The roof rat is a nocturnal rodent that will often target fruit trees. If you have a grove, or a couple of fruit trees, on or near your property, you have to be careful, because if you do not keep certain best practices in mind, not only will the trees attract roof rats to your backyard, they may also draw roof rats to your home.
How to protect your fruit trees
There are a few things that you can do to protect your fruit trees. To start, make sure that you do not leave any fruits that have fallen from the trees laying around. Roof rats will first pick up the fruit on the ground, especially if it’s ripe, so this will be a big draw. If you have problems with rats despite this or routinely, you might want to lay some traps in the area to catch the rats before they reach the fruit.
Preventive measures
If you constantly notice gnaw marks on the fruits in your orchard, then you might want to take some preventative measures to make sure that the rats don’t reach the home. The first thing that you need to do is to make sure that you do not leave any food out in the open. No snacks, no cereals, and even no pet food. Everything needs to be in a sealed container. Second – make sure that there are no leaks in the house or any water sources that the rats can drink from. Finally, you want to make sure that there are no gaps or cracks in the exterior of the home that are big enough for a rat to fit through.
Hiring a pro to help
If you have rats in your backyard, or if the rats reached your home already, it’s best to hire the help of a pro. A pro will be able to implement preventive measures across your property and remove any rat population that is in your home. Of course, it’s virtually impossible to protect your open backyard from rats, but your home can be rat-free for the foreseeable future if the right measures are implemented. When it comes to infestations, a pro will use traps and baits to completely remove the rat population in your home and ensure that the odds of reinfestation are very low. For more information about how to protect your property against roof rats, or if you have an infestation, contact us today.
