Rats are annoying and hard to get rid of once they take up residence in your home. they can reproduce quickly once they find ideal conditions. But will they leave your home voluntarily?
Unfortunately, rats won’t level your house on their own after they have built a nest. These social creatures tend to live in groups and look for food, nesting grounds, and shelter. After they invade your home, discover food sources, and find a place to build a nest, they may stay and breed. You must act right away when you find even one rat inside your house. You must invest in rat pest control to keep your home free of these disease-carrying rodents.
Why Rats May Stay
Rats do not need lots of food and water to survive. Thus, even if they cannot get enough food in your house, they may still try to invade it to find food and go back to their nests. After they enter your house, rats can cause serious damage to the structure and pose health risks to you, your loved ones, and pets by spreading parasites and diseases. Thankfully, pest control experts can offer commercial-grade pest control products that you can use to keep rats at bay. Such products come with instructions you can follow if you try to handle rats on your own.
Factors that Impact Rat Behavior
The factors that affect rat behavior will determine whether rats stay or leave your home. These factors include the following:
- Food availability. As with other creatures, rats should eat to survive and reproduce. This is the reason they will find places that have readily available sources of food such as bread, cooked rice, sweets, seeds, and grains. The availability of food in your home makes the place a perfect target for rats.
- Nesting grounds. Rats look for a place to make nests and hide from predators. Also, they reproduce in such nests. They usually build nests in the attic, basement, and crawl space.
- Water availability. The way you store and handle water in your home will determine the possibility of rats living in your home. They may choose to stay if they can find stagnant water or leaky pipes around your house.
- Climatic conditions. As rats are warm-blooded, they can survive in warm locations. This is the reason more rats are visible during summer.
- Presence of predators. As prey animals, rats will try to hide from predators. Cats are known predators of rats. Thus, rats may not stay in your house if you have cats.