What Attracts Rats to Your Home?

As hard as you have tried to stop them you can’t seem to understand how a rat gets in the house. That’s because there are several factors encouraging the continued invasion of your home by rats. And possibly are yet to deal with some other factors attracting rate to your residence or office. Rats are no doubt, unwanted visitors, in the home and you need to call our rat exterminator Toronto services. They come in unannounced and uninvited and make themselves feel at home at your expense.

The other annoying challenge with having rodents around is; it doesn’t take long before they start taking over your apartment. They litter the place with their babies and leave you with the job of cleaning up their mess. Rats feast on your food supply and then go ahead to invite the mischief (a group of rats) makers to colonize your home. Now, have you had enough? Let’s look at what attract rats to your home:

5 Rat Attractions in your Home

Food & Water

Rats do not have a choice or special preference when it comes to food. However, they tend to like foods rich in starch, carbohydrate, and protein. When you expose cook foods on the sink, kitchen cabinet or table it’s an open invitation to rats. Also, leftover foods kept on the sink, table or other exposed places can help attract rats to the home. They feed on grains, cereal, milk, vegetable, leather, soap, etc. For instance, having an open garbage bin is an open invitation for rat infestation.

Rats cannot survive more than a week without drinking water. However, water might not be the major reason rats get attracted to the home as there are so many water sources everywhere.

Shelter, warmth, and comfort

Besides food, one of the most critical needs of the rat is warmth from the chilling winter season or shelter. Rats are warm-blooded omnivores and staying in the cold is out for such a person. They also need time to rest for up to 8 – 10 hours per day. The shelter also serves as a nesting place for their babies.

Within the premises and outside the rats also stay under leaves, hips of dirt, shrubs, woodpiles, etc. from there rats look for a way to nest in the home or they can build a burrow near your house. There are some image examples of rat burrows in garden pictures.

Dirty environment

Living in a poorly cleaned environment might just be what attracts rats to your home. In some cases, not cleaning the home regularly or leaving old materials around and leaving the garbage exposed. All these are things that could invite rats into your home.

Also, where there are dirty basements or attics, old chairs or cars, etc. could provide a nice home for rats. Since they are scavengers they would invade any home with promises of food or shelter. Poor sanitation situation makes the inhabitants of the home prone to illnesses. Canadian residents are bird lovers and that means they would require bird feeders. Bird feeders usually drop residues that can invite rates into the home.

Leaking pipes

Leaking pipes provide not only access routes but the needed warmth to survive. Rats are excellent swimmers (Norway rat– Rattus norvegicus) so if the pipe has leakages it won’t deter them from entering the home. Also, because they are fast and can climb even the leaking pipe can help rats gain access into the home if there is an opening.

Openings

There are several locations through which the rat can gain access to the home. These are called entry points, and it is important that you know how to recognize them. Holes and cracks in the wall, around the drainpipe or toilet piping system, can be what attracts rats to your home. Other areas that can serve as access routes for rats include unsealed windows, opening underneath the door, etc.

Hideouts

Rats love dark spots since they operate more at night under the cover of darkness. And once you have a quiet place in the home where they can hide. Such hideouts provide the rat with a strategic location from which they can wait to start scouting for foods or breed their young,

How to Make your Home Less Attractive to Rats

• It’s a must, all raw and cooked food must be kept sealed away from rat access.
• Remember that even your pet feed, grass seed or bird feed should be kept in well-sealed bags.
• Do not keep leftover foods on the sink or cabinet overnight.
• Keep raw foodstuffs in airtight bags or containers with functional lids.
• Look out for crawl spaces like window lids and door gaps to keep them sealed.
• Seal off any leaking pipe, insulator or entrance into the attic.
• Check for openings and burrows in the basement and around the building and seal off properly even if it is not up to half an inch.
• Seal off openings around the sewage, water system, sink and bathroom pipes.
• Keep the shrubs and trees far from building, say 10 feet.
• Clean out your entire home more often to reduce hideouts and crawl spaces.
• Put wastes in lid-tight trash cans.
• Be on the regular lookout for new access routes because they won’t give up so easily.
• Use sealers like mesh screen and steel wool to seal off required locations. You can work with a professional pest control company kick out and keep rats out.
• Keep wood around the premises away neatly.
• Keep your birdbath or pet water bowls intact. Also, make sure you do not have dripping taps or sprinkler heads.

The truth is that what attract rats to your home still remain largely your activities. Since rats need water, shelter, and food to survive once you can think of all ways to eliminate the attraction, you are on your way to being rat-free. However, the best measure for dealing with rats still remains seeking professional pest control Toronto or humane wildlife removal company help. DIY (Do-It-Yourself), home remedies and more sounds good but cannot always be used for critical rat infestations.