PEST PROSpectives

Why Your Home Signals “Vacancy” and How to Shut the Door

• Pest Pros of Michigan

Share episode

Cold snaps don’t just change the weather—they change the balance of your home. As nights dip into the 50s, mice, rats, and squirrels start scanning structures for warmth, cover, and easy calories. We sit down with associate certified entomologist Tony Sorrentino to map how rodents really decide where to bed down, why a quarter-inch gap is an open door to a mouse, and how scent trails act like neon signs that keep bringing new animals back to the same weak spots.

Subscribe to PEST PROSpectives where you get podcasts.

Episode Resources
Pest Pros of Michigan

PEST PROSpectives is a Livemic Communications production.

Richard Piet:

I'm Richard Piet. This is PEST PROSpectives the official podcast from the PEST PROSpectives Pros of Michigan. Subscribe. We invite you to do that. Just type in PEST PROSpectives Once again, we're playing with the spelling of that word a little bit. P-E-S-T-P-R-O-S. . So look for that where you get podcasts and subscribe because we have some good information from the experts like Tony Sorrentino, associate certified entomologist, knows what he's talking about when it comes to pests around our properties and how to, well, mitigate the chances of having an invasion or an infestation, but also what to do if that's exactly what you have. Hi, Tony. Hey, Richard. It's great to see you again. Good to be with you. This time we're talking about, well, something we could relate to as humans, the notion that we'd like to be a little warmer when the temperatures cool down. And so do rodents. In fact, they love cozy spaces. So when the temperatures start to cool, or maybe even before that, might be a good time to consider around your property whether or not there are some attractive places, some cozy spots for a rodent to come and hunker down for the cold weather months. Uh, you've seen this before, right? And prevention is really important, isn't it?

Tony Sorrentino:

Absolutely, absolutely. And it's it's just started. Uh, we've just noticed an uptick in rodent calls for this time of year as it drops down into the 50s at night. We really see uh mass migration of rodents, uh, rats, mice, squirrels. So the whole gamut of structure-invading rodents are looking for someplace to hold up.

Richard Piet:

Yeah, here in Michigan, we are talking at the time of this recording around the early fall. So we have had a little bit of uh lower temperatures at night. And uh boy, uh they start to realize I better start looking for a cozy space. So what are they looking for?

Tony Sorrentino:

In our area of Michigan, southwest lower Michigan, Kalamazoo, the the greater Kalamazoo area, the major structure-invading rodents that we see is mice. That you'll see urine staining and levels of high infestation. You'll see fecal matter deposited mice, do two things, and that's eat a lot, and they also deposit fecal matter readily all day long. That's all they do. Rats can be an issue in certain spots too when we move northward into Grand Rapids, but they're all common invaders, and it can be uh around food businesses or in dense neighborhoods, you'll see high levels of rodent activity or higher levels of rodent activity. But that doesn't mean that if you live in the country, you're safe either, because well, that's where they're coming from.

Richard Piet:

So again, they're food motivated. Yes, sir.

Tony Sorrentino:

Yeah, absolutely. And shelter.

Richard Piet:

Well, so that was the next thing I was gonna say. They're food motivated, so they're looking for something to eat, and then they're looking for a place to reside. So the food thing is one item, but then the things they might be looking for as a cozy spot. What are they looking for so we can start considering whether or not we have those spots in our property?

Tony Sorrentino:

Mice are adept at finding structural vulnerabilities, gaps, cracks, crevices, holes as small as a quarter inch could allow for uh, yeah, I know that's tiny. Um, I have a drill bit and that I carry around in my truck so that it shows you what a quarter inch hole is. Their skeletal structure is almost entirely elastic, and so they can just mash their little bodies down and squeeze in there. Rats and squirrels are the same basic body composition, just a little bit larger. So it's like five-eighths of an inch for a hole for a rat or a small red squirrel to be able to squeeze its body too. But that's the if they can't fit their body through effectively, they're rodents, their teeth never stop growing. So they're very likely to gnaw that opening out to make their entryway and make sure that they can get in there. And they're looking for the spots behind the insulation. If you've got that cellulose insulation in your attic or bat insulation, the fiberglass insulation, they're looking for their prey, they're bottom of the food chain. So they are looking for someplace to hide. And if that place also has food, then they've got everything they need.

Richard Piet:

So is it possible that a mouse or a rat would find a place to cozy up in your insulation, but leave to go find food and then come back, even if it was cold?

