If you notice some rat invasion inside your house, you surely want to know the best way to get rid of rats effectively from your house in easy to use method. Do not worry as we will cover many methods that are very effective and useable in many conditions.
Types of Rats That Often Invade
Before you even try to learn how to keep rats away, then it is better for you to know the types of rats that often invade houses in America. There are two common rats that like to enter people’s house which are the roof rat as well as the Norway rat. They have different appearance and habit that makes them unique.
The roof rat is smaller as well as sleeker and more agile type of the two. However, it has larger ears as well as longer length tail compared to its body. The nose of a roof rat is pointy and their eyes are bigger. Their belly usually has white or gray color fur and their body fur is gray to black in color.
The roof rat has great climbing ability, that is why they often seen on the roof, in any upper level of the building as well as on the outdoor vegetation. However, you may even found their nest in underground holes.
This type of rat is often seen in the coastal areas. That is because they generally want to reside around 100 miles away from the sea. They are more comfortable in temperate climates thus they do not like to reside in colder temperature.
Meanwhile the Norway rat is bigger as well as sturdier and robust type of the two. It has smaller ear and the length of their tail is smaller compared to its body. The nose of a roof rat is slanted and their eyes are smaller. Their belly usually consists of mostly gray color fur and their body fur is red to brown gray in color.
This Norway rat cannot climb, that is why they cannot go to the upper level of the building as the previous rat type. Thus they are more often seen on the lower part of the building as well as on the ground. They usually live within colonies and their nest is on the ground or lower level of a building.
Knowing which type of rat that invade your house make it easier for you to choose the method that you want to use to remove them. Of course, it is better for you to learn how to keep rats away using various method including natural rat repellent that we have mention below. Here are the best ways that you can use to try and get rid of those rats from your house or any other building that is invested by the rats.
10 Best Way to Get Rid of Rats
1. Moth Balls
You usually think that this moth balls are used when storing clothes so it would be able to get rid of moth from your clothes. However, you should also know that these moth balls are also effective to get rid of rats. All you need to do is to spread these moth balls into area where the rats like to hide such as roof, basement, and your warehouse. However, you should remember not to use these moth balls inside the house where people live as this item is actually quite poisonous even for human. It is better when you wear working gloves while spreading it so you do not touch it directly with your hands. Wash your hand with soap and water after you are done to remove any residue.
2. Ammonia
If you do not want to buy moth balls, then you can actually make a repellent by yourself using ammonia. All you need to do is to create your own mixture. Take a medium size bowl, then add ¼ glass water, pour in regular ammonia with two cup size into the bowl, finally add 2 tbsp of detergent. Stir them all to mix, and be very careful when you make this mixture. Make sure you wear working gloves as well as mask to prevent you from inhaling the ammonia.
To use this method, you need to but that mixture inside a bowl in several places that the rats often hide or showing up. The rats actually hate the smell of ammonia as much as we do. Thus this method will help you in getting rid of rats immediately.
3. Peppermint
Peppermint has refreshing and nice smell to human, however turns out that the rats actually hate this smell. That is why; you can try and use it to repel the rat away from your house. You can even use both fresh peppermint and the essential oil which both equally effective. To use the fresh peppermint, you need to plant several of the plant surrounding your house in the form of boundaries. This will prevent the rats from invading your house. For the essential oil, it is useful to repel the rats that already inside the house. All you need to do is to put some drops of the oil into cotton balls. Then you can spread this cotton balls all around your house. Do not worry as peppermint oil is safe for human to inhale so you can use it anywhere inside your house.
4. Predators
Another best way to prevent rats from invading your house is by having their natural predators around. Their natural predators in the wild are owls as well as snakes. Of course you do not need to really have them around since snakes can be dangerous for you. All you need to do is to put several plastic snakes in your garden and camouflage it so it will looked real. The rats fear this animal so they will stay away from your house. Alternatively, you can also use owl’s feathers which you can put on the rats holes that you find. This will make all of those pests run away from fear.
5. Pepper
You surely have this spice in your house as it is a common spice that used in many dishes. But you might not know that the rats do not like the smell of this spice which able to make the rats hard to breathe. This is very effective as it can also threaten their life. That is why they will avoid this spice at all cost. If you want to use this spice, you only need to spread the powder or just crush some of the seed then spread them away. Spread them in corners where the rats love to enters, and then you can see the result right away. But you may also need to repeat this method after some duration as the pepper might get sweep away.
6. Bay Leaves
It is another herb that you usually use on cooking various dishes as it gives nice scent and taste to the dishes. The rats may even like their taste as much as you would. However, little that they know these bay leaves is actually poisonous for them. They will die if they eat these leaves thus you may want to use it as the best rat poison that created using natural ingredients. Just leave some of them near places where you often see the rats, then let the rats eat them. Repeat the process until all of the rats is killed using this natural ingredient.
