How can rats get into your house

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What Do Rats Eat? How to Get Rid of Mice in the Walls ». Call us at for Immediate Assistance. That being said, there are other rodent pests, such as mice, who can leave behind the same signs when they invade your home. They can also fit through holes about the size of a quarter.

What else can a rat chew through? The destruction these creatures can leave in their wake could really hit you hard financially. Rats are prolific breeders, so infestations can be a pain to control.

You can try to save yourself a lot of this headache by undertaking preventative measures, including:. And if you want to help prevent them from getting into your home in the first place, a Terminix specialist can conduct a free inspection of your home to determine where rats are getting in and which kind you are dealing with. As autumn has officially begun and the weather begins to cool, Terminix has ranked the top 50 most rodent-infested cities in America.

You might not see them. You might not hear them. But there may be an entire population of pests living in your home's crawl space. They can also live in wall spaces. Other visiting small mammal may include voles and shrews. There are two main things that can attract mice and rats to your house — food and shelter. Rats and mice also need shelter, particularly during winter to avoid the worst of the cold.

A heated home with lots of places to hide away is perfect, and an untidy home even more so. Mice can squeeze through gaps less than 2cm in diameter, and rats only need slightly more space, so any small hole to the outside can serve as a rodent gateway straight into your home.

Rodents generally cause minor problems in houses — of those with yellow-necked mice, 42 per cent suffer damage to furnishings and internal structures, 31 per cent to food, and 9 per cent to insulation and wiring; 18 per cent suffer no damage.

Droppings or scats can tell us a lot about which animals have been visiting our gardens, parks and countryside, including hedgehogs, foxes and badgers. Our expert guide to animal droppings or scats explains how to identify which animal species it comes from and what information it contains about the health of the animal.