Rat Control & Exterior Burrow Exclusion

Baltimore's rat pressure is a rowhouse-geometry problem, not a cleanliness problem. Shared party walls, a continuous back alley with brick or concrete pads, basement areaways, and old clay sewer laterals give Norway rats an unbroken corridor from Highlandtown to Canton to Fells Point. Norway rats burrow rather than climb — you find the openings at the soil line: a 2-to-4-inch hole beside a rear stoop, under a Hampden alley garage slab, behind an ivy bed in Roland Park, along a Federal Hill retaining wall, or in the mulch of a Charles Village front garden. Burrows commonly run a foot or two deep with a second escape hole nearby, so a single visible hole almost never means a single rat. Rats also stay close to home; most feeding runs happen within about 100 to 150 feet of the nest, which is why we walk the alley and the neighbor-side fence line, not just your yard.

Here is the sequence we use. Inspect: count and flag every burrow, grease-marked runway, gnaw point, and dropping concentration. Identify: separate Norway rat sign from mouse sign, because the treatment and the hole sizes are completely different. Treat: secured exterior stations or trapping placed at the burrows and runways, never loose bait in an open alley where a dog or a child can reach it. Seal: a rat can pass through a gap about a half inch wide, so weep holes, utility penetrations, dryer vents, gaps under rowhouse basement doors, and broken areaway mortar all get closed with metal mesh and cement — not foam, which rats chew straight through. Follow up: re-check the mapped burrows and confirm they stay unopened, which is the only honest proof the colony is gone.

Decision-fit matters here. If you have a fresh burrow or two in the back yard and no interior sign, an exterior-only burrow program plus targeted sealing is usually the right call and the cheaper path. If you already hear scratching in a Bolton Hill kitchen soffit, are finding droppings behind the stove, or a tenant in a Locust Point unit reports gnawed packaging, the exterior program alone will leave rats trapped inside the walls — interior trapping has to run alongside it. Exclusion is what stops the repeat call. Baiting without sealing means a new colony moves into the same empty burrow the following season, usually in the fall when temperatures drop and rats push toward heated foundations. Sealing without population control means live rats sealed in. The trade-off is cost: exclusion carpentry is labor and materials, so it prices above a bait-only visit, and it's the part that actually pays back.

One Baltimore-specific note: because Baltimore City is an independent city with its own service system, rats in a public alley or right-of-way can be reported to Baltimore City 311, and that is worth doing in parallel. Our work is your property line — the rear pad, the areaway, the fence base, the foundation. We also point out the feeder that keeps rats interested: an unsecured alley can, a bird feeder near Patterson Park's edge, dense ivy against a Remington garage, or a leaking hose bib giving a colony water. Fixing that with us is often the difference between a 30-day program and a recurring one. Every price we give is a ballpark until we've walked the property; the exact number is confirmed on the free on-site visit, in writing, before we touch anything.