Rodent Control Services in Church Square, Hoboken

Living next to a busy park

Church Square Park is well used: a playground, a dog run, benches and plenty of people eating outside on a nice day. Parks like this tend to support rats, which burrow in planted areas and come out at night to forage. The homes facing the park, and the ones a block away, are close enough to be part of that territory.

That does not mean every house near the park has rats. It means the ones with an open path in, through a broken cellar door, a gap under the stoop or a loose drain cover, are more likely to get them.

Neighbors around the square notice this most in spring and late summer, when rats are raising young and foraging longer into the morning. A rat crossing the sidewalk at dusk is not unusual here. A rat running along your own rear fence, or a fresh hole beside your foundation, is the point to act.

Inside the row houses

Around Our Lady of Grace and along the nearby streets, most homes are attached row houses and small walk-ups. Mice are the more common indoor problem in these buildings. They travel along party walls and through the old holes left behind by plumbers and electricians.

When a homeowner here calls Hoboken Rodent Control, we usually find mice entering at the cellar level and spreading upward through the walls. Trapping alone clears the ones already inside; sealing the building is what keeps new ones out.

• openings under the front stoop and around cellar doors
• gaps where pipes pass through the foundation
• holes along the shared wall in the basement
• spaces behind kitchen cabinets and around radiators

Rats in the yard, mice in the walls

Some homes near the park have both problems at once: rats burrowing in the rear yard and mice inside the house. They need different approaches. Rats are dealt with outdoors and at the foundation; mice are dealt with inside and at the entry points.

Our rat control and mouse control pages explain each in more detail.

Why the whole block benefits

Because the houses here touch, one neglected building can keep feeding mice into the homes on either side of it. The reverse is true too. When two or three neighbors on the same stretch close their cellar gaps and tidy their yards in the same season, the whole row tends to quiet down.

We are happy to talk to neighbors together, explain what we found at one house and point out what to check at theirs. Nobody is obliged to hire anyone. Sharing what the problem looks like is often the most useful thing we can do for a block like this.