Chris, our co-owner and head technician, was interviewed on a number of pest control tips by WikiHow. This is the link to the full interview:
wikiHow Expert Interview Transcript: Chris Parker – wikiHow
Here are some of the questions and his answers:
wikiHow Staff:
Now I would love to transition into the various ways one can capture and trap rats. And you mentioned a few that you support. And I’m just curious if you can just describe not only the ones that you particularly love to use, but also like what are some common ways to just track rats in general, as someone who’s maybe thinking about it.
Chris Parker:
So far away, the most common way to control rodents outside is with rodenticide, which is rat poison. And I will take a step off of my little high horse here and explain rodenticide is typically called baits. So it’s a tasty little nugget of poison that is set inside of tamper-proof boxes and set around the exterior of the house or the yard wherever you think there’s rodent activity, the rooms go into these little boxes, they nom nom nom and then they go away, and then they die. So I would say 99% of pest control companies in the United States if you call for a rodent issue, that’s what they will do. And you can also do this yourself. There are commercially available baits, California just recently banned the sale of most rodenticides to the general public, so changes are happening in this market. But if you want to poison some rats, you can do that at the hardware store yourself.
wikiHow Staff:
Got it. That’s a really good tip. And I am learning everything now about the control of these rats. And I would love to transition inside of one’s home, you may have already touched upon this. But another area of one’s home that may have a selection of these rodents is one’s attic. And I’m curious if you have any specific tips you have for dealing with that type of space where you’re not in it as much as your regular rooms, but you do want to deal with it?
Chris Parker:
Trim your trees. If there is a tree branch within six feet of your roof, a rat will very easily jump onto your roof. I’m trying to use layman’s terms here because a lot of people don’t know the makeup of how a house is built. So a rat will jump off the tree, run down into your gutter, there is very often a gap between the top of the gutter and the bottom of the shingles. And that will typically run the whole way around the house. So it’s like you’ve got a tiny little slit running around your entire house that they can use as a front door. So my thing with roofs is, do you have anything within six feet of the roof and this can even be like a power line like they’ll run down power lines and then jump onto your roof. So trim your trees. And if they’re using power lines, install a baffle which is basically like a giant dinner plate that’s like, I don’t know 16 inches across and it slips over the power line as like a little barricade so that they can’t jump off the power line and get to your house.
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