Rat Removal & Exterminator in Spring Valley, NY

Norway Rat Signs — Burrows, Runways and Droppings

The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) is the rat this region has: heavy and blunt-nosed, with a body of up to about 25 centimetres and a slightly shorter scaly tail, living at ground level and below it.

• Burrow entrances. Round holes roughly the width of a tennis ball, with smooth, packed edges and a fan of loose soil thrown out in front. A clean rim with no cobwebs or leaf litter means the hole is in use.
• Runways. Narrow paths worn bare through grass or packed into soil along walls, fences and foundation edges. Rats repeat the same route every night.
• Droppings. Dark, blunt-ended and about the size of a raisin or an olive pit, usually dropped in small clusters along runways and near food.
• Rub marks and gnawing. Dark smudges where fur brushes the same corner again and again, and chewed plastic bins, doors and pipe insulation.
• Sound. Heavier than mice — scrabbling, dragging and gnawing, mostly from dusk into the early morning.

A rat seen in daylight is worth taking seriously. Rats keep to the dark by choice, so daytime activity usually means crowding, a disturbed burrow or a food source they are competing for.

Here the signs sit in two settings: behind older downtown buildings, where the rubbish is kept, and on wooded or streamside lots, under decks, sheds and stone walls.

Two Kinds of Rat Problem

Westchester and Rockland communities combine older, dense streets with leafy suburban and wooded land, and rats behave differently in each.

• In the older downtown blocks, rats follow rubbish and restaurants. Rear yards, alleys, loading areas and cellar entries are the hot spots, and the sewer connects one block to the next.
• On suburban and wooded lots, the draw is usually food left outside — feeders, compost, pet food, chicken feed — and cover under sheds, decks and dry-stone walls.
• Near streams and ponds, rats nest along banks and move toward houses when water levels rise after heavy rain.

Either way, the entry into a building is low: garage doors that do not seal, gaps where utilities enter, crawlspace vents and cellar doors.

Removing Rats — the Order That Works

Rats are suspicious of anything new. A trap that appears overnight on a runway is often walked around for days. That caution, called neophobia, is why a rat program starts with pre-baiting: large rat traps go out baited but unset, placed along walls and runways inside covered boxes, and are only armed once the rats are feeding from them freely. Set them too early and the colony learns to avoid them.

Size matters. Mouse traps only injure rats. Rat work uses heavy snap traps or enclosed trap boxes, set perpendicular to the wall with the trigger on the runway, and plenty of them — rats rarely all feed from one spot.

In attached and multi-family buildings, interior work stays with traps. On detached lots, a buried hardware-cloth skirt around sheds and decks stops the digging for good.

Exterior bait stations. Outside, a program usually adds locked, weighted or anchored stations along the foundation and fence lines where runways are active. The strongest rodenticides — the second-generation anticoagulants — have been withdrawn from consumer products in the US and are limited to professional use for exactly this reason: an animal that eats them stays poisonous to the hawks, foxes, cats and dogs that may find it. Stations are checked and logged on every visit, and bait is removed once feeding stops rather than left out indefinitely.

Burrows. After treatment, active holes are packed with soil and checked on the next visit. A hole that has been dug open again is the clearest sign the colony is still there; a hole that stays closed across several visits is the sign it is not.

Dead rats and odour. A rat that dies inside a wall or ceiling produces a strong smell that can last one to three weeks. Flies gathering at one spot on a wall, or a stain on a ceiling, usually points to it. A reachable carcass is removed with gloves, bagged, and the area disinfected — soak droppings and nesting material with disinfectant before wiping, never sweep them up dry. Where it cannot be reached, ventilation and time are often the only option, which is one more reason interior work relies on traps.

What the visits look like.

• First visit: mark every burrow, runway and entry point inside and out; set pre-baited traps and, where needed, exterior stations; note what the rats are eating and drinking.
• Weekly visits: arm traps once feeding is steady, log catches and station feeding, and move equipment to where the activity is.
• Exclusion: seal the gaps the survey found — concrete and hardware cloth at the foundation, door sweeps, vent screens, pipe penetrations.
• Close-out: no fresh burrow openings, no new droppings and no feeding across two or three consecutive visits. That is the finish line, and it should be written down.

Who Handles Rat Complaints Here

New York City rules do not apply here: HPD, 311 and the city's Rat Mitigation Zones stop at the city line. What applies is state law and your own local government.

The warranty of habitability under New York Real Property Law section 235-b makes a landlord responsible for keeping a rental fit to live in, and a rat infestation falls under it. Report it in writing first and keep a copy.

Code enforcement. Under the state's property maintenance code, owners must keep premises clear of rodents and of the rubbish and overgrowth that shelter them, and your own city, town or village is the body that enforces it. The code enforcement officer can inspect and issue a notice to the owner.

Health departments. The Westchester County and Rockland County health departments handle public health complaints, including food establishments with rodent problems.

Why it matters beyond the damage. Rat urine can carry leptospirosis, a bacterial infection spread mainly through contact with the urine of infected animals, and rats contaminate food and food-contact surfaces with salmonella. Norway rats can also carry Seoul virus, a hantavirus, although human cases in this country are rare. Do not handle rats, nests or droppings bare-handed, and treat anything they have touched as dirty until it is cleaned and disinfected.

General information about the rules as written, not legal advice about your situation. Confirm current requirements with the agency named before relying on them.

Rat Removal — Common Questions