What Kind Of Rats Are In Florida?

Norway Rats, Wood Rats, Roof Rats, and Cotton Rats are Florida's four most common rat species. These rodents thrive everywhere, leaving their harmful disease vectors all over residences and businesses. They hide in attics, crawlspaces, walls in buildings, and many places outside. Your building HVAC systems can spread these problems as well. They can even enter homes and businesses by climbing up through the toilet and doing so frequently. Rats in Florida can be so problematic they even ruined FEMA aid meant for Puerto Rico.

In addition to home and business damage, they leave bacteria in food, making people, livestock, and pets sick. Flooding and hurricanes in Florida have been a large infestation causing factor over the past several years. Rats can damage every part of a building. They chew up building materials and wires and nest anywhere you can imagine. Roads and concrete slabs even get undermined by burrowing and nesting. Fires and electrical outages can result from their chewing activity. Their teeth continue to grow. As a result, they just keep chewing. Chewing to them is like clipping fingernails for humans.

The Center for Disease Control has done extensive studies on the impact of these rodents. Rat-borne diseases include Rat Bite Fever, Plague, Salmonellosis (food poisoning), Leptospirosis, Murine Typhus, and Trichinosis. These diseases are spread in multiple ways. Direct contact is a considerable risk as  feces, urine, and saliva can transmit diseases. Skin contact and inhalation of airborne excretions are significant health risks.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU HAVE A RAT INFESTATION?

Sometimes your pets will start behaving differently. Sometimes they make noise, sometimes you can see their nests or damage they have done, or you can smell them. The safest course of action is to let us come sort out the situation. We are properly trained to work and perform inspections safely.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF RATS

Norway Rat

Norway rat bodies are longer than their tails and can grow up to 15 inches or longer. They can have brown or grey fur. Another distinctive feature is their scales. Norway rats are very scaly, and these features make it easy to tell the difference between a Norway Rat and a Roof Rat. They go by many other names, including House Rat, Barn Rat, Gray Rat, and more. Adults are huge and can weigh 1 pound or more!

They typically become active around dusk when they look for food and water. Daylight activity usually occurs when rat populations are denser, meaning you have a lot of rats in one small area. Norway rats can mate every five days and produce more than five litters yearly.

Roof Rat

Roof Rats are not as big as Norway rats. Roof Rats can be brown, black, or grey. The Roof Rat has big ears with pointed noses. Their underbellies can be white or gray, with a variation. They will usually have a body length of 7 to 8 inches, with a weight of half a pound, to a pound. Their tails are very long and do not have hair on them. They eat garbage and have carried the plague for hundreds of years and on several continents. Roof rats climb quickly and frequently make their nest above ground in trees, bushes, and common ivy. Inside structures, they hide in walls, the roof, ceiling, and anywhere out of sight.

Despite their physical differences, Norway rats and Roof Rats can enter buildings similarly. Depending on the situation, they will chew, climb, or swim their way in. Because they do not mate, Norway Rats and Roof Rats will fight and kill each other. They will typically not share the same floors when taking over a building. Norway Rats will often occupy the lower half, while Roof Rats will occupy the walls, ceiling, roof, and upper floors.

If you have seen rat droppings, gnaw marks, chewed paper or insulation, or any other sign of these pests, please contact the skilled, licensed professionals at All Nix Services today. We will come out and do a full assessment of all access points to find out where the rats are entering your property and rid you of your rat issue.