This is the true, unfortunate, and downright icky story of how rats took residence in our walls.
We hope it’s never a familiar story for you, but just in case you find yourself in a similar situation, you can find out what worked for us and what didn’t.
July 2019 – We move into a beautiful home with a large shed in the backyard.
September 2019  – We notice some droppings in the shed. We buy some catch and release traps at H-E-B. We catch nothing.
October 2021 – We notice that droppings have grown exponentially. We locate a couple of nests, including a massive one in a grill (gag). We take to Amazon to find different means to control the issue. First, we tried another type of catch and release – a big yellow bucket they could climb into but not out of. We never successfully trapped any this way.
February 2022 – Snap traps with peanut butter (worked a few times)
June 2022 – Reverted back to sticky trap again out of desperation with use of BB guns. Ugh, it sounds barbaric.
December 2022 – We have a pipe burst and the plumber had to access the pipe through our exterior wall, chipping away at brick. It takes a few days to repair the wall. We believe this is when they first accessed our walls.
January 2023 – We have waves of putrid smells as they take turns dying in the walls. We also begin to see droppings in our garage now as well. We set out bait and sticky traps and caught a few, but still have not controlled the issue.
April 2023 – We called Emerald Lawns. We’ll keep you posted.
Rodents? Emerald is Here to Help!
Proudly servicing lawns from Waco to Austin and San Antonio
“The Emerald Lawns Pest Control team is amazing – I would recommend them to anyone! We saw a few rats in the backyard and thought maybe we heard some in the attic. So Emerald Lawns set out bait stations and traps…and we have caught 21 rats so far! I guess the road construction behind our house is driving them into our neighborhood. I’m so glad that we called the pros.”
