OT how to seal a roll up door from rats

I live out in the high desert, and after the rains we had a pestilence of deserts rats every where.
the little buggers are getting thru my shop roll up door, the is small gaps in the door (In between the rail and the door it self, bad design). they have been causing damage, unfortunately both my wife and I are affected by rat poison, so that is a last resort. and to many to trap. doesn't even make dent.

I take a pic of the door to give a better description. later on, it hot right now during the day.

Carefully placed sections of 1/32" stainless steel sheet? I've had to do similar for the mice in my area (luckily, there don't seem to be many rats [knock on wood]), but in my case Al tape has done the job.

Yeah, pics would help with specific suggestions.

1953chevB said:

I live out in the high desert, and after the rains we had a pestilence of deserts rats every where.
the little buggers are getting thru my shop roll up door, the is small gaps in the door (In between the rail and the door it self, bad design). they have been causing damage, unfortunately both my wife and I are affected by rat poison, so that is a last resort. and to many to trap. doesn't even make dent.

I take a pic of the door to give a better description. later on, it hot right now during the day.

Click to expand...

Won't help. Rodents are "special". Magical, even. Millions of years of evolution off an already clever OEM design to perfect that "magic".

They WILL find a way in! Best, actually, if it is several EASY ways, well-traveled, and every one of them leading to a fatal encounter so a recon scout can't get back to "rat out' the danger to be avoided, next wave hitting the beach!

Only thing that works is you make it a one-way trip with effective methods to nail them right away not "later". Glue traps been tried? Tin cat? "Mouse-X" where the poison is ignorant SALT as won't bother a human (yah don't EAT it..) and expanding gluten as blocks their tiny guts?

'Coz the OTHER thing they seek is a sheltered place to breed like... welll...

... "rats" work for yah?

Take no prisoners...

Helps if yah nail a percentage of them enroute, before they even reach the shop/residence too!

Got any OWLS in your area? Flying critters need their own body-mass in food ..or more... every day. A nesting momma Owl will consume a dozen and more rodents every day she's feeding chicks, not a lot less once the family gets to "farming" them. Takes a whole tribe of cats to match that rate.

And then yah have cat shit and THEIR parasites to deal with. Including the re-infestation off the rodents if they are doing rodents in.

Cat don't use no garrote, Gerber knife, nor silenced .22 pistol!

Claws and bloody fang rather. Which re-infects off the rodents, every single go!

1953chevB said:

I live out in the high desert, and after the rains we had a pestilence of deserts rats every where.
the little buggers are getting thru my shop roll up door, the is small gaps in the door (In between the rail and the door it self, bad design). they have been causing damage, unfortunately both my wife and I are affected by rat poison, so that is a last resort. and to many to trap. doesn't even make dent.

I take a pic of the door to give a better description. later on, it hot right now during the day.

Click to expand...

get a cat and you wont have to worry about it, if you dont like cats get a few snakes

Wife got a cat for the shop(well she says the shop) earlier this spring haven't seen a pack rat/ mouse or anything in the shop. hell its even free of scorpions/spiders and bugs right now too.
we would see 3-4 mice a day in the shop, she'd being typing on her keyboard and they would run across it from time to time.

you aint going to keep mice out of anywhere no matter how well you seal the door.

I have only slightly less annoying rodents, I am pondering a slightly underbent sheet of flashing on the bottom foot or so of the door frame at each side, mimicking the weatherstrip, but metal. Combined with rodent deterrent spray perhaps.

Or maybe I would walk into it and gash my shins, maybe it would be better if it could mount on the door, haven't thought it through

I'd love to shoot them for you, if I was there.

The only real option is poison, It works while you sleep.

How does it affect you? It seems to are handling it wrong or placing it wrong....try leaving it outside, and try placing it where the rats will eat it and go off to die such that they never have interest in entering the building at all. Most rat poisons work by making the rat seek water, so place a good source of water away from the building.

