PETALUMA — Host, Sarah Rutan: In anticipation of an upcoming building project, homeowners sometimes forget about the preliminary hurdles that must be cleared before construction begins. Today, we’re in Petaluma with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Ron Evenich of Evenich Construction, to learn more.
Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Ron Evenich: Rodent control, everybody has a story about rats or mice. The key is prevention. Often, the garage is the weak spot of a home. If they get into the garage, they can get into the rest of the house in most cases.
This is a door sweep. The side door of the garage usually has a gap large enough for a rat or a mouse to get through, and these will help stop them from getting in. If that doesn’t do it, they may be getting in from the large-size garage door and you need to set traps.
This is a small typical cardboard box with two holes in it, large enough for a rat or a mouse to get in, and this is for the safety of our pets and children. Many times folks who have cats and dogs and small children want to set traps, but they’re afraid that they’re going to get hurt because the trap is exposed. So, we just put the trap inside this box and allow the rodents to go in and that they be the only ones to have access to the snap trap inside.
When choosing a box to accommodate the snap trap, make sure that you pick one that’s tall enough for the swing arm of the snap trap to have clearance when being triggered. We often use peanut butter or something similar to bait rodents.
And sometimes the rodent is able to get a meal without getting snapped. When this happens, we will often take a piece of paper towel and put it on top of the peanut butter, and it will stick and saturate through into the piece of paper towel making it more difficult for the rodent to get that meal.
If peanut butter is not working, try dryer lint. Often nesting material can be used as a lure to get rodents to go into an area where there’s a trap and get snapped.
Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local top-rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.
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