Are You Struggling To Keep Rodents From Entering Your Nashville Home?

Identifying Rodents Inside Your Home

There are a few animals that can get into your home. Do you know for sure that you have a rodent problem? Often, rodents don't show themselves. Rats and mice are nocturnal animals that prefer to stay hidden. The first step in keeping rodents out is determining whether you have a rodent problem or not. Just so that we're on the same page, these tips will do more than help you tell if rodents are your problem. Detection is the first and last step in rodent control. At first, it enables you to figure out a few essential facts, such as nesting areas, routes, population numbers, and more. Here are a few easy ways you may determine what critters you have in your home. 

Wall Sounds: When you hear sounds from a wall, they may not be rat or mouse noises. Bats get into wall voids and make similar noises. You may check to see if you have a bat problem by going outside and looking for guano on the ground or a hole in your exterior with a black coloration around it.

Attic Sounds: When you hear sounds coming from your attic, you may have a squirrel or a raccoon up there. Squirrels are active during the day, not at night when rats and mice are active. Raccoons are active at night, but they make more noise than rodents. Therefore, day noises or loud noises can help you rule out rats and mice.

Droppings: When you find droppings in your home, there are important facts you can learn about your infestation. Mice are tiny rodents that leave tiny droppings. But so do insects. You can differentiate mouse droppings from insect droppings because insects leave tiny black specks. Mouse droppings are almost the size of rice grains. Rats are big rodents that leave bigger droppings than mice and insects. But so do squirrels. You can rule squirrels out if you find droppings in your kitchen, pantry, or bathroom. Squirrels don't explore your home. They tend to stay in the attic.

When you find droppings, clean the area so you can return to see if new droppings appear. If you see new droppings, you have an active infestation. You can also tell an active infestation by the color and consistency of the droppings. Black, moist droppings are fresh. Grey, crumbly droppings are old. 

Grease Marks: When domestic rodents explore your home, you will likely see dark smudges on baseboards, pipes, and rafters. A domestic rodent lives near humans and comes in contact with dust, dirt, grease, and garbage, among other things. As they run along baseboards and pipes or hide in the rafters of your attic, they leave grease marks.

Holes: When rodents access your kitchen or pantry, they'll come out of your wall voids. Get down low and use a flashlight to look underneath the overhang of your cabinets. Slide your oven out and examine the wall behind. Keep in mind that you're looking for small holes. An adult mouse can squeeze through a hole the size of a dime and an adult rat can fit through a hole the size of a quarter. You're not looking for big holes with arches—like a cartoon mouse would make.

Once you determine that you do, indeed, have a rat or mouse infestation in your home, the next step is to drive them out. There are a few all-natural ways you might be able to do this. Let's take a look at them.

Safely Getting Rid Of Rodents In Nashville

We recommend all-natural methods for rodent control because some products used to control common rodents are potentially harmful to people, dogs, and cats. While they require hard work, it is work worth doing. These tips will do more than drive rodents out of your home. They help to drive out a long list of Nashville pests that are equally as yucky to have in your home as rodents.   

• Deep clean. A mouse eats 15 to 20 times a day. Often, a meal for a mouse is nothing more than food debris. When you clean every nook and cranny, you remove food options easily accessible to mice.
• Keep stored food in sealed containers. While a mouse or rat can chew through a plastic container, it won't think to do it because a sealed container holds the scent of the food inside.
• Put pet food down only during mealtimes. When food is left overnight, mice and rats may access the food. They are nocturnal critters.
• Fix leaking faucets and showerheads. While rodents can derive moisture from the foods they eat, they prefer to live in structures that provide a convenient water source.

All-natural rodent management removes food and water options within your home. While rats and mice can live in your home and get food and water from your perimeter or yard, they may choose to move out when there is food and moisture scarcity indoors. When combined with exclusion work, it is possible to drive these critters out and keep them out naturally.   

How To Keep Rodents Away Once They're Gone

Once you've altered conditions in your home and given time for mice or rats to leave, the next step is to keep those rodents from getting back inside. These tips will also deter rodent activity near your exterior walls, which works to keep backyard rodents in your backyard.

• Use expanding foam to fill in holes and gaps around foundation penetrations, such as pipes and wire conduits.
• Use a caulking gun to seal gaps around window and door frames and fill in holes.
• Repair damaged window and door screens and seal gaps around your screen frames.
• Replace old weatherstripping.
• Install door sweeps where needed.
• Align exterior doors if necessary.
• Install ventilation caps if missing or damaged.
• Use a foundation repair kit to seal cracks in your foundation wall.
• Trim dense areas of your landscaping to remove hiding places.
• Apply fencing material to keep rats and mice from getting underneath your deck, porch, or patio.
• Move bird feeders away from your exterior. Mice and rats love seeds.
• Stay on top of cleaning up nuts from nut-producing trees.
• Keep your garbage in covered containers and get your containers to the curb weekly.
• Remove yard clutter. Rodents use objects on the ground to navigate. A yard free of ground objects is resistant to rats and mice.
• Trim tree branches away from your roofline to prevent rodents from getting onto your roof and exploiting vulnerabilities up there.
• Put wire mesh in your downspouts to keep mice from working their way up through your gutter system to get onto your roof.
• If you have pipes on your exterior, you may consider putting protective devices on them to prevent rats and mice from scaling them. These devices look like upside-down cones. 

Taking these steps can naturally work to deter rodents and keep them out of your home. They counteract the natural behavior patterns of rats and mice. In most cases, you won't need more control than this. Professional rodent control may be the best option if you have higher than normal rodent pressures or conducive conditions that are hard to address.  

Professional Rodent Control Services Made Easy For Nashville Homes

It is a lot of work to control rodents with all-natural methods, but it is often equally hard to use traps and other control methods to get rid of them. Rats and mice are surprisingly adept at avoiding traps and bait, especially when not placed correctly. The service professionals at All-American Pest Control use a scientific process to remove and keep rodents out. We inspect your property and evaluate your rodent control problem, discuss treatment options with you, apply treatments according to industry best practices, and monitor the program's success to ensure no rodents remain in your home. Once your home is rodent-free, we guide you in deciding how you'd like to keep rodents out. We help you every step of the way. 

Would you like to learn more about how to address rodent problems or how we give your perimeter the protection it needs to keep Nashville pests out? We'd love to speak with you. Connect with us today. We're here to help.

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