At my home, we had issues with rodents getting into the attic at night during the winter and '24-'25 was the worse its ever been as they were coming down into the walls of our house and making it difficult for us to sleep comfortably especially when our dog kept barking and they were just creeping deeper and deeper into our house and the walls! So we decided enough is enough, that this is only going to get worse they were damaging our insulation and who know what else is next!
So we made service requests from local companies found by Yelp and Google and they each came out and gave us a quick inspection of our attic and crawl spaces as well as the roof. In the process they often located rat droppings and one of them even went deep into our attic and found a live rat that was there which quickly ran out. The 4th guy we had requested even went up on the roof to inspect for damage and found a missing hearty segment in one of our roof junctions, which was not visible from the ground! We thought, surely this last guy (which had been a referral) would be the best since he was more thorough, but his price was the highest of all the others by at least $200 (Sharp's Rodent Prevention)!
So at this point I'm thinking, I guess I have to bite the bullet and go with one of the lower estimates from the previous day (First Choice Animal Solutions - which were still pretty expensive I thought). But there was still one more company I had requested to give us a quote, but I was not optimistic! I felt like I'll just go with yesterdays best offer since day 2 offers were too high.
Anyway, Rene comes and I have more info then he and am able to clue him in on what kind of issues there are, so he doesn't waste much time digging for more or climbing to the roof, but we go briefly thru the inside and outside of the home and back to his truck and he tells me everything he will do, and it's basically a combo of all things the others said they would do including sealing the weep holes (which our first quote neglected even), an extendable one year warranty (most were one, one was 2 year), and cleaning the attic (not all of the others would do that), but his price was amazingly $200 dollars less than even our best previous estimate! So we didn't hesitate to go with him, but later we did have some slight worries for various silly stupid reasons but none of which turn out to be of any concern! (FYI, we paid 50% upfront and then 50% when all the work is done, which I think is standard these days.)
Anyway, he penciled us in earlier for Tuesday (after nothing on Saturday's visit), and we waited somewhat concerned to see if he would show up again, but he did and it was late on Tues. ~ 5 (later than scheduled). But, he told us the cold weather (deep freeze/thaw of Jan '25) was unsafe so he needs to wait till a Thurs. So we made sure that he set the traps and he told us we should contact him if the traps were set and he would come and reset them and dispose of any remains.
So that evening my wife heard one trap, so I knew we must have got one, but all thru the night, I could hear rustling near the bathroom walls and I was worried one rodent got stuck somewhere hard to extract. So in the late afternoon of the next day on Wed, he comes to dispose of 2 rats and reset the traps again, one male, one female, one of was still half alive, and the female one had been pregnant so we weren't too late after all! Wife thought we need a lot of but 2 was enough.
So the next day, he comes to check the traps again, none are off, and so he goes on sealing the junctions on the roof and shows me pictures of work he's done, and then seals the AC system with metal wire, and seals the corners in the garage door, and begins the process of cutting the wires for sealing a majority of the wide weep holes and then inserts them in as I followed him and inspected as he goes. He almost forgot to do one side of the house, but I let him know and he got it all taken of. Then we schedule one last appointment on Saturday which includes spraying the attic and crawlspace for sanitization purposes and the vacuuming.
On Saturday he brings two other guys, and they go sanitizing and vacuuming everything in the attic and crawl spaces, this time I didn't follow around carefully as I was pretty confident it would get done well enough since there were 3 people working on it this time. I was told it was going to have a smell for a short while but it would pass and then it would it would all be good. Actually the night before I thought I had heard them chewing on the roof and I was worried they were going to break another hole into the roof, but he assured me it's not going to be possible. And sure enough there hasn't been any noticeable activity on our roof ever since and our attic and walls have been completely silent other than the wind through the air vents, so we are so very pleased with the work Rene has done for our home and we highly highly recommend him! read more