Home Life/Habits:

• Nest within 150 feet of a food source; live in colonies of 60 or more.
• Nests are lined with shredded paper, cloth, or other fibrous material.
• Are nocturnal; if they are seen roaming in daylight, the population is very large.
• When they burrow in the ground, it is often beneath a concrete slab, such as sidewalk, beneath rubbish or woodpiles or in low, spreading ground cover, like pachysandra.
• Displace mice, except when food and hiding places are abundant.
• Expand their territory from block to block over months or years.
• Have poor eyesight, but make up for it with keen senses of hearing, smell, taste, touch
• Can squeeze under doors and through a space a half inch wide; can gnaw through steel, wool, brick, and heavy plastic trash cans. will climb to find food or shelter
• Are suspicious of new things in their environment.
• Basic needs are food, drink, harborage/nesting material.
• Consume/contaminate foodstuffs and animal feed.
• Cause fires by gnawing on electrical wires. Cause damage to wooden structures (doors, ledges, in corners, and in wall material) and tearing up insulation in walls and ceilings for nesting. Undermine building foundations and slabs with their burrowing activities. Damage garden crops and ornamental plantings. Can transmit diseases to humans and other animals.
• Cats can catch rats that are young or feeble, but are unable to keep rodent numbers below levels that are acceptable to most people. A healthy male rat with sharp razor teeth is formidable and can repel a cat.

Food and Drink:

• Feed mostly between dusk and dawn;
• Eat an ounce of food and drink an ounce of water, every 24 hours.
• Attracted to the smell of food and garbage; love spillage from birdfeeders.
• Can survive on almost any food source, including
Fruit from ornamental trees and dog feces.

Reproduction:

• Reproduce at a rate of 7 to 10 litters per year.
• Gestation is 3 weeks; 8 to 12 pups per litter.
• Become sexually mature in 8 to 12 weeks.
• A dominant male rat may mate with 20 females a day.
• Lifespan on the street is less than one year
• When food, water, and shelter are available, rat populations grow quickly.

Size:

• Mature Norway rat weighs about 1 pound.
• No Norway rat is “as big as a cat,” but when defensive, can raise hackles and appear twice their normal size.

Signs of Infestation:

• People do not often see rats, but signs of their presence are easy to detect.
• Look for droppings, burrows, signs of gnawing, tracks in mud or dust, runways, greasemarks along walls and fences, ripped trash bags, noise at dusk.

Rat Prevention and Population Control:

• The time to act is before the signs of an infestation appear. Good sanitation and rat-proofing can go a long way in prevention.
• Once you see evidence of rats, act quickly to control them before their numbers get too high.
• Think geographically, working in a radius from where rats have been sighted.
• Best approach is Integrated Pest Management, using poisons as only one of many tools, including elimination of food and water sources, good sanitation, proper storage of trash, rat-proof construction, snap traps, glue traps, preventing access to buildings.
• Consult websites and do not hesitate to hire professional exterminators.
• Bait stations are enclosures used by professionals; they protect the bait from weather and restrict accessibility to rodents, providing a safeguard for people, pets, and other animals.
• Once rats have invaded your garden or landscaping, unless your house is truly rodent proof, it is only a matter of time before they will come indoors.
• Prevent access to buildings by making sure doors, windows and screens fit tightly and sealing all openings in foundations. Don’t leave cellar doors or ground level doors open; check dryer vents.
• Working together is critical: homeowners, neighbors, tenants, building supers, restaurant owners, Parks and Sanitation Departments, Transit Authority, Department of Health & Mental Hygiene.
• Call 311 to report rat infestations. You can also file a rodent complaint on line at http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pest/pest2.html.
• Although we cannot eliminate rats, with aggressive action, their numbers can be reduced to an acceptably low number.

Consult the Following Links for Additional Information:

• http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pest/pest.html
• http://www.metrokc.gov/health/env_hlth/rats.htm
• http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/pcnorwayrat.htm
• http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn74106.html
• http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001252/d001252.pdf
• http://www.nps.gov/phso/ipm/rats.htm