Rodent Cleanup for Tucson Attics and Casitas

This one usually starts with a door nobody's opened in a while. A lot of Tucson properties have a casita, a guest house, a storage room off the carport or a shed out back, and those spaces sit shut for months, especially through the summer. Deer mice and pack rats love that. By the time somebody opens up in October, there are nests in the drawers, droppings on the bed and a smell you won't forget.

Attics are the other spot, mostly in midtown where roof rats nest overhead. Flat-roofed homes might not have much of an attic, but the space under the roof deck and inside the parapets still collects nests. A few older houses have crawl spaces or raised wood floors that gather debris too. Pool equipment rooms and the little storage closet off the carport collect their share as well, mostly because nobody goes in there for months.

What you find when you open the casita

Signs the space needs a real cleanup, not just a quick wipe:

A few droppings on a garage shelf, you can handle with gloves and disinfectant. Air it out for 30 minutes, soak the droppings in a 1 to 9 bleach mix for five minutes, wipe, bag. Don't sweep or vacuum dry droppings, and please don't take a leaf blower to the shed. Our CDC-based cleanup guide has the full steps. A casita with nests in the bedding or an attic full of soiled insulation is a bigger, dustier job, and that's where people tend to call.

• Droppings on shelves, beds or floors
• Nests of shredded paper, fabric or insulation in boxes
• A strong musty or ammonia smell
• Stained or flattened insulation in the attic
• A stick-and-cactus pile inside a shed or behind stored stuff

Why the cleanup comes last

Cleaning a room that rodents can still get into won't last a week. So the tech first checks whether anything is still living there. If it is, trapping the mice comes first, then sealing the casita or attic, and the cleanup after that.

The cleanup itself is slow, wet work. Droppings and nest material get soaked with disinfectant before anybody touches them, then bagged and hauled out along with ruined boxes and fabric. In an attic, soiled insulation may have to come out. Some companies handle insulation and some send that part to someone else. Floors, shelves and surfaces get sanitized at the end, and the room gets aired out before anyone uses it.

Snowbird garages and guest casitas

A lot of these calls come in the fall. Casitas on big Foothills lots sit empty until the holidays. Part-year residents in Green Valley and Sahuarita come back to droppings in the garage and a nest in the golf cart. Tack rooms and feed rooms on Tanque Verde horse properties get deer mice and pack rats pretty much year round.

Don't let guests sleep in a casita that had mice until it's been cleaned properly and aired out. Wash bedding in hot water, wearing gloves while you load the machine. And if you want to ask about coverage, call your homeowners insurance before work starts, since a lot of policies exclude rodent damage.

Sheds are their own kind of mess. A pack rat that moves into a shed hauls in cactus and sticks and builds a midden against the wall or behind the lawnmower, and everything in there ends up with droppings on it. Getting it out means moving everything, wetting the pile, bagging it and wiping down whatever you want to keep. Cardboard boxes usually go in the trash. If you'd rather do it yourself, pick a cool morning, open the doors wide and take your time.

Related: Mouse Control, Roof Rat Control, Rodent Exclusion and Sealing

Serving Catalina Foothills, Oro Valley, Marana, Tanque Verde and East Side, Midtown and Sam Hughes, Vail, Sahuarita and Green Valley, Rita Ranch, Casas Adobes, South Tucson and West Side.