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Home » Home Improvement Articles » Rodent And Animal Control For Your Home

Rodent And Animal Control For Your Home

We all like to satisfy our winter needs for a warm, safe place with plenty of food in the pantry. But so do rodents and other animals. When these pests intrude on our property, it becomes a situation much like kicking out the unwelcome kid next door who is constantly coming over and staying past dinner, and insists on using everything in your house for his own purposes. There are several types of animals to watch out for as it gets colder: rats, mice, raccoons, and opossums.

Rats & Mice: The general types of these rodents that exist in your home can include the Norway rat, the roof (or black) rat and the house mouse. Roof rats usually stake out attics or cabinets and can climb quite well. Norway rats choose to live in the ground by digging burrows against foundations, tree trunks, and gardens. Their burrows can lead into crawl spaces and small openings around pipes which can enable them to inhabit your kitchens and bathrooms.

No matter the type of rat that lives in your home, you can be sure that it will be attracted to any food item you have in your pantry, especially high-quality food products such as meat and fresh grain. If you have pets, be extra cautious about foods being left out, because rats will smell and detect dog food that is sitting out.

Rats need one-half to one fluid ounce of water everyday when consuming dry foods. They have extremely sharp senses of taste, hearing, and smell. Once they are aware of what is within their reach and given their keen senses, rats will do anything to get to food or shelter. Overall, rats are able to enter a building through openings that are wider than half an inch across. Rats have a very short life span -- most die within a year. However, rats can breed rapidly, so even though they die off quickly, their young will survive them. Female rats produce five or six litters of about half a dozen to a dozen young each year.

Now that you know a little about the rat's habits, how can you tell that you have rats living alongside you in your home? Spotting droppings or visible signs of fresh gnawing should be an obvious indicator of rats. Rat tracks can appear on dusty surfaces or mud. Rats usually build runways and burrows to get into your home and they can be found next to buildings and under debris and low vegetation.

Rodent Treatment

There are many things you can do to prevent rats, but what about the rats you know are already snooping in your attic and dark corners?

Snap traps can be used along with baits to attract rats. However, once other rats see that a fellow rat has been killed from a snap trap, they will avoid it at all costs. The other drawback to using a snap trap is the potential health hazards it can cause when the rat is killed by the trap. Snap traps can also pose a danger to children or pets in your home, as they can break bones or cause an even more serious injury.

Glue-boards are traps that use non-drying glue to capture and hold down rodents. These traps can be placed under tables, furniture, next to walls, refrigerators, or any place where you suspect rodent activity. Glue-boards are designed to get the rodent stuck on the board so that they cannot escape. Like the snap traps, glue-boards can pose health problems if rats' bodies are pulled apart and exposed in your home.

Live traps are probably the easiest and most inexpensive rodent control out there. The other benefit of live traps is that it poses less risk or danger to animals you are not targeting, such as your pets. They also do not kill rats, unlike all the other methods discussed above. Instead, rats are captured and left in the trap until you dispose of them. Be sure to place enough bait to attract rats. If rats are without food, they may become anxious and eventually die, leaving behind their bodies to decay, as well as a horrible stench. Try to find areas where there are a lot of rat droppings, chewed entry points, and any other place you suspect rat activity or have heard noises from.

Rodent Proofing

Here are some simple rules of thumb you can adopt to prevent a rodent invasion in your home:

- Store all your accessible food in rodent-proof containers such as glass or metal

- Place your trash in tightly covered metal cans to prevent smells from escaping or potential rodent entry.

- Check your faucets to make sure they are functioning properly and to fix leaks as they occur, since gaps or holes around pipes can serve as easy entry points for rodents.

- Seal up any unnecessary openings with concrete or sheet metal. For other access points, a 1/4 inch hardware cloth or steel wool should do the trick.

- For pet owners, put any uneaten pet food away before you go to bed, as any pet food left out is subject to rodent consumption!

- Wipe your floors often! Any bits of food left on your floor may be game for mice.

Commensal Rodents

The most common commensal rodents, raccoon and opossums, are known to many homeowners as troublemakers because of the damage they can cause by hibernating in your attic or wreaking havoc in your garden.

These animals normally hide out in attics, under decks, sheds, garages, crawl spaces, etc. Sometimes, they choose to live in naturally formed holes near foundations. Raccoons and opossums especially have an affinity for digging in yards and garbage. They love to inhabit attics where they can care for their litter in a warm, dark, and enclosed environment. If they are living in your attic, chances are your attic has a strong odor, which can eventually make its way into the living area. Besides odor problems, raccoons can destroy your insulation and chew on any electrical wires present.

Preventing Animal Pests

Here are some ways you can prevent those pesky raccoons and opossums from entering your property:

Spray a non-chemical solution over the areas where these animals are prone to dig or consume food. This will leave a bad taste in their mouths and will discourage it from going to the same place to cause trouble.

- Use a non-drying glue when animals are climbing your bird feeder poles. Once the raccoon or opossum gets the glue from the pole on their paws, it will usually irritate them enough to discourage them from climbing the pole again.

- Implement a 24/7 motion detector near your fish pond. The motion detector will be able to detect the animal when it is in its range. The detector is non-chemical and will release a three-second spray of water to scare the pest away.

