Rodent control in Austin, TX.

Prevention and a clean-out are two different jobs.

Rodent monitoring comes with the $66 a month plan, no upcharge, and if they show up between visits the re-treatment is free. A house that already has residents is a different job: the clean-out starts at $449 and comes first. Sealing is quoted after we have seen your soffits, because a 1950s Rosedale bungalow and a Mueller townhome do not leak the same way.

Starting rate for a single-family home in Austin. Ongoing prevention that covers rodents alongside ants, spiders, roaches, scorpions and wasps, with free re-treatments between visits.

Inspect and identify

A full interior, attic and exterior inspection to confirm the species, map the travel routes, and find every way in. What we find sets the plan and the price. No guessing.

Trap and remove

We trap inside the living space and attic rather than poisoning up there, so nothing expires behind your drywall. Exterior tamper-resistant stations deal with the pressure pushing in from outside.

Seal them out

Exclusion is the part that lasts. We seal soffit gaps, weep holes, line-set penetrations, garage-door corners and roof junctions with steel and hardware cloth. We seal soffit gaps, weep holes, line-set penetrations, garage-door corners and roof junctions with steel and hardware cloth rodents cannot chew through. Pest Prevention by Design guidelines (Texas A&M AgriLife, PDF)

Why rodents get into homes in Austin.

Austin's rodent problem is a canopy problem. The live oaks and pecans that make Hyde Park, Tarrytown, Travis Heights and Rosedale beautiful also give roof rats an elevated highway, branch to utility line to roof, entering at a soffit gap or gable vent without ever touching the ground. That is why homeowners hear scratching overhead at night and find nothing at all downstairs. Older homes compound it: original soffits, unsealed penetrations and pier-and-beam crawl spaces give both rats and mice more ways in than a modern slab house.

Austin is really two pest environments split by the Balcones fault. West of MoPac the ground is thin soil over fractured limestone, riddled with voids and karst seams that hold cool, humid shelter right against foundations. East of it the ground is blackland prairie clay that holds water instead of draining it. Which side of town you live on changes which pests show up at your door and how they get in, and it is the first thing our technicians look at.

Rodents are the one pest where the damage costs more than the creepiness. A rat chewing insulated wire in your attic is a real fire risk. Chewed AC ductwork means you are paying to air condition the space above your ceiling, which your August electric bill will mention. Flattened insulation stops insulating, and urine and droppings soak the attic directly over your bedrooms. They bring fleas and mites along as houseguests, too. So we treat rodent work like a repair job, not a body count. Trapping without sealing is bailing out a boat and never looking for the hole: satisfying for a while, and you are still going to get wet.

The first real cold front does it. A gap venting warm air reads like an open door to a roof rat.

Food and cover outdoors means no reason to gamble on your attic. Quiet out there is not the same as sealed up in here.

A dime-sized hole lets a mouse in, a quarter-sized one a roof rat. Trap without sealing and you have just freed up a vacancy.

The signs homeowners notice first.

Scratching above the ceiling at 3am in a Travis Heights bungalow is almost always a roof rat, and a mouse in a Tech Ridge garage cabinet is a different conversation. Call and tell us what you heard, where, and when. Most of the time we can say over the phone whether it needs someone out today or can wait for the next open slot.

How much does rodent control cost in Austin, TX?

An active mouse or rat infestation is a separate clean-out job starting at $449. Recurring rodent control and monitoring rides along with the general pest plan, starting at $66 a month for a single-family home. The sealing work, what we call exclusion, gets quoted separately, because every house leaks in its own special way. Central Austin homes from the 1930s to the 60s tend to need the most of it. Old houses have character. Character means gaps.

How did rodents get into a brand new house?

New construction is one of the most common rodent calls we get, for two reasons. First, new sections displace field mice from the land the neighborhood was built on. Second, builders routinely leave gaps where brick meets soffit, around AC line sets and dryer vents, and at garage door corners. A mouse needs a dime-sized hole, so a new home is not a sealed home.

Do you seal the entry points or just set traps?

Both, and the sealing is the part that actually ends it. Trapping without exclusion knocks the numbers down for a few weeks, then the next family moves in through the same hole and you are back where you started. Traps handle who is already inside. Exclusion handles everyone still thinking about it.

Will you put poison in my attic?

No. We trap in attics and living spaces instead of baiting there, specifically so nothing dies inside a wall where you cannot reach it. That smell lasts weeks and there is no candle strong enough. Exterior bait goes in locked, tamper-resistant stations along the outside, where the pressure is coming from in the first place.

How long does it take to get rid of rats or mice?

Most Austin homes are quiet within one to three weeks. Mice go faster than roof rats because they are less cautious about new objects. Rats are trap-shy and can take an extra week or two to commit. The timeline depends much more on how many entry points there are than on how many rodents are inside.

Do you clean up droppings and contaminated insulation?

We treat the area during service. Full attic remediation, removing and replacing contaminated insulation, is a larger job we quote separately after inspection. If you have had a long-standing infestation above bedrooms, we will tell you honestly whether it is warranted.

Do pier-and-beam homes in central Austin get rodents differently than slab houses?

Yes, and mostly from below. A crawl space under a 1940s Bouldin Creek or Cherrywood house gives rats and mice a sheltered route to every plumbing penetration in the floor, and the skirting rarely seals tight after decades of settling. Slab homes in Circle C or Wells Branch push the entry points up to the soffit and garage door corners instead. Same species, different doors, so the inspection starts wherever your house meets the ground.

Should I cut back the live oaks touching my roof in Hyde Park?

Trimming branches back off the roofline removes the easiest bridge a roof rat has, and utility lines are the second one, so it helps but does not finish the job. Rats still climb brick, downspouts and vines. Treat the pruning as one piece of exclusion, not the whole plan. We would rather see the soffit gap sealed first, then the canopy pulled back so nothing has a reason to test the repair.