Rat and mouse control in Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth
You hear rats before you see them. Something moving across the ceiling at night, always around the same time.
By the time one is seen in daylight there are usually more than you would like to think about. They’re not a sign of a dirty house. They are a sign of a way in, and a roof is full of ways in.
What you’re looking at
- Noise in the roof at night. Scratching or running, usually starting after dark and settling before morning.
- Droppings. Along the tops of walls, in the back of cupboards, behind the stove and in the ceiling.
- Gnawing. On skirtings, on food packaging, and on electrical cable, which is the part worth taking seriously. A gnawed cable in a roof is a fire.
- A smell that won’t go. Usually something that died in a cavity wall or under the floor, and it is a job on its own to find it.
- Rub marks. Dark greasy smears along the routes they run, low down where wall meets floor.
Baiting alone doesn’t end it
Bait deals with the rats that are already in. It does nothing about the hole they came through, so a few months later you are hearing the same noise at the same time of night.
The lasting part of the job is exclusion, which is the same principle as keeping birds out of a roof. Close the ways in and the problem stops recurring. It’s why we generally look at a rodent job and a bird proofing job the same way, and why the two often come up together on the same property.
How the job runs
- We go through the property first. The roof, the ceiling void, the drains, the outbuildings and wherever food is kept. We are looking for the runs and the entry points, not just the droppings.
- Bait goes into lockable stations. Tamper-resistant, placed on the runs rather than scattered, so children and pets can’t get to it. That matters more than anything else we do on a rodent job.
- Trapping where bait isn’t right. In food preparation areas and some commercial premises, traps rather than bait.
- Then we close it up. Entry points sealed, because that is what makes it last.
- We come back. Stations get checked and topped up, and we tell you what has been taken and what that means.
Questions we get asked
Is the bait safe with a dog in the yard?
Bait goes into locked stations fixed in place, on the runs, out of reach. Tell us about the animals in the house before we start and we will plan around them. Where we aren’t comfortable, we trap instead.
Something has died in the wall. Can you get it out?
Sometimes, and sometimes it is in a cavity nothing reaches. We’ll tell you honestly which it is when we see it rather than promise it over the phone.
Rats or mice, does it matter?
Yes. They travel differently and they take bait differently, so the stations go in different places. Part of the first visit is working out which you have.
How long until it is quiet?
A week or two for the noise to stop in most houses. The proofing is what decides whether it stays quiet.
Do you do businesses?
Yes. Restaurants, shops and warehouses, usually on a standing arrangement with scheduled checks rather than a single visit.
What it costs
Rodent work is quoted per property. Unlike a spray job, the price depends on the size of the building, how many stations it needs, and how much closing up there is to do at the end, so a number typed on a page here would be a guess.
We come and look, and you get the figure before anything starts. The rest of our prices are on the prices page.
Tell us what you’re hearing
Where in the house, and what time of night. That tells us more than you’d expect.
Or phone 061 905 0514 if you’d rather talk to a person.