Norway Rats in Monmouth County: Risks for Little Silver Waterfront Homes

Norway rats are strong swimmers and diggers, and they like soft, damp ground where a burrow holds its shape. A bank with roots, rocks, and rubble along a bulkhead is close to ideal. Add a bird feeder, a compost pile, or a grill area, and the food source is a few steps from the den.

Little Silver has a lot of this kind of edge. About 8% of homes sit directly on the Shrewsbury River, and roughly another third, about 35% by the borough's count, sit on streams that connect to it. That means many properties have a water side. If you own one, walk the side facing the water first, because rats traveling a bank usually meet that foundation before any other.

Thick garden cover and mulch beds along a creek give a rat a hidden route from the bank to your back door. Trim plantings back from the foundation, because a hedge that touches the wall works like a covered walkway to any gap.

A burrow entrance is a hole about 2 to 4 inches wide, often with smooth, packed soil around the edge and no spider webs or leaves in it. Look along the foundation, under decks, beside sheds, and at the base of bulkheads and retaining walls. Droppings and tracks give you a second check.

If the droppings you find are small and pointed, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch, you likely have mice, not rats. The two need different sealing, and rats need much bigger gap repairs. A dock or bulkhead can also hide rat sign that looks like something else, so take your time. Our post on scratching noises in the attic at night walks through telling them apart by sound and sign.

They are places rats can pass through, not places we can say rats are living. Rats follow water edges because the edge is continuous, covered, and close to food. A dock, a boathouse, or a boat launch is a hard-edged strip along the same path.

The Dominick F. Santelle Park and Boat Launch, at 190 Riverview Avenue, is a public ramp on the Shrewsbury River. We are not saying rats are there. It simply shows the setting: a waterfront edge, a gravel ramp and a parking area meet, and an animal moving along a bank might pass through.

If you keep a boat, launch from a public ramp or store gear near the water, treat your own trailer, dock box and truck bed as places a rat could shelter for a night.

• Empty dock boxes and boat covers of food, wrappers, and spilled bait, since even small crumbs draw rats.
• Store boat cushions, ropes, and life jackets in sealed bins or hang them off the ground.
• Check the space under a boat trailer and inside a cover for droppings before you tow it home.
• Keep bait and chum in lidded containers, and clean fish scraps well away from the house.
• Look at the gap between a dock and a bulkhead, where a rat can slip into the yard unseen.

A rat does not need your house. It needs the bank, a burrow, and food, and it will use your foundation if it can.

Most of the work is removing food and shelter along the water side, before rats ever reach the wall. The steps below are ordered by how much they help. None of them replaces sealing the building, but they slow the pressure on it.

• Move bird feeders and pet food bowls away from the water side, and sweep up seed under feeders every evening.
• Use a trash can with a tight lid, kept off soft ground, and never leave bags on the ground overnight.
• Keep compost in a closed tumbler, and do not add meat, fish, or dairy.
• Cut back thick ground cover and pile wood at least a foot off the ground and away from the foundation.
• Fill abandoned burrows only after a technician confirms they are empty, since sealing a live burrow can push rats toward the house.
• Repair gaps at the foundation, around utility lines, and at crawl space vents with hardware cloth, sheet metal, or mortar. A gap of about 1/2 inch is enough for a rat.

Burrow work matters most on low ground. The borough's low waterfront streets are known for tidal flooding, and rising water can flush burrows and push rats up toward foundations and crawl spaces. Check for new holes after a big tide or storm. Our post on rodents after storm flooding at the shore covers what to look for, and rats under a shed or deck covers the yard side.

Call as soon as you find fresh burrows near the house, rats in a garage or crawl space, or damage to wiring or pipes. Rats breed fast, with about 6 to 12 pups per litter and a gestation of roughly 21 to 23 days, so a few animals can become many in a season. Small problems are quicker to fix than large ones, and early sealing keeps rats from settling under the house.

Our rat control work starts with an inspection of the water side and the foundation, then a plan that combines trapping, tamper-resistant bait stations where appropriate, and sealing. Poison alone can leave dead rats in walls and put pets and wildlife at risk, so we do not treat it as the whole answer.

Where burrows run under slabs, decks or stairs, our backyard and outdoor rodent control covers the yard-side work. Once the animals are gone, rodent exclusion closes the entry points so a new rat does not move in. We answer the phone at any hour and can often visit the same day.