Roof Rat Control in Fort Lauderdale

If something is running across your ceiling at night, the odds favor a roof rat. They're slender, dark gray to black with a lighter belly, and the tail is longer than the head and body put together. They climb anything they can get their claws into and would rather sleep off the ground. In Fort Lauderdale that means palm heads, ficus hedges, the canopy of a mango or avocado tree, and your attic.

UF/IFAS lists the places they nest: attics, soffits, piles of debris, hollow trees and the skirts of old fronds on palm trees. It also says roof rats in Florida breed year-round, with peaks in spring and fall. So there's no off-season here. The rat in your attic may be eating two yards over and coming home along the power line, and a few traps by the attic hatch won't change that.

What people usually notice first:

• Quick scratching or thumping overhead, mostly at night
• Spindle-shaped droppings up to about half an inch long in the attic or garage
• Hollowed-out mangoes, avocados or oranges still hanging on the tree
• Dark greasy smudges where rats squeeze along a beam or under a soffit
• Chewed AC lines, wire jackets or insulation in the attic

How roof rats get into Broward attics

Most houses here have tile or shingle roofs with soffits along the eaves and vents at the gables. Over the years soffit screens tear, a vent cover cracks, and the open curved ends of barrel tile at the eave never got closed. A rat walks a palm frond to the roof, slips under a tile end and drops into the attic. Older homes in Victoria Park and Sailboat Bend see a lot of this, and so do the canal-side houses in Rio Vista.

Other common ways in are the hole where the AC refrigerant line goes through the wall, plumbing vents on the roof, and the gap at the top of a garage door. A storm that cracks tiles or knocks a screen loose opens new ones overnight.

• Barrel tile ends at the eaves left open
• Soffit vents with torn or rusted screen
• Gable vents and roof vents with cracked covers
• Branches and fronds touching or hanging over the roof

What a thorough roof rat job includes

A good provider treats this as three jobs that happen together: get the rats out, close the way in, and take away what drew them. Ask the technician to walk you through each part before you agree to a price.

• An outside walk of the trees, wires, fences and full roofline, plus an attic check
• A written list of entry points, ideally with photos
• Snap traps set along the runways in the attic, checked on a schedule
• Sealing with metal, hardware cloth or mortar rather than foam alone
• Advice on which limbs and fronds to cut back from the roof
• A plan for attic cleanup once the traps stay empty

Step by step

Most roof rat jobs in Fort Lauderdale run in this order:

1. Inspection outside and in the attic, looking for droppings, runways, nests and daylight at the roof edge
2. Traps go up along the paths the rats use. UF/IFAS says rats are cautious and it may be a week before they approach a trap, so the first few days can be quiet.
3. Most openings get closed right away. Some providers leave one main opening watched until activity stops.
4. Follow-up visits check the traps and look for fresh droppings or gnawing
5. The last openings get sealed once the traps stay empty
6. Cleanup of droppings and soiled insulation, if needed

Why roof rats are harder to stop in Fort Lauderdale

Food and cover never run out. Yards are full of palms, sea grape, ficus and fruit trees, often planted close to the house, and UF/IFAS says hollowed-out fruit is the most common evidence of roof rats. A loaded mango tree can feed them for months. On canal lots the rats also have water a few steps away.

The roofs work against you too. Barrel tile has an open curve at every eave end unless someone closed it off, and a long tile eave can have dozens of those. Then hurricane season adds its own damage every year, from cracked tiles to torn screens. That's why sealing and tree trimming matter more here than in places where rats live mostly at ground level. Palms, fruit trees and roof rats goes through the yard side tree by tree.

What you can do this week

Cut off the food and the bridges. Pick fruit as it ripens and rake up what falls. Bring pet food in at night. Store bird seed in a metal can with a lid. Get limbs and fronds cut back so nothing touches the roof.

Don't toss loose poison into the attic. A rat that eats it can crawl into a wall void to die, and then you're dealing with a dead rat smell on top of everything else.

Related services: Rodent Exclusion & Sealing, Attic Cleanup, Rodent Inspection

Areas served: Victoria Park, Las Olas, Rio Vista, Sailboat Bend, Tarpon River, Croissant Park, Harbor Beach, Coral Ridge, Imperial Point, Downtown & Flagler Village, Wilton Manors, Oakland Park, Plantation, Davie, Hollywood, Dania Beach, Pompano Beach, Lighthouse Point, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Coral Springs.