For raccoons and opossums who are already inhabiting your home, trapping with a bait (usually meat) is the most effective and viable way to get rid of them. However, you should only handle raccoons and opossums if you are an experienced handler. If you are not sure what to do, the best idea is to call an animal removal service. Anteater Pest and Lawn can send a trained professional out to the property to identify, inspect and design a program for you. The Exclusion portion of their Rodent Service is designed to:

- Identify rodent and rodent damage
- Inspect conditions conducive to rodents
- Seal/Close entry and exit points
- Install traps
- Return and remove traps
- Include a 1 Year renewable warranty

Once you are armed with the right facts and materials, you should be able to handle rodents quickly and efficiently before they overstay their welcome in your home and ruin your holidays.

And here is another random article you might be interested in...

Risk and Reward

If you are doing your own investing in the stock market, what would be the first question you would ask yourself before you make any trade or investment? If your answer is how fundamentally sound the stock is, or whether the stock just broke out of a trading range on a chart, or the fact that the stock has gone down 50% in the last 6 months, or whether the volatility is low now so it is a good time to buy or sell, then you are probably on the road to ruin. These strategies have nothing in common with each other and there are all kinds of different criteria that I did not mention that have nothing in common with each other. However no matter what type of strategy you use to make your investment decisions, there is only one crucial question that must be asked before you pull the trigger and make the trade. That is, what is my risk and what is my reward on this trade. Even if you are going to buy a stock and hold it for a long time, you still have to be aware of your risk and your reward. Why? Because the entire stock market may be here for the rest of your life, any one stock might not be. You think, that is okay I diversified a lot so I don't need to know risk and reward. Wrong. Diversification is great, but you should still be aware of the risk and reward because even indexes of the entire market have a risk and a reward, depending on the length of time invested. Point of entrance, exit, stops, and diversification, are all important things, but they by themselves are not risk and reward. You have to ask yourself how much am I risking, and what my potential reward is. How much are the important words

Okay how do I do that? Well first you must define your investment strategy. If you want to buy and hold what exactly does that mean. Hold for 5 years, 10 years, or forever? What is forever? If you are 20 years old forever is different than if you are 55. Also if you are buy and holding, is forever when you stop investing or is it when you start withdrawing money? These are important questions that must be answered specifically. You might say it doesn't matter because I will be diversified with index funds for the next 15 years. Okay let me ask these questions. Are you 100% invested at all times? Do you know the maximum drawdown (the largest loss from the index high and low in any 15 year period) for the index you invested in? Are you able to financially withstand that kind of drawdown? Alright, I know these are a lot of questions and all you want to do is invest in an index mutual fund for the next 15 years and forget about it. Well I am going to say right now that if you think you are taking very little risk on 15 years you are wrong. If you bought the S&P 500 in a 100% position in 1965 and needed the money in 1980 you would have made no return on investment and had a 40% drawdown from 1969 to 1975. If you look at the period of 1930 to 1955, a 25 year period it is even worse. I know it's the great depression and things are different today. Don't assume anything. I am not saying that you should not invest. I am just saying that there is a risk and a reward. Every time you trade whether it is once a week or once every 15 years, that trade has a chance of winning and a chance of losing. Also, when you buy a managed mutual fund for 15 years you are not buying and holding. You are buying and selling but you are paying a professional to do it for you. He or she will have draw downs in the fund and hopefully he or she will be looking at risk and reward for you. Even an index fund held for 15 years is not truly buy and hold because the indexes change on a yearly basis. Some stocks come in the index and some stocks go out of the index. The longer the time span, say 40-55 years, the bigger the risk but the bigger the reward. Also the longer the time span, the longer you can withstand a large drawdown if it comes.

Now what if you are trading stocks with an entry and an exit point already predefined; that is where do I get in and where do I get out. That strategy might be good but that is not risk and reward. The most important question is how much am I invested and how much do I get out. What is the % of risk on each stock position in the portfolio and what is the risk to the total portfolio. Let's take an example. You bought 100 shares IBM @50 for $5000 in a total portfolio of $200.000. You put a sell stop loss to sell all 100 shares if IBM goes to $40 / share. That means your risk on IBM is $10 / share or $1000. But your real risk to your portfolio is .5% or $1000 divided by $200,000. If you have a sell exit point of $100 then your reward on the stock would be 100% and the reward to your total portfolio was 2.5%. So your total risk to reward was 5 to 1. You could crunch numbers all day to make up formulas to fit your strategy, but the most important part is how much are you risking. Here are some general rules when it comes to risk:

Don't risk more than 2% on any given trade or idea. That doesn't matter if your strategy is technical or fundamental or discretionary. Risking 1% would be safer. Most large fund managers risk much less.

Diversify. Buying 1% risk on IBM and 1% on Dell and 1% on Hewlard Packard is a 3% risk because they all sell the same products

Don't risk more than 20% of your portfolio at any one time, 10% would be better. You have to have a way to quantify the greed factor or it might consume you and all your money at the same time.

In my own portfolios I try not to risk more than 7% on an initial portfolio position.

Initial risk and on going risk can be two different risks. As a trade becomes profitable the amount of at risk at any moment in time can be a variable not a constant. That would allow for letting profits run while cutting losses short. However, making your initial risk a variable in most cases would be a disaster. Once initial risk is conceived it should never be increased. Greed may become the primary factor in increasing initial risk and that is always a fast track to increasing losses.

I hope that risk and reward become the primary strategy concern in your future investing and trading.