Author: Kurt Treftz, Cascade Pest Control
Avoid Damage and Disease with Rodent Control
Rats, mice, squirrels, and other common household rodents can cause disease and extensive damage to your home, storage items, and even to your car.
This damage is due largely to excessive gnawing or by contamination due to their extended dwelling in your space. Thankfully, Cascade Pest Control has a number of highly trained rodent control technicians, some of whom have been studying rodent behavior and consequences for many years.
Although we at Cascade Pest Control encounter rat- and mouse-caused damage daily, we can still get surprised by these critters. So it can be even harder for folks with little content knowledge about the habits and practices of these animals to know what they’re up against. This video previews years of Cascade experience and distills it into an introductory look at Rodent Damage and Disease.
Rodent Gnawing and Contamination
Most rodent’s incisor teeth are constantly growing, much like human fingernails. This means that they must maintain the length of these teeth, and most do so by gnawing hard foods to survive or shredding nesting materials in an attempt to file them down. The wood and aluminum found in many home exteriors are perfect candidates for rodent snacking, and once through these barriers, these creatures have access to interior spaces, such as attics or crawlspaces, that serve as perfect nests.
The damage rats and mice cause only furthers at this point, as their droppings and urination are left or tracked everywhere they roam. Beyond the immediate health risks this can cause bacteria-wise, a variety of disease pathogens—including the deadly hantavirus carried by mice—can further threaten your health.
While this is not a risk to be taken lightly, the greatest damage rodents can cause to residential spaces is to ruin the structural integrity of the space, along with potentially also ruining your automobile.
Rat & Rodent Damage to Home – Insulation
The many layers of insulation in attics and crawlspaces are intensely attractive to roaming mice and rats for nesting purposes. Their activity and movement often compresses, shreds, and dislodges the insulation, therein diminishing the active effect of the insulation itself. The heat loss or escape further results in added expenses in your heating or cooling bill per month too. Furthermore, contaminated insulation can be a health hazard that only increases the danger and necessity of replacing / repairing damaged insulation.
Contaminated insulation further poses a problem if you are trying to sell your home. Whether dislodged or sullied with rodent debris, these issues will be uncovered in the home inspection, and could result in the sale falling through.
This is also true of damaged roofing and siding materials that rats and squirrels are known to chew through. Electrical wiring can also be damaged in this process, leading to dead circuits or, in extreme scenarios, house fires. Long story short: you don’t want these critters getting access to neither the interior nor the exterior of your home due to the expensive and extensive damage they are prone to cause.
Rat Damage to Autos & Other Vehicles
The Puget Sound region has rats notorious for damaging cars. Whether it is through ruining upholstery on auto interiors, or engine hoses and high tech wiring, these pests can easily put your vehicle out of commission. It can take hundreds to thousands of dollars to repair these types of damage.
Rats and mice can also target your health via your vehicle as well. The Greater-Seattle area had a case of the hantavirus due to a mouse nesting in a car’s ventilation system! Take the time to protect your health and your car’s integrity by trusting Cascade to remove rat, mouse, and rodent access to your property.
About the Author:
Kurt Treftz is the co-founder of Cascade Pest Control and has been observing rodents, their behavior and the consequences of their presence for forty-one years. Cascade’s rodent control experts have the experience to know how rat, mice and other rodents behave and how to control them. We’re also familiar with the property damage, destruction, contamination, and disease that rodents can cause.
Cascade Pest Control’s services extend through Tacoma, Greater Seattle, Bellevue and the Eastside, Everett, Skagit & Island counties, and Bellingham.
Call us: 888-989-8979 or Request a Quote online
