Pest Control - Mice and Rats

This is a continuation of my pest series - part 2 of 3. This series covers the most common pests in the house. Mice and Rats are best killed with d-con. Care should be taken with pets and children in the house. D-con in a nutshell is a blood thinner.  FYI - Rats and mice are incapable of vomiting or burping. The rodent eats the poison bait and bleeds out. Our pest control person had only one recommendation for killing mice and rats:

The placement needs to be different for mice vs rats. For combating mice, the bait needs to be placed were the droppings are evident. For fighting rats, the best location is along the perimeter of walls and also known feeding grounds. FYI - Rat urine is fluorescent under a black light. Be absolutely sure that the poison bait is out of reach of dogs and children. I have one bait cube under the shelving unit for our long term food storage. Under the sink, way back in the corner is also a good location to place a cube of d-con. The last of the series will be about ants.

Pest Control - Roaches

   We try to keep the house clean, but even the cleanest houses can get roaches. They often travel from the store to your house via groceries. I talked with my pest control guy at work and learned quite a lot from him. Here's a brief lesson.

1. Roaches like warm moist places to nest and breed.
2. A egg poach will take 30 days to hatch. 
3. Most roaches use eggs to hitch a ride from place to place. 
4. The other way is from crawling in from outside.
5. If you see one, chances are that there are hundreds.

We also talked for a few minutes about how to combat them at home. He said that the safest way to fight them (with kids and animals in the house) is to use Combat Roach Gel. (Pictured Below).

These are the steps:

1. Clean the area really good.
2. Apply a thin bead in the area that you saw the cockroach.
3. The area should be undisturbed for a few days - also make sure that it can be recleaned. 
4. Under the lip of the counter, along the back splash, and around the sink are good areas.
5. They will seek out the bait and take it back to the nest.
6. Let bait stand for about three days.
7. Clean up the gel bait.
8. Reapply in 30 days to kill newly hatched roaches.
9. Follow procedure again if any more are sighted.

   I followed his directions and it worked great. I will be reapplying tonight under the refrigerator since I saw a little baby roach today. I will mark the calendar to reapply another dose. The tube should last me a very long time since a lot is not used each time. FYI - A bead of gel for me was about an inch in length and I used three around the area that the offensive pest was seen. Last time that I did this was around 6 months ago.

    Future posts will deal with ants and rodents. Sanitation will be a big issue in an emergency that I haven't seen a lot of sites discuss.