Video: Heeding the Signs of Rodent Infestation

OAKLAND — Host, Sarah Rutan: Rodents are good at hiding, but if you know what to look for, you’ll be able to detect their presence. Today we’re in Oakland with Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Niv Goldman of Alley Cat to learn more.

Diamond Certified Expert Contributor, Niv Goldman: So a lot of question that we – we’re getting is how do we know that we have a rodent in the house? So one way that you know that you have a rodent in your house is that you either hear a scratching on the walls, or a scampering in the attic, or under the floor so you know you have an animal that entered your house.

Another way to know that you have an animal in your house is basically you smell a dead animal somewhere in the house. So some way, somehow, something got in and died in your crawl space or in your attic, and it’s very easy to know about it this way.

The third way is that you basically just see droppings. You can see droppings on the counter, on the floor usually in the kitchen because this is where the rodents mostly get attracted to the food source and you know you have a rodent problem in your house.

The second question is: What do you usually should do when you know that you have a rodent? So it’s very important to call a professional to come and inspect all those areas that are affected. Usually the professional will go inside to the areas, we’re looking to the damages and what needs to get restored to a good condition, and we’ll give you a report of the damages.

Why this is urgent to – to call somebody to inspect the home, this is also something I would like to mention, rodents are laying about 30 to 80 droppings every day. So if you have two, three, four rodents in the house, it becomes to about 100 droppings every day. That leads to two problems: one problem, it’s the health risk. Rodents transmit diseases like salmonella and Hantavirus through their droppings. So you want to get that cleaned out as soon as possible.

The other reason is because rodents create a lot of damage in a very short period of time. So they entered into the spaces, they can infest insulations so there are more droppings laying around, the most infested the area become. They’re attracted to heat, so they might want to get into the air ducts as well. And that can get very extensive work. So we recommend as soon as you know you have a rodent problem, call somebody in so he can at least give you the scope of job and what needs to be done so you can make a good decision about your home.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.