Rodent Removal & Exclusion, Durham NC

Step 1 — Free property inspection. A licensed technician walks the interior (attic if accessible, basement, crawl space, garage, kitchen, laundry room, any room with activity) and the entire exterior perimeter. We look for four things: entry points (gaps of 1/4 inch or larger — for mice, gaps as small as a dime are enough), active runways (greasy rub marks along baseboards and joists), nesting sites (shredded paper, insulation, fabric), and food/water sources drawing them in. Every entry point gets photographed and documented on a property map.

Step 2 — Personalized written quote. Based on the size of the property, number of entry points, whether we're dealing with mice or rats, and how established the population is, you get a written scope in three components: trapping and removal, exclusion sealing, and (if you want it) ongoing monitoring. Personalized to your home; no flat rates.

Step 3 — Trapping and removal. Snap traps and tamper-resistant bait stations are placed strategically — in attics, crawl spaces, along exterior perimeter, in wall voids where accessible — never in living areas where kids or pets could contact them. Trap placement follows runway mapping from the inspection: rodents follow the same routes every night, and traps placed on those routes are dramatically more effective than random placement. We check and reset traps on a schedule (typically 2–4 visits over 2–3 weeks) until we're seeing zero activity.

Step 4 — Exclusion sealing. This is the step that actually solves the problem permanently. Every entry point we mapped gets sealed with materials rodents cannot chew through: galvanized steel mesh (hardware cloth), copper mesh wool, sheet metal, mortar for masonry gaps, and weather-resistant sealant. We seal from the roofline down — soffit gaps, attic vents, dryer vents, plumbing and cable penetrations, foundation gaps, crawl-space vents, garage door thresholds, and any gap along the sill plate. Steel wool alone rusts and fails; foam alone gets chewed through in a week. Materials matter.

Step 5 — Optional ongoing monitoring. For homes near woods, fields, water, or in older neighborhoods with high ambient rodent pressure, we recommend adding exterior bait stations on a monthly or quarterly monitoring schedule. Stations catch new pressure from surrounding properties before it becomes an interior problem.

Step 6 — Cleanup and warranty. After exclusion, we can coordinate crawl-space or attic cleanup and insulation replacement (droppings, urine-contaminated insulation, nesting material) — usually as a separate scope, quoted after the main exclusion is complete. All exclusion work is warrantied against re-entry through sealed points.

Almost every "we've been paying a pest company but the mice keep coming back" call we get involves a competitor who put down bait stations and stopped there. Here's the problem: bait stations kill the rodents that eat the bait. They do absolutely nothing to close the front door those rodents used to get in. So the population you see drops for a few weeks, new rodents move in from outside through the same open entry points, and you're back where you started — except now there are also dead rodents inside your walls.

Bait stations belong in a rodent program as one component of ongoing monitoring, not as the whole strategy. If a pest company quoted you a rodent job and didn't mention exclusion sealing, they're selling you a subscription, not a solution.

Timeline: Most Durham rodent jobs run 2–3 weeks from first visit to zero-activity confirmation. Initial trap-set visit is followed by 2–4 trap-check visits over the following weeks. Exclusion sealing typically happens after trap catches drop off (sealing while rodents are still inside traps them in the walls).

Access: We need attic access if accessible, crawl-space or basement access, and interior access to rooms where you've seen activity or heard noise. Most exclusion work is exterior; we'll only need brief interior access to check trap sites.

Noise: For a few nights after we set snap traps, you may hear a snap. That's the treatment working.

Kids and pets: Snap traps are placed in attics, crawls, and behind appliances — locations kids and pets can't reach. Bait stations are tamper-resistant and placed exterior or in enclosed spaces. Products used are EPA-registered per label.

Odor: If any rodents die inside walls before we can remove them, there may be a brief odor as decomposition completes (typically 1–2 weeks). This is why we always trap and remove before sealing — sealing first traps live rodents inside and dramatically increases wall-void mortality.

Fall and early winter are the peak rodent-intrusion months in Durham. As nighttime temperatures drop below the mid-50s in late October, mice and rats actively seek warm structures, and the same house that had no rodents in August can have a population by Thanksgiving. That's why we recommend the exclusion inspection in late summer or early fall — before the population moves in — so entry points are sealed proactively.

If you're already hearing scratching in the walls in December or January, don't wait until spring. Winter populations continue to breed inside warm structures (mice breed year-round in a heated home), and every month you wait doubles the population you eventually have to remove.

A 1,400-square-foot slab home in a newer subdivision with two obvious entry points is a completely different job than a 3,000-square-foot older home on a wooded lot with a crawl space, an attic full of nest material, and 15+ potential entry points along the roofline, foundation, and utility penetrations. Property size, age, foundation type, tree and vegetation cover, existing damage, and how established the population is all move the number substantially.

A flat rodent-service rate would either overcharge easy jobs or under-scope hard ones. We walk the entire property, map every entry point, and put a personalized written quote on paper before we start.