The first step in dealing with rats are the ones who won’t leave the house and the ones that won’t leave the back yard. These rats are a problem that needs to be resolved with much more than exclusion. You will need snap traps for the interior but you must be very careful if you are doing this part of the treatment on your own with only domestic rat products. Wooden snap traps are both ineffective, often taking a limb but not the whole rat, or trapping it so it starves and eats itself, not a pretty sight and something most people would not want to pick up and throw away. What’s more, is rats are capable of smelling the scent of dead rats. So you cannot use the traps more than once. When a rat is trapped you must throw away both the rat and the trap, using it would risk the other rats learning that it will kill them and then avoiding the traps entirely.
This leads to the most important part of home extermination. If you teach the rats not to use the snap traps, when the professionals come to deal with it they will not be able to because the rats have already been taught about the danger of the traps and will avoid them. This can make your infestation untreatable, and your entire home may have to be condemned. This is not a happy situation so do not try to resolve rat issues on your own. Call the Exterminators.
If this all sounds like too much work you should take the time and the money to find a Rodent technician with plenty of training and experience to handle your rodent infestation. The technician can do a great deal that a normal person would not even know about. Where would you start if you want to allow the rats to leave the house but prevent them from getting back in? How does one seal an entryway in concrete? Rats can easily chew through the foam and duct tape will not work so what is the solution? A professional can use steel mesh and proper concrete to repair opening and crumbling foundations. They can also attach what is called a One Way Door intended for rats. The reason for this is, unlike house mice who stay inside permanently, rats enter the house for food and then leave to return to their burrows, roof rats will live in the roof and then vacate to hunt outside. Both of these situations involve rats leaving and entering the house. With the total exclusion of your home and a rat door, these rats will leave without realizing that they will be locked out, and an entire infestation could very well solve itself. This is one of the most effective ways of dealing with rats and is something only a professional can do properly.
