Rats are a fact of human civilization. For many thousands of years, humans have proliferated across the globe. Rats have been along for much of the ride. These vermin love to stow away on ships and other vehicles to catch a lift. Fortunately, you can use rodent removal to get rid of rodents. While getting rid of rats in basement is easier said than done, a professional exterminator can likely get the job done.
Rats are such a problem in some areas that public authorities hire professionals whose primary job is to kill off rats, thus improving public health. New York City, one of the world’s most rat-infested cities, recently hired a so-called rat “czar.” If you live outside of New York, you might not have a rat czar, but your local animal control department may be working to kill these vermin off.
It’s harder to get rid of rats in a large area, like a city, compared to getting rid of rats in the garage and other small spaces. Quite likely, rats will survive even extensive extermination efforts in a large city. However, their population can be brought under control.
Need help with pests? Contact an exterminator. If nothing else, they can answer your questions, like do rats play dead or what is a crawler rat? Let the pros fill you in.
Many thousands of years ago, the Agricultural Revolution transformed humanity, when people transitioned from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of permanent settlements, animal husbandry, and agriculture. This paved the way for modern civilization, but there were some unintended consequences, too. Stored foodstuffs attracted wildlife such as rats, mice, and squirrels, who often broke into and devoured these food stores. Many speculate that wild cats were domesticated primarily to serve as rat and mouse catchers to protect grain supplies. These problems persist to the present day, but modern animal removal services can be called upon to eliminate unwanted rodents and effect wildlife control. These destructive animals may cause a lot of harm, and squirrel families can damage a house’s utilities. Today, animal removal allows either the relocation or killing of intruding rodents, depending on preferences.
The Problem of Rodents
Mice and sometimes even rats are kept as pets, and they are not nearly large or powerful enough to kill a person. Why, then, are they such a problem? For one, the age-old problem of food raiding persists, and that problem didn’t end with the neolithic age. Today, it’s believed that as much as 20% of the world’s food supply is contaminated or eaten by unwelcome rats, mice, and other creatures, and without modern animal removal and the like, that figure could be as high as 50%.
The problem don’t stop there. Rats, mice, and squirrels can’t ordinary kill people or even most pets with teeth and claw injuries, but they can spread disease fast. Such rodents may often carry the deadly rabies virus, for example, and any bite should be looked at by a medical professional. Not only that, but rats, mice, and squirrels often carry fleas, and those fleas, in turn, may spread deadly diseases through their blood-sucking bites. The blood loss isn’t the issue, but the transmission of disease through fleas, mites, and ticks. In fact, the infamous Black Death in medieval Europe was likely spread by flea-ridden rats who arrived from Asian trading ships. A relative lack of cats at the time due to witch hunts made this problem only worse. Today, there’s no Black Death plague in progress, but flea and tick bites are dangerous all the same.
Such rodents are also an issue due to property damage and sanitation issues. A public building such as an apartment or a restaurant may become temporarily shut down when rats and mice are found, and a restaurant’s image may suffer when rats are detected on the premises. Worse yet, these intruding rodents enjoy urban areas since they offer so many hiding places and shelter, and that includes the inside of buildings and even inside walls. Rats, mice, and squirrels are known to break into public buildings and houses alike to build nests and raise pups far away from cats and other predators. They’re known to build nests in air ducts that block air flow, and intruding rodents often chew on wood, plastic pipes, and electrical wires constantly to keep their teeth in shape. Finally, intruding squirrels are known to chew their way into a wooden attic and create holes that admit rain water. Such intruding water may cause all sorts of problems in its own right. Such a scenario call for animal removal services at once.
Clearing Out Rodents
Homeowners and public building managers alike may call upon animal removal services for any infestation too large to handle alone. One such option is to encase a building in an airtight, tent-like canvas and then release a lot of poison gas inside. Such gas will be allowed to linger for a few days and kill all rodents in the home, and professionals will clear out their bodies and safely pump out the poison gas. The building will be aired out, then safe for human habitation again.
Roof repair contractors may be asked to remove squirrels and their nests from the attic, and also patch up wall holes that the squirrels chewed. Special paint may be applied to discourage further squirrel invasions. And in some cases, live capture may be done, involving trap cages loaded with bait. Trapped rodents may be relocated somewhere remote and then released, where they’re unlikely to return to the house.
