I went to Slidell yesterday for a rodent call.

The customer has chickens in the backyard. Don’t misconstrue, this guy keeps a nice place, and takes excellent care of his animals. I was surprised myself I mean most “chicken owners” I have met in the suburbs are usually creepy, weird, or just outright nuts!

His complaint was of a mouse in the attic and yes he had cameras showing video of one, and he has caught one but his biggest problem was that he could NOT figure out how they were getting in.

First I went into the house and asked him where the noises were appearing to come from. This is usually the first step. Next, I went into the attic space. I like to go in there first, of course not always but in general, that’s the course of action. I looked for evidence of the mouse and tried to see if there was any sign of an obvious opening in the roof such as a huge gaping hole.

Disappointed, I went into the next available attic space. This space was over the garage and where he had recently caught a rodent himself. He had caught it by the tail, and was going to drown it but felt bad for it and let it go.  I didn’t see anything of interest in there at all.

I told him I wanted to walk the perimeter to try and locate the opening. A rodent issue in an attic means they are getting in from OUTSIDE of the residence and my goal is to find that opening. Sure enough, I located what I thought was an opening at the top of the brick line where the vinyl meets the brick. Looked like it was it so I was all proud of myself. I told him I could fix that for 250 but I would need to run to home depot. He agreed and off I went. Funny how when you enter the store – no matter WHERE that is whatever you need is at the other end. In this case, I knew where it was usually located but of course, that was conveniently moved.

Anyway, I get back to the guys’ house and get my ladder set up. I quickly realized that this was NOT the hole, in fact, I was really wrong. The shadow had depth, but once I was up there I could clearly see that there was solid wood there and it was impossible that ANYTHING was getting in there.

Time to face the music. Defeated, I told the guy that what I thought was wrong. Sure, I could have lied, made my money and left. He would have still had his issue though and he was paying me to figure it out, and not necessarily solve it. In this case, he said he could trap them and even possibly do the repair if he just knew where it was. He didn’t like getting up on the roof, so that was all me.

To wrap this up nice and short. I got up on the roof to inspect the ridge cap, I walked the perimeter with a mirror so I could see up under the edge of the wall at the base of the house. I went BACK into all attic spaces. Finally, at just the right distance back and the right corner area, I looked up and found the hole in the corner above the vinyl corner piece but directly under the overhang.

So next time you’re looking for that one hole, never give up. He had at least 3 rodents in the attic and all average sized. This means there is at least a golf ball sized hole SOMEWHERE.