How Do You Know If You Have Rats in Greenwich?

Start by Ruling Things Out

A noise in a ceiling or a wall is the commonest reason people start worrying, and it is also the least specific thing that can happen in a house. Before assuming rats, it is worth knowing what else produces the same impression.

None of that means you do not have rats. It means a single ambiguous observation is not enough to act on, and the next step is to get a second, less ambiguous one.

What Actually Counts as Evidence

In rough order of how much weight to put on it:

1. Droppings collecting in one place along a route. The strongest everyday sign. Rats travel the same path repeatedly, so droppings gather along a skirting, behind an appliance or under a sink rather than turning up randomly.
2. A dark greasy smear along a wall, a pipe or a joist. Rats keep contact with a surface as they travel and leave a mark where they do it. Mice generally do not produce this, so it is one of the more useful discriminators.
3. Burrows outside. Holes in the ground against a wall, under decking, beside a shed base or next to a drain cover, often with a worn path leading away from them.
4. Gnawing on things that are not food. Cable sheathing, plastic pipework, timber, plasterboard corners, the edges of stored boxes.
5. Weighty movement, after dark, in the same place each night. Repetition and location matter more than the noise itself.
6. A sighting. Conclusive if you got a good look, and worth far less than people assume if you did not - a glimpse in the dark is very often a mouse.

Three Things You Can Do Tonight

All free, and between them they will usually settle it.

1. Put down a dusting of flour

A thin dusting of plain flour across the suspected route - along the skirting, in front of the gap, across the floor of the cupboard - and leave it overnight. Tracks in the morning tell you something is using that route and roughly how big it is. It is the oldest trick in the trade and it still works.

2. Go and listen at two in the morning

Not to hear more, but to hear when. Rats are nocturnal and their activity is concentrated after dark. Something busy at three in the afternoon in a loft is far more likely to be a squirrel, and something audible all day from the eaves in spring is likely to be birds.

3. Photograph what you have found, next to something for scale

A matchstick or a pen beside the droppings, in decent light. It is worth doing because rodent droppings are the single most useful thing you can send with an enquiry, and because the difference between rat and mouse droppings is obvious in a photograph and almost impossible to describe over the phone.

Rat or Mouse? It Changes the Treatment

Both services cost the same here - £190 for a flat and £240 for a house - so the answer will not change your bill. It changes what gets done.

Rats are cautious about anything new in a familiar route, so the programme is built around returning to check what has been taken. Mice are curious rather than suspicious, sample in small amounts at many points, and keep several nesting sites going at once, so control has to be distributed rather than concentrated.

The quick discriminators: droppings gathered in a run rather than scattered across cupboards, a greasy smear along a wall, gnawing on non-food materials, burrows outside, and noise with real weight to it, all point at rats.

When to Stop Investigating and Call

There is a point where further self-diagnosis stops being useful, and it is worth naming so you are not still setting out flour in three weeks' time:

• You have two independent signs rather than one - droppings and a noise, or tracks and gnawing.
• There is evidence inside the building rather than only in the garden.
• Something is gnawing near cabling. That is a fire risk and it is not worth waiting out.
• There are children or vulnerable people in the property and food preparation areas are involved.
• You have found a burrow against the house and a worn run leading to it.

Equally, one rat crossing a garden once is not the same as a rat living in your house, and we will tell you that on the phone rather than book a visit for it.

What to Send With Your Enquiry

Four things, and between them they usually mean the first visit starts in the right place rather than spending twenty minutes finding it:

• A photograph of the droppings, with a matchstick or a pen beside them for scale.
• Which room, and whereabouts in it. Under the sink, behind the fridge, along the skirting on the party wall - be as specific as you can.
• What time of day you hear activity. This one answer often settles rat against squirrel before anybody arrives.
• Whether it is a house or a flat, and if it is a flat, whether the building is purpose-built or a converted house.

If you have already tried something, say so. It is not a confession - where bait or traps were placed, and what happened to them, is real information about how the population is moving.