Also known as the black rat or ship rat

Identification

• Dark colored
• Weighs 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
• 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 explorer 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

• 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