7. Onion
Some of you hate the smell of onion even though this food is actually making your dishes taste more delicious. Turns out the rats also hates them as much as you do. So you should take advantage of this and use it as one of the method to remove the rats from your house. Just slice some onions then spread them all around your house in the corners where rats usually hide.
8. Cow Dung
This might sound so gross for some of you, but for those who happens to live in a farm; this might be a good tip. Even though you hare the cow dung smell, but actually the rats love them. Sometimes they will even eat this as they think it is a good food to eat. However, eating it will make their stomach become inflamed severely, which eventually leads to their death. That is why; you can use this item as an effective way to poison those rats. Just take several dung cakes then spread them on the attic or warehouse where you would not smell it. Then left them for a couple of days you can see that the rats will be death.
9. Traps and Bait
When you learn how to get rid of rats fast, then most of the time you will learn about traps and bait method. It is an effective method that you can do if you are persistent enough to do it regularly. Making bait to trap the rats need some effort to do, but most of the time your effort would not become vain. Of course, there are several ways of trapping and baiting the rats that you can use which we will cover below.
10. Steel Wool
An effective method if you want to keep the rodent away from your house is by covering their access using steel wool. They would not be able to chew this steel wool, thus prevent them from accessing your house. However, before using this method, you need to find out their access point first. Then you can set some kind of barrier on their access point to prevent them from coming through it.
Those are several methods that you can use as best way to get rid of rats from your house whether it is from inside the house itself and even from outside the house. Some of those methods need to be done in regular period so it will still be effective in removing the rats from inside your house. However, some of those methods may become a permanent solution for you. Of course, this also depends on the situation that you have in hand. And remember that your condition can change so you may also want to try and change the method that you apply to remove the rats from inside your house. Nevertheless those methods are indeed effective and already proven by years of usage by many people.
In Deep Guide on Traps and Bait to Get Rid of Rats
Now that the other methods are covered, there is one method that we need to cover deeper which are the traps and bait method. This method is commonly uses by many people as it is very effective and less expensive to do. There are some traps that uses bait but some are non baited traps. Non baited traps are pretty inexpensive way that you can use to reduce the population of rats in your environment. However, using bait in your traps will increase its effectiveness. There are several types of traps that you can use such as:
- Snap trap
It is the most traditional trap that you often seen on comedy move as traps that hurt the comedian in different places. It is very effective as it is created in the rat size. Furthermore, it can capture as well as kill the rat at the same time, so you can get rid of it right away. Remember that you need to choose large size trap which usually have “rat control” label. This large size trap will be able to hold even large size rats and kill them instantly.
- Live trap
If you hate on the idea of killing the rats, then this live trap is one that you can use. This trap consists of some type of mechanism which can trap the rats inside. As you know rats like to explore into holes. This trap is creating using that tendency in mind as the trap utilizes small holes which make the rats want to enter it. But once they enter the hole, there is certain mechanism that triggers the trap to snap close. Then the rats will be trapped inside so later you can remove the rats further away for it not to invade your house once again.
- Glue board
We do not recommend this trap as it is less effective compared to other traps. Especially when the rats are very large so it can even drag the trap away as it will only attached to its body. And sometimes they can even free themselves from the glue especially when they only caught in one of their foot, which is why it is not very effective to use. However, if you see that the rats which invade your house are small enough to be captured by this kind of trap then you can give it a try.
Now for the baits, there are also several things that you can use as bait so they will be lured to enter the traps. All you need to do is to think what do rats eat the use them as baits. The easiest thing is by using pet food since it is dry and easy to be placed inside the traps. However, you can also use common dried food such as fruits, nuts and even meat. However, try to use hard food as soft food is easier to be pulled by the rats so the trap would not snap closed. You can then attach these baits into the traps by using wire or thread to the trap trigger.
Tips in Using Rodenticides inside House with Children
Rodenticides are actually effective way that you can use to remove the rats from inside your house. However, as this item is made using harmful chemical and very poisonous. It is not only poisonous for the rats, but also for human, especially small children. There is a risk when using them in house with children around.
That is why EPA has issued a new regulation which make this type of bait can only be sold in the form of disposable and one time use bait station. By using this type of bait station, then it will mineralized human contact to the poison as well as protecting the children from touching them accidentally.
The bait station itself is actually not a trap that will kill the rats. Instead it is only a station to store the rodenticides inside. Then the rats will enter the station and eat the rodenticides inside. After a while it will kill them in very fast duration. Remember to see the direction included in the product if you try to use this item as it is very dangerous. Usually professional pest control uses this method as they have access on bulk rodenticides. Of course, they already have enough knowledge to use this method in the safest way possible. Thus if your rats invasion is very severe, it is better to as the help from professional pest control rather than trying them by yourself.