Possible Rate/Mice in loft?

Jaybee_16

Had been getting an occasional mouse in my loft. Put poison down and they were gone. Probably mouse skeletons under the loft insulation. Eventually went around the gap between the walls and weatherboards with silicon and found a couple of gaps they could have used to enter. Easy as I live in a bungalow.

In a previous property I remember looking out the window to see a squirrel climbing up the wall of a house opposite and getting into the loft through a gap under the guttering. Spoke to the owner who said he knew and wasn't bothered.

Postik

When I first moved into my house, one night we had a storm and I could hear what sounded like scratching in the loft above our en-suit.  I assumed it was a mouse, but I figured out in the end that it's the inner workings of the extractor fan moving around when heavy gusts of wind blow through the vents outside.

p00hsticks

My brother heard similar and I hate to tell you but it turned out to be rat(s).
He got rentokil (or similar) out and the man laid baited traps in the loft - they then come back in a couple of weeks to remove the traps and hopefully contents...
He also looked round the house and identified that the likely way they had got there was via a loose ventilation panel on the ground floor, and then then made their way up the inside cavity walls to the loft space. 
They'll happily eat cardboard. 

Emmia

Green_hopeful said:

Animals like squirrels can climb up the outside of houses. They won’t jump out at you if you open the hatch. Perhaps try putting a radio in the loft fo a couple of days on a talk station perhaps radio 4. I find they normally move on quite quickly. 

I've seen a squirrel shinning up a fairly high tower block, got to the 8th floor (judging by the exterior) before hopping onto a balcony...

greyteam1959

Use Google to find a local independent pest controller.
They will be a lot lot cheaper that the big names like Rentokil.

Advice2017

Thanks for all the replies.  It seems the local council offer a 3 free visit service and will bait for rats or mice, not sure about squirrels. They said they should be able to tell by the gnaw marks and droppings what critter it is....  Fingers crossed they can solve it.  We do keep a lot of cardboard storage boxes up there (which may already have been shredded.  Is this a bad idea, should we remove them after this episode?

Mutton_Geoff

Also be very careful handling anything that the rats have been near. ie wash hands thoroughly.

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/leptospirosis/

Advice2017

Just a quick update.  The Council came and had a look. They said the gnawing seems to indicate mice not rats and they also said they couldn't smell any evidence of rats.  They left some blue pellet type poison and will come back in a week or so to have another look. 

They didn't do any kind of survey to see how the mice originally got in and we'd like to prevent them returning.  It's an old terraced house and impossible for us to get into part of it which is boarded off with no access.  He said it only takes one pencil size hole for them to get in. His recommendation was just to leave a tray of the poison pellets permanently in the loft, is this likely to work and how often should we refresh that tray?

I think they may also have got into an understairs cupboard - there is an incoming mains gas pipe here.  Can we ask the Gas Supplier to come and seal around the pipe properly or move to another location.  A quick google suggests some kind of metal ring which mice can't chew through?

I saw the same pest control van in the road another day, so I think there might be an infestation in the area.

Many thanks in advance.

ThisIsWeird

I don't know if they work, but if they do, you could always leave a couple of sonic repellents running near the most likely entry points? Or are there similar deterrents, perhaps olfactory? Pepper? Vinegar? No idea.
Poison will obviously 'work' to kill them, but will mean dead bodies. Perhaps when enough bodies  pile up, the entrance holes will be blocked.

Albermarle

His recommendation was just to leave a tray of the poison pellets permanently in the loft, is this likely to work and how often should we refresh that tray?

I think you have to hope that the first lot of pellets will kill them off, so you do not need to refresh the tray more than once.

Just because mice have got in once, it does not necessarily mean they will keep coming back. Could be a one off issue, or not...