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Guaranteed Rat Control, Removal, & Prevention in Orlando Florida

What equipment is needed to trap a rat?

In order to catch a rat, you'll need to have a plan. That’s what most homeowners are missing when it comes to rat infestations - a plan and some knowledge. Thankfully, you’ll find both of those things here.



In order to successfully trap a rat, you’re going to need the following things:

Trap
What trap are you going to go for? “Humane” traps, such as live cage traps and plastic box traps, aren’t as humane as you first may have thought. Firstly, relocated rats very rarely stay alive for long. Secondly, the rat will just make its way back to your house, and if you haven’t secured your home properly, it’ll come back in. All of your hard work will have been in vain.

We would recommend avoiding live cage traps, and also glue traps too - they’re definitely not humane. Stick to the old-fashion snap traps. They work the best, and they get the job done int he most effective and efficient way.

Bait
The bait isn't actually that important, but there are a few things you will probably want to think about. If you use a bait that is sweet - jam, for example - you are likely to attract wasps, flies, and other critters. When you check your traps, you might have caught an animal other than the rat you had intended to trap.

We would recommend using something like peanut butter to bait your traps, but you could use cat or dog food if you have nothing else to hand. You could even throw human leftovers in there if you wanted to. These rats are scavengers after all, they’ll eat anything and everything. They really aren't that fussy.

Disposal Items
This means things like a bag to put the trap + rat in when you have successfully captured something. What else did you think you were going to do with it? You're going to need to dispose of that now. You will also need a few other things - thick rubber gloves, a breathing / face mask, antibacterial disinfectant cleaning solution, the stronger the better, and also plenty of scrubbing equipment. You should probably crack out the rubber gloves. Your'e going to be scrubbing for a while.

You will need to clean up every trace that the rat was ever in your home. The urine, if left behind, will omit pheromones that will soon attract other rats. If you leave any rat matter behind, whether it is feces, urine, bedding / nesting material, or even biological matter, you will attract other rats, the threat of disease, and even other animals in turn too. Maggots and flies will start to come flocking, and that's before you get into the bad smells that often come hand in hand with these critters.

There are other things you will need to bear in mind too. The home inspection you will need to perform, for example. You will need to get yourself up a ladder and inspect the entire exterior of your home. Roof to floor, you need to make sure there are no holes left for those rats, or other wild animals, to scamper through. That's the only way to rat-proof your home and to trap a rat - you will need to make sure that you have filled every hole they could have imagined using.

For more rat information, visit our rat removal tips page, or for more specific how-to instructions, read the how to get rid of rats page with 6 step-by-step instructions. If you have a problem with rats above your ceiling in your house, read my rats in the attic guide. The most important part of rat control is sealing shut entry holes into the building, but after you've done that, you'll want to know how to kill rats humanely to complete the rat control job.

More articles about rats:
What to do about a trap-shy rat
What are the types of rat snap traps?
Does poison make rats thirsty and die outside (NO. This is a myth)
What is the best bait to trap a rat?

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