Tony Sorrentino:

Even if it is cold. So they they're looking for a place to shelter that could turn into a breeding population inside of your home. Oh boy, with enough uh food access and other resource access. Seasonally, we run into clients that that have mice that come into the house in the fall and then leave again. Well, they always leave in the spring. Yeah, I know, because it's warm outside again. There's more resources available. Your house is a good thing to these creatures, and through an effective rodent management program and then an effective exclusion, we lock them out and control them from the outside.

Richard Piet:

Well, so there's the point, right? We would like to, I say we, the general we would like to make sure we find these access points or potential ones and stop it before it starts. So do you actually participate in that? Do you go around and offer an inspection?

Tony Sorrentino:

Absolutely. Um, we offer our critical pest assessment, and that's a top-to-bottom holistic inspection on your home, your interior attic spaces, your roof spaces, gable ends, dormer vents, gable vents, and and dormer returns and roof returns. We look at all of those structural vulnerabilities on the roof level, and then we're gonna go around the ground level and look for quantum posts, doors that are not sealing properly at the bottom, the garage door that's chewed out on both sides. All those are telltale signs that the rodents have been here, and once they've been there, they deposit micro droplets of urine and body oil called sebum on the entry point. And it's like a flashing neon light to these rodents. And when other rodents come back, which is inevitably what's going to happen in nature, no need goes underexploited. It says that that they're gonna come back, and when they repopulate, they're gonna notice that flashing neon light that says that says Richard's house is a good spot. We can come over here. There's a spot right here where we can get in. And so our role then is to create an effective treatment program that controls rodent and nuisance structure-invading pest activity because our real goal is to give you a pest free environment inside your home.

Richard Piet:

Or they don't even need Google Maps or Apple Maps, they just remember where to go. Pheromones, man.

Tony Sorrentino:

It's crazy. How do they work?

Richard Piet:

Yeah, well, they work pretty well, I guess, if they keep finding their way back. So you're most often going to a property after some signs have been discovered. Is that true?

Tony Sorrentino:

Yeah, well, typically people aren't calling around unless they're hearing noises in the walls or they're seeing evidence in their homes, or they they've got a chewed loaf of brennad. There's multiple contributing factors that help people develop a rodent infestation in their home. One could be your bird feeders are too close to the outside, and and Nana likes to have the black oil seed for the the starlings and the pigeons that come and eat by her house. The mice like those too, so does foils. You want to have a rodent infestation, that's how you'll get it.

Richard Piet:

All right. Maybe we ought to consider doing what a friend of mine did and put a bird camera in the back of the yard. Yep.

Tony Sorrentino:

Way back in the corner, and then you can watch it on live stream.

Richard Piet:

That's exactly what they do, and it's far away from the house. So if the squirrel or the mouse manages to climb up there, it's not near your property, or at least it's not as close as it could be. So the rodent issue generally becomes something on your radar after some of the signs are there. But I suppose someone might call you, right, and say, just walk around my house and tell me what you see. Could I be vulnerable?

Tony Sorrentino:

Absolutely. That's a structural site audit. Even if you think that there is no structural vulnerabilities on your house, I bet you I could go around with gap measuring tools to determine rodent entry points. And if I can fit that tool in there, it determines that that's a structural vulnerability. And I could walk around my own home and show you structural vulnerabilities. Does that 100% mean that rodents are using those? No. However, it is there, and we can provide the service to seal that up so it doesn't ever turn into an issue.

Richard Piet:

So you seal it up, and if those neon signs, quote unquote, are there, you also are doing what you need to do to remove that too, right?

Tony Sorrentino:

Yeah, I don't know that there's any real way to remove the pheromone trail. Okay. But an effective exclusion and then additional control methodologies placed strategically around the outside offer an extended window of protection for your home. Okay.

Richard Piet:

So sure, a structural site audit might not be out of the question here before the season really gets cold. And you might want to have someone like Tony with the purview of an associate certified entomologist to spot those areas that could be vulnerabilities. Or certainly if you have some infestation or a place where the neon signs are flashing for those rodents already, they can come up with a solution to put a stop to that. Rodents love cozy places, just like we do, and we tend not to share those spaces if we can manage not to do that. So ask the PEST PROSpectives Pros of Michigan about that. Whether you want critical pest inspection or that structural site audit, just uh click through from the show notes to the PEST PROSpectives Pros website and make the call or send the online alert, and Tony and the team will be ready to respond. Thanks, Tony Sorentino, for this episode. Thanks, Richard. PEST PROSpectives Prospectives. Look for it. Where you get podcasts, click subscribe and check out our other episodes from the PEST PROSpectives Pros of Michigan.