Roof Rat

Roof rats arrived in North America with the Jamestown colonists in 1607. It’s also known as the black rat or ship rat.

Identification

• Roof rats are usually dark colored

• Weigh less than 1 pound

• Large ears

• Tail is longer than the head and body

• Spindle shaped droppings

Environment

• 90% of their time is spent above ground, hence their name

• Roof rats form nests in trees and high points, run on power lines or the tops of fences, or live in attics

• Nocturnal, which is why you may hear them scurrying in your attic in the middle of the night

• Tend to stick to familiar territory; they are not explorers, they find an area that suits their shelter and food needs and usually don’t venture more than a few hundred feet from there

Threats

• Roof rats rarely live for more than a year in the wild

• During that year, a single adult female can produce more than 40 baby rats

• Rarely die naturally but when they do it’s often in a safe place, like your attic, which will create an unpleasant odor

• Most will be killed by predators

• Commonly small because they breed in such high numbers, which makes so many of them young

Treatment

• When trapping roof rats, it is not uncommon to get a few large ones and a number of small ones, indicating a possible family of roof rats

• Traps may need to be prebaited in order to capture shy individuals