Are Rodents A Year-Round Problem In Austin?

Austin is known for its food, its live music, and its friendly people. What it is less famous for, and should not be, is rodents. Anywhere homes and businesses sit close together, mice and rats follow. The question homeowners ask us is whether these pests ever take a season off. The short answer: no. Rodents are a year-round problem in Austin, and the best defense is a house that never invites them in.

Problems Rodents Cause

The trouble rodents bring falls into three buckets: annoyance, destruction, and danger.

Annoyance. Rodents work hard to stay out of sight, but they slip up, and an unexpected encounter with a rat in your kitchen is nobody’s idea of a good evening. Even unseen, they make themselves known, scratching and scampering through wall and ceiling voids at all hours. Light sleepers hear every bit of it.

Destruction. Rodent teeth are remarkably sharp, and they stay busy. Mice and rats chew through drywall, siding, and roof shingles on their way in, then keep gnawing on furniture and anything else in their path once they are inside. As a rule, if something stands between a rodent and where it wants to be, it gets chewed.

Danger. Rodents are not clean animals. They carry disease-causing organisms and spread them through droppings and urine in the backs of cabinets, around pantries, and across food. Hantavirus and salmonellosis are two of the common ones. They also ferry fleas and ticks into homes, parasites with disease risks of their own, including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and murine typhus. Our post on the problems Austin rodents cause goes deeper on the damage side.

Signs Of A Rodent Infestation

Rodents hide well, but they cover their tracks poorly. If they are in your house, some of these will usually give them away:

• Grease marks along baseboards
• Fecal pellets in the backs of cabinets and around the pantry
• Small urine stains
• Holes chewed through walls
• Gnaw marks on furniture
• Electrical outlets that mysteriously stop working
• A musty, ammonia-like smell
• An actual mouse or rat crossing the floor

That dead outlet is worth taking seriously, by the way. It usually means something has been chewing wiring inside the wall.

Five Simple Rodent Prevention Tips

Since rodent pressure never really lets up here, prevention is a year-round habit rather than a fall chore. Five steps cover most of it:

1. Seal the exterior. Fill entry points with caulk backed by steel wool, repair damaged window and door screens, and put metal screens over exterior vents.
2. Fix moisture problems. Repair leaky pipes and broken gutters, and eliminate the standing water rodents drink from.
3. Cut the clutter. Less debris in and around the house means fewer places to hide and nest.
4. Clean regularly and thoroughly. Crumbs and residue are a standing dinner invitation.
5. Upgrade your food storage. Move anything living in cardboard boxes or plastic bags into containers rodents cannot chew open.

For the full room-by-room version, see our post on easy ways to keep rodents out of your Austin home.

And when prevention is not enough, get us involved. Accurate Termite & Pest Control has the equipment to remove rodents from your home and over 25 years of Central Texas experience keeping them out. Call (512) 267-0812 or visit our rodent control page to get started on an effective, affordable solution.