We haven't heard from your wife in all this, so be sure to keep the rat poison out of her hands; that's probably the #1 tool widows used in securing their status as a widow.

gustafson said:

I have only slightly less annoying rodents, I am pondering a slightly underbent sheet of flashing on the bottom foot or so of the door frame at each side, mimicking the weatherstrip, but metal. Combined with rodent deterrent spray perhaps.

Or maybe I would walk into it and gash my shins, maybe it would be better if it could mount on the door, haven't thought it through

Click to expand...

Mine are sealed. So, too the sills of people-passage doors. Coming up 30 year, same facility? Stuff gets noticed and dealt with in due course.

They climb. Come down from roof, eaves, soffit, vents. No hole? Self-sharpening, ever-growing incisor-teeth? They'll just MAKE one.

Save a skull next time you kotches one. A pup is what you seek. One just weaned.

Size of that tiny skull fits a passage? All the rest of the body back of it folds up and clears the same hole or crack. Pups are so low-mass they can strip the bait off a spring trap trigger-lever and not trip the trap. Sat and watched it in wonder a coula times, CERTIAN the bugger was doomed. No joy! Cleaned the trap and wandered off to find some desert, set to read fake news, and enoy a cheap cigar. The mouse. Not I.

Glue trap with a bottle cap of WATER can work, back east.
But DESERT rats do not drink. They metabolize all the water they lose (damned little!) from food.

If NOT kilt? Now they have a supermarket in which to grow to breeding adulthood.

Seeds can work. So can the crickets the glue traps catch, too!

Anti-freeze for water supply helps.

Oatmeal, dry, too. It swells up.

Plug a hole with four-ought steel wool? They chew right through it. But it kills them, later.

Humankind has been fighting rodents for over two million years, eating each other included.

But they had a Helluva head-start since we last had a common ancestor.

They don't have no other job but being rodents and makin' MORE rodents, y'see.

REAL ones can't even get onto Government payrolls. THOSE rats are phoneys.

No wonder they ain't yet lost the war!

Look up walk the plank traps. There are versions for rats that utilize either 30 or 55 gallon barrels. Self-resetting, they can catch a lot of rats.

We make bucket mouse traps at fish camp and they work. Youtube has many examples.
Good to have top-lid and no holes garbage cans outside and inside so to have no man-made free food about the area.

Once rats get in and take home it is a bugger to get rid of them. a half dollar and even a quarter or nickel size hole can let the buggers in.

You might make a habitat for California kingsnakes abut the shop. Have some local kids find them and let loose about the outside of the shop. Half a yard rock piles are good for snake habitat.

but if red touches yellow it is a dangerous fellow. (a coral snake)

Another way to remember is the black line holds the yellow poison in/safe so black on both sides of yellow makes it a safe snake..but best to know the difference for snakes of your area. good if you can kill as suspect coral and take it with you to the hospital. Coral bites you can't wait for a reaction ...that can too late.

michiganbuck said:

We make bucket mouse traps at fish camp and they work. Youtube has many examples.
Good to have top-lid and no holes garbage cans outside and inside so to have no man-made free food about the area.

Once rats get in and take home it is a bugger to get rid of them. a half dollar and even a quarter or nickel size hole can let the buggers in.

You might make a habitat for California kingsnakes abut the shop. Have some local kids find them and let loose about the outside of the shop. Half a yard rock piles are good for snake habitat.

but if red touches yellow it is a dangerous fellow. (a coral snake)

Another way to remember is the black line holds the yellow poison in/safe so black on both sides of yellow makes it a safe snake..but best to know the difference for snakes of your area. good if you can kill as suspect coral and take it with you to the hospital. Coral bites you can't wait for a reaction ...that can too late.

Click to expand...

Problem with snakes is they are slow-digesters that don't NEED much food. Weasels and Ferrets need food as badly as birds, scarf up rodents at a combat speed, but are themselves a noxious pest.

Birds of prey - raptors especially - are the most reliable. Voracious. Efficient. Don't mind the same boring menu of rodent, day after day.

Have dalmatiangirl bring you over a couple of young rattlers ....

A Miniature Pinscher is also good- All they think of is rodent killing

UptownSport said:

A Miniature Pinscher is also good- All they think of is rodent killing

Click to expand...

