Rat Control in Sacramento, CA

Roof rats up top, Norway rats underneath

The roof rat climbs. Sacramento calls itself the City of Trees, and mature trees, utility lines, fences, ivy and backyard fruit trees give a roof rat a route straight onto the roof. It comes in near the top of the building - an attic vent, a gap at the eaves, the open end of a tile course - which is why so much rat work here is attic work.

The Norway rat does the opposite. It burrows, it lives low, and in this region it has two rivers, miles of levee and a great deal of storm and sewer line to live along. It comes in from below: through a crawl space vent, a gap at the foundation, or up through a damaged drain or sewer line, where it is inside the structure without ever crossing the roof.

So the attic is where we start, not where we stop. Scratching overhead in the evening and droppings along a joist point at the roofline. Activity at ground level, or a problem that comes back after a clean seal at the roof, points underneath. We check both before anything is priced.

What we do about it

The entry points are mapped first, because you cannot seal what you have not found.

Then every opening gets sealed in steel and mortar before the trapping starts, so nothing new gets in while we work. Vents get proper screening, roofline gaps get closed, and the penetrations where pipes and conduit enter the building get packed. Overhanging limbs get flagged too - UC agricultural research puts tree limbs within six feet of a roof in reach of a roof rat, and in a city this green that is most houses.

We trap what is left inside - traps and the Rat Vac system, not poison - so nothing dies inside a wall cavity where you cannot reach it. In a Sacramento summer, a dead rat in a wall is not something you want to find by smell.

Then the attic or crawl space gets cleaned: droppings, nesting material and contaminated insulation out, the space sanitized, insulation replaced where it needs to be.