Economy Pest Control serves the Greater Boston area with high-quality termite and pest control.

Rats and their Control

The Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus), also known as the brown rat, sewer rat, wharf rat, or water rat, is the rat most commonly encountered in the Greater Boston area and throughout the Northeastern United States. These stocky animals can grow to lengths of almost a foot and a half, from the nose to the tip of the tail.

Norway rats tend to be ground-dwelling animals, making their nests in burrows that they excavate, under sheds or other buildings, in basements and crawl spaces, in sewers and utility chaseways, and in garbage dumps and junkyards. They look mainly for areas that are close to sources of food and water, and in which they can find protective harborage from predators. Since rats will eat virtually anything, they often make nests near sources of human garbage.

The physical abilities of rats are quite impressive. When necessary, they can climb quite well; and they are often found in upper floors of abandoned buildings where the rat populations has forced the colonies to spread out. Rats also are excellent swimmers. They have been known to travel great distances through sewer pipes and storm drains.

The reproductive potential of the Norway rat is also quite impressive. Rats reach sexual maturity in about two to three months, and the average female rat bears between 30 and 60 young each year, of which 15 to 30, on average, will survive to maturity. Under favorable conditions, the rat population in a given area can increase dramatically in less than a year.

Control

Norway rats can be difficult to control. Their cautiousness, high reproductive potential, and general hardiness make rodent control a challenge even for professionals.

The most important factor to consider when controlling Norway rats is population control. Killing individual rats is not enough; the idea is to control the population. This begins with taking actions to make an area less able to support a rat population, such as:

Reducing the amount of food and water available by proper sanitation and waste management.
Reducing harborage by cleaning up refuse and debris in rat-infested areas.
Utilizing non-chemical control methods such as exclusion to keep rats from entering buildings.

Economy Pest Control can help you identify condtions conducive to rat infestation on your property, and offer helpful advice to correct these conditions. Once appropriate measures have been taken to make an area less rat-friendly and to exclude rodents, we will employ more direct control methods, such as the use of traps or rodenticides ("rat poison"), to rapidly reduce the existing rodent population.

Effective control of rats requires a detailed knowledge of their behavior, a cooperative effort to reduce or eliminate conditions favorable to them, and the skills of a professional exterminator. In the Greater Boston area, please contact us for more information about our rodent-control services.

Rodents | Rats | Mice | Rodent Control