Any terrier dog will do that. OCD thing. Not as lazy as ambush-predator cats. Nor quite as agile. Close, though.

On the other hand, "lazy" can be a blessing! Terrier gets bored, you could be ordering-in mice off Amazon or such.. just to have more peace than pieces!

BTDTGTTS!

thermite said:

AOn the other hand, "lazy" can be a blessing! Terrier gets bored, you could be ordering-in mice off Amazon or such.. just to have more peace than pieces!

Click to expand...

An orange cat adopted my shop for a while .... after I caught him bringing mice in a few times so he'd have something to play with at night, I convinced the neighbor to take him home.

michiganbuck said:

We make bucket mouse traps at fish camp and they work. Youtube has many examples.
Good to have top-lid and no holes garbage cans outside and inside so to have no man-made free food about the area.

Once rats get in and take home it is a bugger to get rid of them. a half dollar and even a quarter or nickel size hole can let the buggers in.

You might make a habitat for California kingsnakes abut the shop. Have some local kids find them and let loose about the outside of the shop. Half a yard rock piles are good for snake habitat.

but if red touches yellow it is a dangerous fellow. (a coral snake)

Another way to remember is the black line holds the yellow poison in/safe so black on both sides of yellow makes it a safe snake..but best to know the difference for snakes of your area. good if you can kill as suspect coral and take it with you to the hospital. Coral bites you can't wait for a reaction ...that can too late.

Click to expand...

Rattlers are pretty common in the California deserts as I used to live there. I would not do anything to attract snakes. I would get a cat or two. Due to piss poor finish carpentry I have not addressed yet, small snakes can get in the house, they have always been harmless ring necks. My new cat goes after anything that moves, it killed a ring neck just last week. Large insects seem to not be in the house any more either. The flying ones can be an issue as he goes after them with reckless abandon and gets upset when he can't get to them.

My previous cat thought of mice as toys, she never killed them just swatted them around, so I used peanut butter in those covered spring loaded traps, cured the mouse problem pretty quick. I did only need to get rid of a few here and there.

Seal up door gaps.

Leave traps inside.

Make sure nothing is left to attract them, no food, water, or soft stuff they can use as bedding.

Try Rodent Sheriff as a repellent. Worked for me on squirrels and rabbits and even kept a persistent racoon away from the trash bin.

EG
Considering he lives in the high desert, he already has a supply of snakes.

Michiganbuck
California Kingsnakes are black and yellow, no red band to confuse with a Coral.

I've tried the ramp traps, did not work well in my shop. What did work well is an empty 40 gallon garbage can, bait with taco wrappings and half empty cups of salsa, push can against a tool box and lean a bicycle against garbage can. We discovered this method after a night of shop cleaning followed by dinner, garbage can was full of mice next morning. Been a few years, we were catching 10+ a night for a week iirc.

California Kingsnake image
California Kingsnake | Coal Oil Point Reserve

My roll up door is to the breezeway, then to the shop. In addition to the mice found in the mouse traps there has been a yellow racer and a lizard. There are rattlers about, but so far NOT in the shop! The snakes so far have not been greatly reducing the mice population.





John

comstockfriend said:

My roll up door is to the breezeway, then to the shop. In addition to the mice found in the mouse traps there has been a yellow racer and a lizard. There are rattlers about, but so far NOT in the shop! The snakes so far have not been greatly reducing the mice population.

View attachment 298616

View attachment 298617

John

Click to expand...

It would help if you quit killing the non-poisonous ones

OP, I hope you are not one of those asshats that kills every snake you see? I understand not wanting poisonous ones near the house, but learn to identify and leave the non-poisonous ones alone.

dalmatiangirl61 said:

It would help if you quit killing the non-poisonous ones

OP, I hope you are not one of those asshats that kills every snake you see? I understand not wanting poisonous ones near the house, but learn to identify and leave the non-poisonous ones alone.

Click to expand...

I dont think mouse traps can distinguish what is venomous and what isn't....it's just a savage killing machine