“I just NEED you to get rid of the RATS!”

Imagine it’s December and you’re the Executive Chef at a country club in a beautiful, high-end community in Fort Myers, Florida. Soon club members will be flocking down-south, returning to their winter homes and looking forward to that first special meal with all their friends back in the clubhouse.

This should be an exciting time of year, but a dark cloud looms overhead…

You have a serious rat problem on your hands!

Somehow, as the Executive Chef, you’ve been deemed with the responsibility of eradicating the problem. You’re also the one receiving calls from members complaining about seeing rodents around the building and even scurrying across the parking lot. Guests working out in the gym are finding rat droppings all over the floor and staff aren’t looking forward to opening closets, let alone stepping foot inside them. Management is relying on you to maintain their reputation for quality and save the community from embarrassment.

What do you do now?

Well, in this case, you ask Larue Pest Management to step in and take over, because the current rodent exterminators just aren’t quite up to the task.

After years of protecting homes and businesses from rats and mice, we’ve learned a few things that can make a big difference when it comes to effective rodent control in Fort Myers, FL.

Rats are highly intelligent creatures and at this location, since the problem was left to magnify, the population had become trap shy. Normally, to prevent this issue, rodent bait stations should have been secured to a solid surface, so they don’t move around when a rat or mouse enters it. And this may be a surprise, but rats prefer that a bait station be clean! Dirt and debris left inside will curb its effectiveness.

This property was infested by palm rats (aka roof rats). Average adult palm rats run 14 to 18 inches from nose to tip of tail, but can slip through cracks as small as a half an inch wide and if they can’t quite fit, they’ll gnaw on it till it’s wide enough to crawl through.

It is absolutely necessary to do a thorough examination of the perimeter to make sure holes and cracks are sealed. Our preference is to use a darker colored foam, rather than the cream. It’s a small detail, but as you can see, one that separates us from our competitors.

Metal mesh is also used to close up holes found in interior walls and ceilings. The metal used needs to be extremely strong though!

One of the chefs told us a story of how they closed up one of the holes in the ceiling themselves with some lightweight  metal mesh. One day he left and shut the door behind him, only to return moments later because he forgot something inside. When he opened the door to the kitchen, he discovered 6 hungry rats staring back at him!

That’s when he realized they had chewed through the metal and had learned over time that when the lights and fan went off, it was dinnertime. Proof that rats are not only smart, but ferocious chewers.

Rat’s teeth grown an amazing rate of about 5 inches per year, which is why they are known to gnaw continuously. They can cause a ton of damage to your property and can even caused fires by chewing through wires.

Once entry points are properly sealed, rodents may not enter or leave the structure, cutting them off from their food and water sources.

With proper techniques in place, the extermination process should take around a month for a serious infestation such as this country club. In most residential cases however, it will take around a week to gain control over a rodent issue.

The better approach for preventing rodents from entering your home to begin with and that does NOT mean placing a fake owl on your patio…

We’ll be covering Rodent Prevention in a future blog post, so check back!

Do you need help with Rodent control in Fort Myers, Naples, or Cape Coral? Don’t let the problem persist!  Give us a call at (800) 314-8813 or schedule an appointment online today!