2nd Website enquiry

20th July 2020:

I had a call from a new customer in North London who were regulaly seeing rats in their rear garden during the day. They had explained to me that they have had three different pest control companies in during the last 12 to 18 months who all did the same thing, put bait boxes down. For each visit by the pest control companies, they were charging the customer £100 with not one rat being caught.

I visited the property on Wednesday and had a walk around the garden and the outside of their bounderies. The first thing i noticed were holes around an old tree stump that was against the fence where on the other side of the fence, was a public footpath and beyond the path was a sports club.

I set a camera up in the opposite corner of the holes where the rats had been seen daily. They were disappearing into the adjoining hedge of their neighbours who had a water feature in their garden so that being the water source that rats require.

I then took a walk down the footpath to see what was there. There were plenty of holes under the hedge that were conveniently covered by the leaves of the hedge. On the other side of the footpath were a dumpster bin and a wheelie bin owned by the sports club. Both lids had been nibbled and clawed by either rats or squirrels. The dumpster bin, had a big hole in the bottom with the waste bags inside, hanging out of the large hole. Perfect for rats to access to a food source.

I also had access to the neighbours property. Both the customer and the neighbour ensured that their waste was packed away in bins to ensure no vermin could have access to them. Both domestic properties were doing all they could to prevent any spillages of food waste. I noticed that another neighbour at the bottom of their adjoining gardens had apple trees so that and the sports clubs bins were food sources for the rats and possibly the rats were using the domestic gardens for only nesting. Both neighbours had grand children who were regular visitors with plenty of activity equipment in the gardens to play on. Both families concerned about disease from the rats.

I set up a camera in the one corner of the customers gardens and not over the holes as i knew the rats were there anyway. The customer had covered the holes on several occasions but they were being re-dug out all the time. I also put out a mix of peanut butter and vegetable oil on the ground in front of the camera to entice them out.

I collected the camera on Friday and viewed the footage with the customer. There was plenty of rat activity where each rat disappeared into the adjoining hedge of their neighbours. They have agreed to have me there with the air rifle for one or maybe two evenings in the next week. If successful, they would like me to attend their property every six months to keep the numbers down.

There are other areas of the garden and neighbours to concentrate on as well but lets just deal with what we know and then in six months time, set a camera up again in other parts.