How We Solve Washington DC Wildlife Problems
It starts with your phone call. We answer our phones 24/7, and we will carefully listen to your wildlife problem. Every case is different, so we will ask appropriate questions to help
us understand the situation better. Questions like, "do you hear the noises at night or during the daytime?" or "what type of roof do you have?" After we have a general idea of your
situation, we can provide a ballpark price range, and schedule a same-day or next-day appointment to inspect your property.
INSPECTION: Once on site, we will perform a full inspection of your home and property. This allows us to use the correct strategy and traps. If the animals are in an attic, a full building inspection is crucial, including the following:
- All ground-level areas, such as piper or A/C line entry & exit areas, A/C chase bottoms, ground-level vents, etc.
- All mid-level areas, such as dryer vents, siding gaps, first floor eaves or dormers, etc.
- We inspect the entire roof, including all plumbing stacks, ridge caps, vents, and other potential gaps or holes.
- We also inspect inside your attic, to identify animals and damage they have caused.
- If the animals are outside, we notice many subtle clues that will assist us in a successful strategy.
TRAPPING, EXCLUSION, REMOVAL: Once we understand what animal species we are dealing with, and the problem, we use the most effective means of removing the animals. We use dozens of different types of traps.
- Trapping - If trapping the animal(s) in live cage traps, trap type, set, and location are crucial to success.
- Exclusion - Oftentimes, we are able to simply set one-way doors or other exclusion devices that allow the animals inside a building to safely exit, but never get back inside.
- Removal By Hand - Sometimes we actually remove animals by hand, or with special tools like snare poles.
- The Law - In all cases, we obey state and local laws regarding wildlife, but aim to take the most humane approach.
ENTRY HOLE REPAIRS: Repairs are a crucial step in the wildlife removal process. In many cases, such as bat or rodent control, the job cannot be performed without detailed repairs, and in all cases, sealing the entry holes shut ensures that no future wildlife will ever enter your home.
- 100% of the entry holes must be found, and sealed shut, or the job is not complete.
- Our repairs are professional contractor grade, look good, and when applicable we use steel, which rodents such as rats or squirrels are unable to chew through.
- We give a written guarantee on our repairs against any future animal entry.
ATTIC DECONTAMINATION SERVICES: It may be desirable to clean your attic after we've removed the animals. They can leave behind large amounts of droppings, urine, hair, oils, food, nesting material, and so on. These remnants can attract insects like cockroaches, and the scent left behind can encourage new animals to chew their way into your house. You might experience odor problems from the waste. It's possible that mold will grow on waste areas.
- We remove or vacuum all droppings, or remove all the soiled insulation.
- We fog the attic with a special enzyme-based cleaner that destroys any organic matter and deodorizes the space.
- We repair damage, such as ductwork, electrical wires, pipes, insulation, and more.
Washington DC is a mid-atlantic state, and thus we have a mix of wildlife. Most commonly, we handle squirrels in attics, as well as raccoons, both in homes and outside. We deal with some opossums and skunks. We also remove Little Brown Bats from buildings. The metro areas do have rats, and we practice non-poison rodent control. We don't deal with too many snakes in Maryland or northern Virginia. We do professional pigeon control. Sometimes we handle groundhogs and moles. We service Calvert County, Charles County, Frederick County, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and surrounding areas. We do work in downtown Washington, D.C. and Arlington and Alexandria Virginia, and also the Virginia towns of McLean, Herndon, Reston, Tysons, and Vienna Virginia. In Maryland, we service Rockville, Silver Spring, Bethesda, Gaithersburg, and even east to Annapolis MD.
This month's wildlife how-to article: How to get rats out of the attic
Rats are horrible creatures, especially when you have them in your attic. Not only are they just awful to look at, but they carry diseases and cause all manner of issues, especially within your home when they start leaving their droppings all over the place and having a good old nibble through your electrical wiring and the rafters in your attic. We should be blunt about this – if you have rats in your attic, the only thing on the very forefront of your mind should be how to get rid of them!
Obviously, one of the best ways that you can learn how to get rats out of the attic is to use a good pest control company that will pretty much do all of the hard work for you. This is not always an option however, especially if your finances do not allow it. Thankfully, there are something that you can do yourself to try to remove the pest problem.
• One of the very first things that you should do when trying to remove the rats from your attic is to take a good hard look to make sure that you problem is actually caused by rats. The scampering of feet that you hear in bed could be that of a squirrel and those droppings that you see might be those left by a mouse. There are two big signs that it could be a rat – larger poop than mouse poop, and nibbling on electrical wiring, which rats seem to do a lot!
• Of course, you will need to find out where and how the rats are getting into your home. It could be the smallest of holes – they can crawl through pretty much anything, so take a look around piping on the exterior of your home to make sure that there are no holes. You can miss holes when you are trawling the up and down of your home to look for them, so this is another reason why a pest control company is a good idea – they don’t tend to miss them and they also know exactly what they are looking for!
• When it comes to blocking the holes that you have found, it can be another difficult task. Rats will gnaw their way through most materials, so one of the bet pieces of advice that you can be given is to use a mesh wire and a polyurethane sealer to do the job – they will not nibble through the mesh wire, and the sealer will prevent the flow of air so they will not even know there was a hole there to begin with!
• Next comes the bit that you might have been dreading – trapping. There are a quite a few different trapping methods that you can use, from the older style snap traps that are not pleasant to clean out, to the sticky traps that almost superglue the animal to the trap that it has fallen upon, and even more humane ones that you can release the animal with afterwards. The thing is though – do you really want to release this rodent into the wild? You should put the traps where you see the droppings left behind by the rat – this will indicate pathways so you are sure to catch something.
• One vital piece of information is that you should be checking your traps at least once per day. A decomposing rat left to its own devices in the trap will prevent them from catching any more, may attract other rodents and will leave a nasty smell!
Other Washington DC animal pest control topics:
Skunk Repellent
Squirrel Prevention Tips
How To Kill Opossum
Getting rid of skunks in Washington DC
Can Wild Animals in the Attic Give Your Pets Fleas?
