The Dangers of Mice and Rats, and Ways to Deal with Them

Rodents can cause a severe amount of damage when they gain access to a property. Mice and rats can be a serious problem, and even squirrels can cause trouble.

Mice have teeth which never stop growing, and the result is that they naturally have to chew and gnaw on things in order to keep their teeth down to size. They will gnaw on things like wood and chew through electric cables. While with the latter you may have a dead mouse, you may also have a house fire. If you see mice around the home – or even if it is only one – the likelihood is that there are many more. Mouse traps in Lincolnshire may well catch some of them, but your mice might be in a place where it is hard to get to, such as under the eaves.

Mice also make nests in out of the way places where you are not likely to spot them. They use shredded pieces of paper and other materials in order to build a nest which might be behind your cooker or fridge, and you probably won't think of pulling your cooker out to have a look. Furthermore, the gestation period of a mouse is approximately three weeks, and they can give birth to anywhere between 3 and 14 young, with the average being 6 to 8. Females reach sexual maturity at six weeks, and each can have five to ten litters a year, so you can see that you don't need very many mice in your home or business for the population to explode very rapidly.

Rats can be another major problem, with similar habits to mice in the way that they chew through cables. They like to get into the soffits and the eaves, and also under floorboards. They can also often be heard in the wall space. They can chew through flexible pan connectors behind a toilet and can gain entry by swimming through the U-bend of the toilet. In parts of the Mediterranean, holiday home owners are known to put the toilet lid down and weight it with a brick when they leave the property.

One of the major ways that rats make entry to a property is through drain and sewer pipes. However, in the UK today, pest controllers are fighting back with what is known as a rat blocker. This is a stainless-steel device which is fitted into a drain or sewer pipe which prevents the rats gaining access, while allowing the water and sewage to flow normally. Thus instead of trying to control rats that are already inside a property, it prevents them from getting entry in the first place.

The rat blocker fits tight into your drain or sewer pipe and the steel flap opens when fluids need to flow freely into the sewer. However, until then the flap remains closed and the rats can't gain entry. Quite simply, fluid flows out, but rats can't get in. That also means that even if you have multiple lateral drains, you still only need one rat blocker to keep the rats out.

In Denmark, rat blockers are now actually required by legislation and are fitted to all schools, hospitals, government buildings, and new-build properties. More than 100,000 rat blockers have been installed, and one manufacturer states that up to 90% of town rats come from underground pipes.

Some of the best rat blockers in Denmark have a "VA" seal of approval having passed stringent tests including flow tests, and another where a rat is placed in a sealed system for two weeks and the smell of food wafted to it by a small fan. In order to pass the test, the rat must not be able to pass the rat blocker.

Last October, one of the country's largest insurance companies began offering its' premium customers a free rat blocker, including installation, thus acknowledging that rat blockers not only give home owners peace of mind, but also have the potential to save the insurance company money in the long haul.

In the UK, in Devon, it was widely reported on BBC TV that residents in a new housing development had spent thousands on trying to deal with a rat infestation. A pest control expert who was brought in quickly located the problem and installed two 6" rat blockers. Residents are delighted, because there has not been an issue since.

Pestcotek is the leading pest control company in the county and can use mouse traps in Lincolnshire to control a mouse infestation.