How to Remove Rats in the Basement
Rats like basements for obvious reasons: access from the ground level, plenty of room to move around, they are usually dark, and humans most often will not make this area a main living space. Once you have a rat infestation in the basement of your home, it will only grow and begin to spread to other parts of the home. It's important as a homeowner to recognize when you have a rat problem in your basement, and contact a wildlife removal specialist that assists with rodent control and removal, in order to prevent these small mammals from chewing their way through your wallls, ductwork, and electrical conduits.
Trapping Rats in the Basement
Solving your rat problem in the basement of your home can be as easy as setting up some traps aroudn this area. If you don't use your basement often, and wont' have small children or household pets in the area, it is safe to use snap traps. Our technicians usually bait and set these traps nearby where the rats are entering the basement or nesting in order to maximize their efficiency.
Finding Their Entrances
A throrough inspection is in order before you set the traps in order to find the entrances the rats are using to enter your basement. You'll need to search both high and low along walls of your basement as household black rats and roof rats are skilled climbers. While they are already quite small creatures, they are able to squeeze and flatten themselves to suprisingly small sizes to mnake use of the smallest cracks and other vulnerabilities in your home.
Setting the Traps
After inspecting and preparing to do exclusion work, bait and set your traps as previously discussed. It may take several rounds of trapping to eliminate all of these pesky critters, but it will be worth it. In between rounds of trapping, you can start doing exclusion work to make sure that the rats or other rodents don't start inviting their friends over. Use silicone caulking for small holes and cracks, and repair siding and stucco outside of the home. If you have vents that lead to your basement, make sure to place steel mesh behind or in front of them so that rats don't work their way through the slats.