The Dangers of Having a Rodent Infestation in Your Home
What can go longer than a camel without drinking water?
Rats!
Out in nature, rodents are incredible creatures that we can learn a lot from. They have sharp memories, peculiar social tendencies, and interesting decision-making processes. However, when rats and mice start taking up residence in your home, they can ruin your life in a matter of days.
What are the top rodent infestation dangers you should be aware of? Read on to find out!
Rodent Infestation Dangers
When you think of the dangers of a rodent infestation, sickness is probably the first threat that pops into your mind. However, it’s also important to consider all of the damage that rodents can cause to your home.
For instance, mice and rats are notorious for their constant need to chew things. If you have a mouse infestation in your home, you might start to notice chew marks on your drywall or plastic pipes throughout the house.
If you’re hearing scattering sounds in the attic that sound louder than mice or rats, it could be squirrels. Similar to mice and rats, squirrels pose a variety of health and property damage risks.
Outdoor Exposure
When mice chew through the rubber, plastic pipes, insulation, and drywall, it opens up your home to a variety of damages. For starters, other insects and varmin can wind up entering your home through the newly chewed openings.
Fire Risk
When mice start chewing through things like wires, the risk of a fire happening goes way up. You’d also be increasing the chances of problems like carbon monoxide poisoning happening.
The moment you notice damage from a rodent infestation, such as open holes, you’ll want to seal them up right away. The sooner you seal the holes up, the faster you’ll be able to protect your family and home from damage.
Lost Food
What’s your grocery bill look like every month? The average person needs anywhere between $165 -$ 345 worth of groceries a month. If you’re buying food for a large family, you can easily spend thousands a month on groceries. However, if you have a rodent infestation in your home, you could wind up spending all of that money for nothing!
One of the first places rodents takes over is the kitchen. From your food pantry to the cereal in your cabinet, there isn’t a safe food place when rodents are around. The moment rodents come into contact with your food, you have to throw it away.
Even if there aren’t rodent feces in the food, the exposure to the rodents makes the food dangerous. Since it can be difficult to determine what food the rodents touched, you could wind up having to throw away everything that’s not in the fridge.
What to Do if You Have Rodents in Your Home
The second you realize there’s a rodent infestation, but all of your sealed food into your fridge. Next, call in the professionals so you can stop a bad situation from becoming worse. A matter of hours can make the difference between hundreds vs thousands of dollars worth of damage.
Contracting the Hantavirus
Next, let’s talk about a life-threatening disease that rodents can transmit to humans. The hantavirus is a well-known disease that’s primarily transmitted to humans through rodents. White-footed deer mice are particularly notorious for transmitting the hantavirus.
How do you catch the hantavirus, exactly? It has to do with the waste rodents leave behind. Rodent saliva, droppings, and urine can all transmit the disease. When you’re exposed to rodent droppings, or you inhale fumes from their waste, your risk of catching the disease goes up.
If you live in a small area that has a rodent infestation, the danger becomes even worse. Side effects of contracting the virus include dizziness, body chills, headaches, and stomach problems.
Bubonic Plague and Salmonella
Next, 2 other types of sicknesses rodents can transmit are the bubonic plague and salmonella. The bubonic plague earned the name “ The Black Death” during the Middle ages. The well-earned name is thanks to the low survival rate of the European population when the bubonic plague hit during the Middle ages.
Catching the bubonic plague is very easy when there’s a rodent infestation. All it takes is one bite from a rodent flea that has the virus, and you could die in a matter of days.
Next, you’ve probably heard of salmonella when you hear people talk about food poisoning. While salmonella is a type of food poisoning, it’s also a type of poisoning that can be spread through rodent feces.
For instance, if the mice get into your food in the pantry and it becomes contaminated with rodent feces, eating that food could give you salmonella. The symptoms of salmonella include stomach pain, diarrhea, and extreme fever.
Fevers Caused by Rodents
Lastly, let’s talk about a couple of the different fevers that rodents can cause. For starters, there’s a sickness called rat-bite fever.
Rat-bite fever spreads when you come into contact with a dead rodent, or if you’re bit or scratched by a living rodent. You can also contract rat-bite fever if you eat or drink water that’s been contaminated by rat feces.
If left untreated rat-bite fever can be a fatal disease. Symptoms of rat-bite fever include vomiting, muscle pain, rash, and of course fever.
Next, a specific species of a rat can cause Lassa fever. A multi-mammate rat can have the Lassa fever virus, and it’s most common in West Africa. It’s easy to catch Lassa fever when you’re in an environment where rodents are present.
All it takes is inhaling dust that’s been in contact with infected rodent urine, and you can catch Lassa fever. Symptoms of the virus can take a few weeks to show up.
Common symptoms include headaches, fatigue, respiratory problems, and neurological issues. Sadly, a lot of patients wind up passing away from multi-organ failure after catching Lassa fever.
Protect Your Home and Family
Let’s face it, the dangers of a rodent infestation are terrifying! However, there is good news. By getting swift help from a team of professionals, you can once again reclaim the safety of your home.
If you’re dealing with pests in your home, don’t wait to take action. Reach out to one of our team members today, and let us tell you how we can help. For more tips like these, check out another one of our articles.
