There’s nothing positive about a rodent infestation. When rats, mice, and other rodents make their way into a home, they wreak absolute havoc, eating food, destroying furniture, and making a general mess. For this reason, you need to take rodent infestations seriously.

While you can deal with rodent infestations after they’ve already occurred, it’s much easier to just prevent them from happening in the first place. How do you do this? By doing away with things that commonly attract rodents.

Below, we’re going to discuss not only what attracts rats and other rodents, but what you can do about those things. Let’s go!

What Attracts Rats and Other Rodents?

There are a number of different things that can attract rodents to your home. However, the most common of these things are the following.

Left Out Food

Rodents love all manner of grains, seeds, and fruits. If you have any of these foods laying out around your house, you are making yourself prone to mice, rats, and similar pests.

Unsecured Trash Cans

Mice, rats, and other rodents are fiends for food scraps and other trash. They are attracted to both the tastes and the smells. Because of this, unsecured trash cans are exceedingly vulnerable to them.

Pet Food

Do you have cats, dogs, birds, or other pets in your home? If so, you need to keep their food secured as often as possible. If pet food is left sitting uncovered in your house 24 hours a day, rodents will try (and probably succeed) to get to it.

Clutter

Though you may not realize it, the fact of the matter is that rodents are actually quite smart. They’re not going to go into your home without a plan. Instead, they’re going to try to hide as much as they possibly can.

Where do rodents like to hide? In cluttered areas such as closets, pantries, and basements.

Crumbs

Mice and rats are small creatures. They don’t need to eat an entire cookie to satisfy their hunger. Just a little crumb will do.

In essence, if you let food crumbs lay on your floor, countertop or table for an extended period of time, rodents will eventually let themselves into your home.

Holes in Walls

Like most living beings, rodents like to work smarter, not harder. They don’t typically try to scheme their ways into homes. Instead, they look for existing holes and gaps.

Gardens

A big part of keeping rodents from coming into your home is keeping rodents away from your home. For this reason, you need to be very careful with the gardens in your yard. If you have fruits, vegetables, or other plants growing in your garden, rodents will be attracted to it.

Firewood

One more thing that attracts mice is firewood. This is particularly true of stacks of firewood. Firewood stacks make great hiding places for mice, and also provide them with shelter from sun, rain, and snow.

How to Do Away With Rodents

Keeping rodents away from your home can not be done through one simple measure. In order to stave off rodents, you must perform a variety of measures. The most important of these measures will be reviewed below.

Close Up Gaps

When rodents make their way into a home, they do so through small gaps which have formed on the home. These gaps can form on a number of different home entities, including the home’s roof, foundation, and siding, to name a few.

Your responsibility is to inspect for gaps often and to close them up upon discovery. By blocking off entry points, you keep mice and other rodents from making their way in.

Make Sure Your Trash is Covered

As was noted above, rodents are attracted to trash. If you want to keep rodents away from your trash, you need to keep it covered. Make sure to use a trash can with a cover on it.

Clean Often

Want to prevent rodents from pursuing the food crumbs that exist in your home? The only surefire way to achieve this is by picking those crumbs up as soon as they appear. Clean your home as often as you can.

Keep Everything Organized

We have already noted that rodents love clutter. How do you prevent clutter? By storing your possessions in a neat and organized manner.

Don’t give rodents any place to hide.

Take in Cats

While it might not be the most practical thing for you to do at the moment, you might consider scaring off rodents by taking in pet cats.

Cats are natural predators and strike fear into the heart’s of mice, rats, and other rodents. If rodents know your home houses cats, they probably won’t even try to enter.

Trim Tree Branches

Believe it or not, mice love to make their way into homes via tree branches. Therefore, if you want to keep mice out of your home, you need to keep your tree branches away from your home.

Keep Your Food Secured

As was noted above, rodents love fruits, grains, and seeds. If you leave these foods uncovered in your home, rodents will attempt to get to them.

However, if you keep them secured in plastic containers, cupboards, and drawers, rodents will more than likely stay away. At the very least, you’ll keep these foods from being eaten.

Keep Firewood Away from Your House

Rodents love using piles of firewood to make their way into homes. However, this doesn’t mean that you should stop stacking firewood. It just means that you should stack it at a reasonable distance away from your house; At least 25 feet, but the further, the better.

Need Help Repelling Rodents from Your Home?

Now that you know what attracts rats, you can set out to do away with them. Need help repelling rodents from your South Florida home? If so, Command Pest Control is the company to call.

Our team is well-versed in the repelling and eradication of all types of household rodents. Regardless of what rodents you’re dealing with, we can help you to combat them.

Contact us now to schedule an appointment!