When winter comes knocking, your attic looks like a safe haven to animals caught out in the cold. Because they tend to be quiet, the first time you may notice their presence is when you hear a scream when the holiday decorations are being brought down from the attic and an active rat or squirrel nest, complete with rodents, is discovered instead.
Preventing Pests from Making Your Attic Their Home
Remove or pest-proof access vectors. This means checking those pipes and trimming boards or other vertical surfaces that pests use as ladders to make the climb. Something as simple as putting in a bit of roof flashing horizontally at a low point can make it impossible for pests to climb around the flashing and continue their upward mobility.
- Seal up the access points. If you have older vents in an unheated attic, this can be as simple as finding some 1/4" square hardware cloth to back the vent and keep them from climbing through to your attic space. If there are holes in the trim, a bit of polyurethane foam - the canned spray foam found at most home improvement stores - will block them up. Most pests don't like chewing on the foam.
- Put out traps or bait to get rid of any problem pests that do make it into your attic. Bear in mind that if you have pets, they could ingest a rodent poisoned with warfarin and get very sick or die from eating the poisoned animal. Warfarin poisoning is a serious problem, but can be treated if caught early enough through a combination of Vitamin K, iron supplementation and veterinary care.
- If you're looking for a more animal-friendly way to repel attic pests—spray peppermint extract or scatter crushed red pepper in front of vents, open gaps or on the floor. Pests will avoid these items because they pick up a strong scent from them. This scent makes it easier for predators to find and kill them.
If you have had unusually bright pests get around your defenses or if you've missed a spot and now have an infestation, it's time to bring in the heavy hitters. At Breda Pest Management, we've built our business for decades on quality reliable service. Please request a free consultation to get answers to your pest problem.
