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THE OWL-RAT ELIMINATION SYSTEM

> Poison free rat exterminators in Palm Harbor, FL
> 
> 
> “THE OWL” RAT ELIMINATION SYSTEM-CREEPY CREATURES, INC., HUMANE AND
> ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY  SOLUTION TO TAMPA BAY’S MASSIVE RAT INFESTATION!

If you are anything like me, you love animals, but you DO NOT care to share your
home and yard with rats. ICK.

The problem with rat control in the Clearwater/Tampa Area has always been THREE
things…

First, rat poisons needs to be re-baited every month or it goes rotten. If you
do not keep the poison fresh, you may as well not even do it.  With Tampa Bay’s
harsh, wet weather most rat poisons will quickly grow mold on them. Do  you like
to eat moldy food? (I have to admit, I do love some of the moldy cheeses like
blue, gorgonzola and especially brie…I could eat a pound of brie…ok, focus
Dusty!) But rats don’t like moldy food, not even moldy cheese.

Second, not all rat poison is created equally. There is high quality, there is
low quality rat poison. There is single-does and there is multiple dose
rodenticides. If you are going to do it yourself, it is important to know the
differences. Do you know the difference? It is quite important because it can
mean the difference in killing wildlife such as owls, raccoons, opossums,
neighborhood cats, bobcats and even panthers/mountain lions.

Whether you live in Palm Harbor, Tampa, Clearwater, Oldsmar or any of the other
surrounding towns. Finding an exterminator that knows how to get rid of rats can
be tough. And knowing how to properly get rid of rats without poison is even
tougher. Until now, there were very few ways to get rid of rats poison free!

Give us a Call or Text to see if the Owl Traps are a fit for you. 

727-488-5657


WHY USE “THE OWL” TRAPS?



Another unwanted side effect is, where do the rats go to die? Sometimes they
will die outside where other animals can eat their poisoned carcasses.  

Knowing how to get rid of rats in attics can is not for the amateur.  Even
professionals can struggle with knowing how to get rid of rats in attic,
especially without rat poison.

Countless pest control professionals will tell you that rat poison is designed
to make the rats thirsty so they go outside for water and die. To quote Dwight
Schrutt, “FALSE!” There is NO rat poison designed to make rats thirsty so they
go outside for water and die. You would think that if this were true they would
advertise it. Yet, for over 30 years I have had a bet; if you show me where it
says that on the label it says the poison will make rats thirsty so they go
outside for water and die, I will pay you $100 CASH. I’ve had ZERO takers so
far. My thoughts on this is that it was an easy way for exterminators to simply
throw out a bunch of poison and leave…praying that no rats will die in the walls
and attic…and smell. Customers don’t like this.

Different rat poisons work in different ways, too. Some affect the nervous
system, some are stomach poisons and some break down the blood vessels so the
rats hemorrhage internally and die.

This is an issue where owls eat multiple rats that have been feeding off the
same poison PLUS they also feed these rats to their babies. They do not
necessarily die immediately but the poison builds up in their brains so much
that they eventually die from the poison buildup. 


HOW DOES “THE OWL” RAT TRAPS WORK?



Rats can be picky and will often ignore some of the best tasting rat poison on
the market. PLUS, if a rat eats the poison and it does not kill it, they will
get sick and will most likely never eat it again. So now you are back to square
one with rats that will not eat your expensive poison. 

Even worse, while rat poisons are designed to be only eaten by rats, on occasion
squirrels will also eat rat poison. I love squirrels and would never want to
hurt them. But squirrels eating rat poison also creates a secondary issue. As
far as birds go, owls are most affected by eating poisoned rats because both
rats and owls are nocturnal, meaning they are active at night. 

When squirrels are eating rat poison they are now making themselves available
for birds of prey that are diurnal, or active during the day. These birds
include hawks, ospreys, falcons and even bald eagles. 

I get that not many people like vultures…they appear as undertakers fighting for
a good spot on an unfortunate armadillo or a massive feast of a deer that was
struck by a car. 

I think vultures are pretty awesome. But like them or not, vultures play a key
role in cleaning up our environment. They are the sanitation crew of the wild.
Garbage men get little respect until the garbage goes a week without being
picked up. Both garbage men and vultures are vital to providing us with a clean
and healthy environment. And I mean this in the most respectful way, my dad was
a garbage man during his college summers.

