Quick answer
Running and scratching up in the ceiling at night? Droppings near the rice bag, chewed wire behind the TV? That’s rats, almost for sure. The poison cake from the shop hardly ever solves it by itself, and half the time you end up with a dead rat stinking somewhere inside the wall for a week. Proper rodent control is really about finding how they’re getting in, shutting those gaps, and then using bait and traps carefully. And here in Kerala there’s one more reason not to sit on it. Rats spread leptospirosis, the rat fever that fills up our hospitals every monsoon.
The sound everyone knows
Anyone who’s lived in an old tharavadu, or any house with a wooden ceiling, knows this one. Lights off, house goes quiet, and then something goes racing across the top of the ceiling like it pays the rent. You tell yourself it’s a cat on the roof for a few nights. Then you see the bite marks on the banana bunch.
New flats don’t escape either, by the way. Rats climb up drainage pipes, walk along the cable trays, squeeze in through the hole where the AC pipe goes through the wall. And for shops and godowns around Ernakulam town it’s pretty much an all-year thing.
Which rats are we talking about?
Three usual suspects in Kerala, and they don’t behave the same.
First one’s the roof rat, the black one. Total acrobat. It’ll run down a coconut tree onto your roof, tightrope along the electric line, and next thing it’s living in your loft like a paying guest. The bandicoot, our peruchazhi, is the big heavy one that digs. You’ll see its burrows in the compound, under the shed floor, near drains, and it can chew through things you wouldn’t believe. Then there’s the house mouse, small and quick, getting into kitchen drawers and wardrobes and the store room through gaps you’d never notice.
So the plan depends on which one it is. A bandicoot digging up the backyard is a totally different job from roof rats in a false ceiling.
It’s not only about the damage
The damage is bad enough, mind you. Chewed wiring can start a fire. Rats get into car engines and bite through the sensor cables, and if you’ve paid one of those service bills you know. They spoil rice and grains and whatever’s stored, and in shops and warehouses that adds up quick.
What really worries us though is rat fever. Leptospirosis, if you want the proper name. It’s in their urine, and when that gets washed into rainwater or floodwater or just wet mud in the yard, it gets into people through tiny cuts on the feet, the hands. Every monsoon it’s in the papers, right? That’s partly why our team checks for rats whenever we go out for post-flood sanitization work. And one request. If anyone in the house gets a sudden high fever with body pain after wading through water, don’t sit at home with a paracetamol, go to the doctor and mention the water.
Why the shop poison often lets you down
Most people try one of three things first. Poison cake, a glue pad, or the old wooden cage trap. Sometimes it works for a bit. Here’s why it usually doesn’t last. Rats are suspicious of anything new, so a lot of them just ignore fresh bait for days. Kill a few and leave the hole open, and new ones simply move in. A poisoned rat often goes back into the ceiling or wall to die, and then you’ve got the smell, the flies, and no way to get at it. And loose poison lying around is genuinely dangerous with small kids, a dog or a cat in the house.
How we handle it
We do rodent control in a fairly simple order. First our technician looks for runways and the ways in, so droppings, greasy marks along the walls, gnaw marks, burrows. Usually there are two or three main entry points, could be a gap under the kitchen door, an open drain outlet, a hole round a pipe, or a branch resting on the roof. Next, block whatever can be blocked. We’ll show you every gap and tell you how to close it, wire mesh, cement, a metal plate, whatever fits. Honestly this is the step that stops the whole thing coming back. Then the baits go into locked, tamper-proof boxes along the paths the rats use, so the kids and pets can’t get to it and we can keep an eye on how much is eaten. In kitchens, food businesses, or homes where a dead rat in the ceiling would be a nightmare, we go with traps instead and take the catch away. And we come back to check, see how much bait’s gone, whether things have quietened down, and adjust if we need to.
A few things you can do yourself
That coconut frond leaning on your roof? It’s basically a ladder for rats, so get someone to trim it. Same with any mango or jackfruit branch touching the wall. The firewood pile, the heap of old husk and the broken tiles you’re saving behind the house, move them away from the walls or just clear them out, because rats love nesting under that kind of junk. Drain outlets and the bathroom floor trap need a mesh or a lid. Keep rice, dal and pet food in steel or hard plastic tins. Don’t leave food waste in an open bin outside overnight. Seal up the gaps around AC pipes and cable holes.
For shops, godowns and offices
If you’ve got a supermarket, rice mill, warehouse or office, rats are always a risk to your stock and wiring. We set up numbered bait stations all round the building, check them on a fixed schedule and give you a service report each time. Useful for audits, and a lot cheaper than replacing damaged stock.
Don’t wait for the monsoon
When the rain floods their burrows, rats move closer to the house. The best time to deal with them is before the monsoon starts, which is why rodent control is part of our pre-monsoon preventive package.
We’re PCCS India and we’ve been doing pest control in Kerala since 2008. Hearing things in the ceiling at night? Call us for a free inspection on 9349550599. We’ll figure out how they’re getting in and shut the door on them, literally.
