What a Garden on the Slope Offers Them
The plots here are long, and because the ground rises towards the park they are rarely flat. Retaining walls, brick steps and built-up beds break the garden into levels, and the back of each level is a pocket of dry soil under something solid. That is the sort of place a brown rat digs into rather than out of, and it explains why a burrow can be a few strides from a kitchen window without anybody noticing it.
Mature trees, and the compost at the bottom of the plot
Older gardens of this size usually keep their trees, and a fruiting one drops enough in a single autumn to feed whatever is living below it. A compost heap adds cooked scraps, warmth and cover in one heap. Neither means an infestation on its own, which is the point a rat in the garden makes, but both shorten the journey between the far end of the plot and the house.
Sheds, garages and the line of the boundary fence
A shed standing on bearers, a garage with a slab that has settled and a fence panel run the full length of the plot are three separate gifts. The first two give a void with a roof over it; the third gives a covered run from the bottom of the garden to the back wall without crossing open lawn. Gardens back onto each other here, so a neglected plot two doors down is close enough to matter. Where rats nest covers what they are looking for in a space like that.
The Low Openings at the Back of a Big House
The front of an Edwardian house is usually much as it was built. The back has had a century of improvements, and every one of them cut an opening through brickwork low down, where nobody looks.
- Air brick grilles under a suspended ground floor, cracked or half-buried by a raised bed
- The oversized hole where a kitchen or utility waste pipe leaves the rear wall
- The flue and condensate pipe of a boiler moved onto an outside wall
- The gap under an up-and-over garage door, and the side door beside it
- The joint where a flat extension roof or a lean-to meets the original brickwork
- Nothing at all outside, with noise under the floor, which points at the drainage instead
What Usually Gives Them Away
- Smooth holes with a fan of loose soil below them, at the foot of a retaining wall or beside a shed
- Worn runs through long grass or ivy, following a fence line rather than crossing open ground
- Gnawing on the bottom of a shed door, a garage side door or a bin lid
- Dark tapered droppings in a garage, a garden store or an outside cupboard
- Scratching after dark in the floor or wall on the garden side of the house
The first signs of rats explains what each of those means once it has reached the inside, and telling rats from mice settles most of it from the droppings alone. Grain-sized droppings in a cupboard are mouse control in Dollis Hill instead, and heavy movement overhead in daylight is squirrel control.
What Helps Now, and What to Leave Alone
- Move the compost heap onto a hard base, or switch to a closed bin, and keep cooked food out of it
- Pick up windfalls, and take bird feeding down while there is activity in the garden
- Lift stored timber, bags of sand and stacked pots off bare soil, and clear the strip along the back wall
- Leave a hole that is in use open until treatment has finished, or a fresh one gets cut somewhere worse
- Keep poison out of a garden where children, pets, foxes and birds can reach it
Booking Rat Control in NW2 and NW10
What to tell us
Say whether the address is a whole house or a flat in a divided one, and describe the back: how far the garden runs, whether it is stepped, and what stands on it — shed, garage, compost, outbuilding. Then say where the activity is and at what time of night.
Getting ready
Make it possible to walk the whole of the back wall and the boundary on both sides: bins and planters away from the brickwork, growth cut back at the base, side gate unlocked or somebody there with the key. Empty the cupboard under the sink and any garage shelving where droppings have appeared.
Afterwards
You will be told what was found and what the next step is, including whether that step is a drainage contractor rather than us. How long the whole thing runs depends on the property and on how settled the rats are, which this guide to timings goes into. Get back in touch if noise returns after a quiet spell.
Making the Bottom of the Garden Less Useful
Two jobs remain once activity has stopped. Take the digging away first: clear the base of the retaining walls, close in the space under a shed, get stored material up off the earth. Then have the small openings in the house closed, which is what rodent proofing in Dollis Hill is for, and rat proofing sets out what is worth doing. Rat Control Brent covers the borough, neighbouring Neasden has the same interwar back walls, and Pest Control Dollis Hill has the other pests in NW2.
