Coming Soon to Your Home and Neighborhood
By Fire Chief Sam DiGiovanna
The weather is changing very quickly. From extremely warm temperatures to cool temperatures are on the horizon. It’s time to start preparing your home from unwanted guests – Rats!
Winter is hard for most rats due to the limited availability of food and just how problematic low temperatures are. Survival is their only concern, putting breeding worries on the back burner and looking for warmth, food, and water.
They scurry in our walls and above our heads during the night, they raid our food and ruin it with their feces, and they reproduce wildly, creating more and more inhabitants for us to worry about.
Ask anyone in California and most will tell you “The rat population is on the rise,” according to Fire Chief Sam DiGiovanna.
Rats, mice, and squirrels also do a lot of damage to your home’s structure, insulation, pipes and even electrical wiring. While you can repair obvious damage, it’s all too easy to miss a gnawed piece of wire when confronted with larger scale issues like insulation used as nesting, excrement contaminated floorboards and gnawing upon support beams.
Rodents’ teeth are constantly growing, which forces them to have to gnaw on anything they can get their paws on to file their teeth down. Plastic insulation surrounding electrical wiring exists because electricity is quite hot when it goes through wires. The insulation protects nearby objects from getting overheated. However, when a rat or other rodent has been going after your wires, they leave nothing left but the hot, exposed metal. It’s only a matter of time before the wire either short circuits, causing a spark, or heats up and causes something nearby to ignite.
Because mice can enter holes of even 1/4 inch, you need to seal any exposed openings to ensure that rodents cannot enter your home.
Your home should be free of exposed elements where rodents can gain entry.
Avoid storing firewood, supplies, equipment, etc. next to your house. Rodents find refuge in these first and then can move into the home.
Keep tree branches away from rooflines as Norway roof rats can gain access through these and heavy vegetation next to the home.
If you already have rodents, you should call a professional pest control expert immediately. Payne Pest Management is who I recommend and use. They can be reached at 858-294-0064 located at 43460 Ridge Park Drive, ste. 250, Temecula, CA 92590 binged.it/3C2eJ9o
Ask your Payne Pest Management expert about ways to check for and repair rodent-created damages.
If possible, park your car in the garage. Cars make nice homes for rats and mice and can chew through your cars electrical and fuel systems causing damage.
As always, install and frequently test a smoke detector in your house whether you have rodents or not. If a fire does occur, a smoke detector can save your life and the lives of your family.
