Rodent Proofing & Exclusion
Rodent proofing and exclusion refers to physical barriers preventing mice, rats, and other critters from entering a house. To do this, San Tan Pest And Weed Control employs several methods to close all possible holes and entry points rodents can use to reach the inside of a home. For example, a San Tan Pest And Weed Control technician may determine that a chimney or vent cover is necessary to avoid rodent intrusion. Another strategy includes sealing holes and gaps around gas, plumbing, and electrical lines.
Sanitizing & Contamination Remediation
After rodents have been exterminated from a household, it’s time to restore the contaminated areas to their former condition. To accomplish this, San Tan Pest And Weed Control technicians sanitize all wood and concrete surfaces to remove rodent odor and refresh the air.
Signs There Is a Rodent Problem
Rodents are characterized by constantly growing incisors on their upper and lower jaws. They make up the most significant order of mammals regarding the number of species, at 2,277 known. Over 40 percent of mammals belong to the rodent order, and they can be found in large numbers on all continents, save for Antarctica.
With such a vast population, it makes sense that a rodent or two might wander into a home or business and cause trouble, but how does the property owner know there is a rodent problem?
Droppings
Droppings are an obvious sign of a rodent problem. Unlike humans, rodent droppings can be found where they typically can be found. Homeowners will most likely find droppings in cabinets and pantries, under the sink, and in random cracks in the flooring.
If droppings are spotted, it is possible to determine how old they are to establish how long the rodents might have been hiding in the home or if their nests are nearby. Old droppings are a dull gray and tend to crumble. Fresh droppings are darker, softer, and shinier. In addition, the size of the droppings is a clue to what rodent has made its way inside. Mouse droppings are small, about half an inch in length. Rat droppings are larger than half an inch in both length and diameter.
Nests
Rodents build nests to have a place to wind down after long days of scurrying and scrounging. These nests are usually made from bits of fabric, shredded paper, dry grass, small twigs, and sometimes furniture stuffing. They are located in quiet areas, safe from predators, and have nearby food and water.
The homeowner should be able to find remnants of a rodent’s nest building, like overturned trash bins, chewed paper, or holes in the furniture. They may find the nest if they search in cabinets and dressers, inside boxes, or the crawlspace.
What Is Seen, Heard, and Smelled
If there is a suspected rodent problem, the homeowner has likely seen a rat or mouse. Most rodents are nocturnal and can be spotted with a good flashlight and a bit of hunting through cabinets and dark spaces. However, rodents aren’t fond of human attention and prefer to keep to themselves. It’s highly likely that if a homeowner spots a rodent during the daytime, there is already a full-blown infestation.
Despite their relatively small size, rodents are not quiet housemates. Residents may hear them scratching, gnawing, clawing, and scurrying in the walls, rafters, and vents. In the event of an infestation, they may even hear squeaking and the occasional scuffle.
During an infestation, it’s common to smell a strange musk odor in rooms with poor ventilation. This smell is the trademark of mice. Rodents, in general, don’t smell particularly pleasant.
Remember that rodents have a limited living space range. Mice typically live in a small space, perhaps ten feet in diameter, depending on the food available. Rats, however, have a much larger active area of over 150 feet, so that they may be moving in and out of a home at their convenience.
Stolen Food
Rodents have strong teeth and jaws. As a result, a rat can gnaw through glass, concrete, and even metal. They can also fit into any hole that their heads fit through. That means the average rodent should have no problem obtaining food, whether in a cardboard cereal box or a heavy-duty reusable plastic container.
The good news is that rodents aren’t especially sly about the food they take. So a homeowner can discern from the mess, the hole in the box, the missing food, and the nibbled bits they left behind.
Gnawing
As mentioned, rodents have teeth that grow continuously. Therefore, they need to file their teeth down by regularly gnawing on whatever they can find, which includes wood, clothes, paper board, and even bricks. Homeowners can usually hear gnawing sounds at night, but it’s not uncommon for table and chair legs to show tooth marks and gnawed spots during a rat infestation.
When it comes to rodent extermination, San Tan Pest And Weed Control provides unparalleled services and a professional approach. The trained and licensed professionals scour each corner where rodents may be hiding and set up traps in adequate positions to maximize efficiency and avoid friendly concerns for all people inside the house.