Mouse and Rat Control

Henrico's two common rodents behave differently, and the treatment follows the animal. House mice show up in the newer subdivisions — Twin Hickory, Wyndham, Gayton, the Short Pump corridor — usually through garage door bottom corners, weep holes, and the gap where the AC line set passes through the wall. A mouse needs about a quarter inch. Norway rats are the bigger concern in older Henrico housing stock and along creek and storm-drain lines: Lakeside, Laurel, Highland Springs, and parts of Varina and Sandston, where block foundations, dirt crawlspaces, and failed crawlspace vent screens give a rat a wide-open door. On wooded lots near Deep Run Park or the fields out toward Dorey Park, rodents already live outside year-round — the question is never whether they're on the property, it's whether the building is still closed to them.

Timing matters here. The first real cool-down in Central Virginia, usually mid-October into November, pushes mice indoors within days, and that's when the attic scratching calls spike across Glen Allen and Tuckahoe. If you're hearing movement in a ceiling at 2am, that's typically mice traveling on top of the drywall between joists, not squirrels — squirrels work daylight hours. We tell you which one it is at the inspection rather than guessing at it over the phone.

Interior work is trap-based, not bait-based. Rodenticide placed inside a living space kills the animal somewhere you can't reach — inside a wall cavity, above a bedroom ceiling — and you live with the odor for two to three weeks. Traps let us count the catch, confirm when the run has gone quiet, and show you exactly where the activity was concentrated. Where tamper-resistant exterior bait stations make sense on a property with heavy outdoor pressure, they go outside, secured, away from where children and pets go.

The decision most Henrico homeowners face is one-time trapping versus trapping plus exclusion. One-time trapping is the right fit when you caught it early — a single mouse in a kitchen after a garage door was left up, no droppings anywhere else, no crawlspace evidence. It's cheaper and it's often enough. Trapping plus sealing is the honest recommendation when the inspection turns up multiple runways, droppings in two or more rooms, a crawlspace vent chewed through, or a rat burrow at the foundation. Skipping the sealing on a house like that means paying for removal twice. The trade-off is plain: exclusion costs more up front and takes longer, and it's the only part of the job that stops the next rodent from walking in.

Ongoing rodent monitoring exists for properties that genuinely need it — restaurants, rentals with shared walls, homes backing onto woods or farm land in Varina — and it's quoted separately so you can decline it and still get the removal. Virginia regulates pesticide application through the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS); ask to see applicator credentials before any product is used in your home, here or anywhere else. We'll show ours on request. Every price below is a ballpark from real Henrico jobs — the exact number gets confirmed in writing at the free on-site inspection, after we've actually looked at your crawlspace.