Anyone have suggestions for a honest reasonable pest control company? HVAC people said he saw signs of some rodents in crawl space Minor problem but want to get it handled. Thanks in advance. I do not want replies form companies.
This might be better asked on a local Facebook or NextDoor group since many good pest control companies are locally owned as opposed to the large chain ones.
I have a farm and have rats and mice. I had to be careful using trap which contained poison after I acquired two large dogs. There also was the possibility of feral cats finding poison.
Anything which uses poison is a problem as vermit will ingest it and then go somewhere to die. You do not want that smell anywhere near your house. So rather than ask Clark how to get travel deals for mice to, oh I don’t know, Orlando.. (see the humor there?), I used the following.
I opted for a humane way to kill rats and mice. I purchased a couple of electronic traps (like the Victor Rat Zapper) which will deliver an electrical shock to the animal without poison. They die is seconds, then you can just dump them somewhere away from the house.
Some of these electronic traps contain wifi/bluetooth so that if nearby, the cellphone app can tell you when they have eliminated a pest. Others may be cheaper and not have the notification. I would read pros and cons and number of reviews. Also check as some units are designed for mice and others larger for rats.
Some suggest peanut butter or cheese, however what I found was I would arm the device, angle it a bit and just toss in a couple little pieces of dry dog food/kibble to sit at the far end of the device, then just carefully put it in place. In one case I set one outside on the open porch and within 5 minutes had a beep on the cellphone app that a rat was caught. I waited a few minutes, went out and tipped the trip so the animal slipped out of the trap into a small plastic grocery bag I had, drove away from the house and tossed the guy out of the bag into the grass.
I was then ready to re- load and re-arm the trap again. No cleanup. I will mention that if the animal is in the trap for any length of time, you may have to open the trap and clean the bottom plates. Essentually the animal smells the food, enters the ‘tunnel’ and steps on metal plates. When far enough in near the food, the back feet will be on one plate and the front feet on the other plate, thus completing an electrical connection and killing the animal.
It is funny because in the late 60’s a friend and I solved the problem with a metal plate a small circle of vinyl record with an apple on top of it and a high voltage transformer connected to the plate and a wire stuck in the apple. We could have designed a better and safer solution and created these things 55 year ago! These newer units are a lot safer and no need for an apple.