Austin has three rodent species that matter for residential pest control: Mus musculus (house mouse), Rattus rattus (roof rat, the dominant rat species in Texas urban areas), and Rattus norvegicus (Norway rat, less common, prefers ground-level burrows). Each requires a different control strategy because each accesses your house differently.
The fundamental rule of rodent control: trapping without exclusion is a treadmill. You’ll trap rats this month and have new rats next month because the access points are still there. The companies that quote you the cheapest rodent treatments are doing trapping only. The work that actually solves the problem is the exclusion — sealing the openings, repairing the damage, and removing the conditions that brought the rodents in.
Roof rats: the most common Austin problem
Roof rats climb. They access attics through gable vents, soffit gaps, the gap where the AC line enters the house, the gap behind the gutter at the eave, the weep holes in brick veneer, and the spots where the roof meets a chimney or a wall transition. Once inside, they nest in insulation, chew wiring (the most common cause of attic fires from rodents), and contaminate the area with droppings.
Roof rats love yards with mature live oaks, hackberry, pecan, and citrus — Austin has all of these in abundance. Any neighborhood with overhanging tree limbs above the roof has elevated roof rat pressure.
The actual exclusion work
Real rodent exclusion involves: (1) inspecting the entire exterior for openings larger than ¼ inch (mice) or ½ inch (rats), (2) sealing them with material rodents can’t chew through — hardware cloth, copper mesh, sheet metal, concrete patching, not just expanding foam, (3) addressing roof access by trimming tree limbs back from the roofline, (4) addressing attic conditions that promote nesting, (5) removing exterior food sources (pet food, bird feeders without trays, fallen fruit).
A real exclusion job on a 2,500 sq ft home takes 4–8 hours of skilled labor and runs $1,200–$2,800 depending on the number of access points and the type of repair required. This is expensive because it’s done correctly. The “monthly rodent service for $59” is doing none of this — they’re replacing bait in stations and trapping in the attic without addressing the access.
What separates good from bad in rodent work
Initial inspection time. A thorough exterior + interior + attic inspection takes 60–90 minutes. A “rodent inspection” that takes 15 minutes is a sales call.
Documented access points. Real exclusion comes with documentation — photographs of every access point identified, the repair material used, and a graph of where remediation occurred. This is your record for the warranty and for future home sale disclosures.
Trapping during, not instead of, exclusion. The right sequence is: trap the rodents that are inside, exclude the access points, monitor for 30 days, and then transition to a maintenance-only program. The wrong sequence is: trap forever, never exclude.
Honest assessment of what didn’t work. Some homes have access points you can’t fully seal — extensive wood-shake roofs, complex transitions, structural issues that the homeowner won’t pay to fix. A good company tells you which problems are unsolvable and what the maintenance regime looks like with that constraint. A bad company sells you a perpetual treatment plan.