How Can You Confirm Rat Activity Around a Property in Great Shelford?

BPCA put it plainly: rats have to gnaw in order to keep their teeth in shape, and they are not shy about what they gnaw on. It is a biological requirement rather than an occasional behaviour, which is why the damage is so consistent.

Where to Look, Inside

• Cable — in a loft, under a floor, behind an appliance, at the consumer unit. Stripped insulation on a cable is the single most important thing on this list
• Plastic and lead pipework, particularly where it runs through a void
• The bottoms of doors, especially to a garage, a cellar or an outbuilding
• Skirtings and architraves, at floor level and usually at a corner
• The edges of a loft hatch
• Food packaging and stored goods, opened coarsely rather than neatly
• Insulation, torn up and dragged rather than nibbled

Where to Look, Outside

• Shed and garage doors, particularly at the bottom corner
• Around an air brick, where a plastic cover has been enlarged
• At a soffit, fascia or barge board, if something has been getting to the roof
• Around a pipe collar or the sleeve where a service enters the wall
• Compost bin lids and the corners of plastic storage
• Timber decking edges, and the frame of a shed base
• Bin lids and the rims of plastic bins

Rat Damage or Mouse Damage?

How Fresh Is It?

• Fresh gnawing on timber is pale against the surrounding surface, and the exposed wood has not yet darkened
• Fresh chippings or dust below the damage
• Old damage is the same colour as everything around it, with no debris beneath
• Paint or varnish edges tell you the same story — a clean break is recent

What to Do When You Find It

Photograph it, leave it, and note where it is — particularly if it is at an opening, because gnawing at the edge of a gap identifies the entry point. Do not seal the hole while there is anything inside: an animal sealed into a structure gnaws its way out somewhere new, and you get a second repair on top of the first.