But vultures feed off of carrion. “Carrion” is a fancy word for “dead animals”.
When squirrels feed on rat poison they become carrion and the rat poison then
gets passed on to vultures. While vultures have a face that only a mother (and
me) could love, it is NOT in our best interest to harm them.

Give us a Call or Text to see if the Owl Traps are a fit for you. 

727-488-5657

This is how the Good Nature Owl Trap works!

I’m an animal lover. I even like rats…yeah, I’m one of those weirdos. But I also
know that rats are incredibly destructive and if let alone, they will destroy
your home and eat all of your food. I’ve seen it personally when people have
tried to live with their rats, hating the thought of killing them.

The rats we have in that Tampa Bay Area are Rattus rattus, most commonly called
“roof rats”. Some people call them fruit rats or citrus rats. Occasionally they
are called “Wharf rats” but wharf rats are typically Norway rats, which we
fortunately do not have an issue with here in the Tampa Bay Area.

Norway rats are the big city rats, typically up North where people describe them
as big a dogs or cats. Which, by the way, is an exaggeration. They are big but
not THAT big.

Roof rats are considered commensal rodents. They are not native to the United
States and do not properly fit into our ecosystem. Commensal rodents thrive
around people. They do not do well out in the wild like other native rats like a
Florida wood rat. 

Occasionally, we are asked to relocated rats because people cannot stand the
thought of killing them. Being commensal rodents, rats will not survive out in
the woods or the “in the wild where they belong”. They will quickly be eaten or
will starve to death. 

If you just move them somewhere else, “not in the wild”, then you are just
transferring your problem to someone else and that’s not cool.

When animal loving people try to live with rats, rats will eventually destroy
everything. All of their paths will turn brown from the oil on their skin and
the urine they smear as they drag their bellies when they walk. 

Along with urine, rats will leave droppings EVERYWHERE. When I say “everywhere”,
I mean everywhere. In your attic, on your kitchen counters; we have even seen
rat droppings in people’s BEDS!!! GROSS!

Rats will chew holes to get into any place they want. Then they will chew
randomly on things just because their teeth require chewing. 

Rats have caused fires as a result of chewing on wires. On more than one
occasion while crawling through rat infested attics I have been shocked when
accidentally touching a live, exposed electrical wire. 

The Owl Trap is poison free and won’t harm other animals.

Just like you and me, rats love a cool drink of water and they know just where
to get it…your dishwasher hose. What better way to destroy a kitchen than to
flood it by chewing on a dishwasher hose? What is even more frustrating is when
the homeowner replaces the dishwater, repairs all the damage from the flood only
to realize they STILL HAVE RATS and they CHEWED THE NEW HOSE TOO!!!

Whether rats are looking for a cool breeze to go with that drink of water or
they just want to explore new places, rats LOVE TO CHEW ON A/C ducts. One of the
most common things we see in attics and under mobile homes, aside from rodent
droppings, is air conditioning ducts completely torn apart from rats. It’s
enough to share your cold water with rats, do you really want to share your cool
(and expensive) air conditioning with them, too?

The bottom line is, you can try your best to live with them, but in the end…the
rats always win if not dealt with. 

Being an animal lover that understand how destructive rats are, I hate the
thought of them suffering. 20 some years ago, my old friend and urban wildlife
specialist and entomologist, Dr. William H.Kern of University of Florida at
Gainesville told me when I asked about where the rats die; he explained just
like you and me, when we feel sick, we crawl into bed and hope to die; rats do
the same. 

This means, if your rats eat your poison, it is possible they will go into your
attic and die…and smell…then  you see great big flies that lay eggs that hatch
into maggots and feed on your dead rats…in your attic…above your head while you
sleep. Often times the flies come out of the bathroom vent to greet you as you
are having your morning “business meeting”…or as they used to say “Seeing a man
about a horse.”

Mobile homes can be worse. First, they are nearly impossible to screen up the
underside. Even most of the best screen jobs can leave holes small enough for a
rat to get in. Rats love to eat poison then crawl up into the subflooring
(cardboard that attaches the insulation to the floor of the mobile home) and
die. And smell. And attract flies and maggots. This is a very disappointing
feeling given the going rate to screen up a mobile home is about $3,000!

I know all of this to be true because when I was young and hungry, trying to
build my business I would take the worst of the worst work…and that is dead
animal removal. I have removed more dead rats and opossums (perhaps that died
from eating poisoned rats) from attics and mobile home subflooring than I could
ever care to remember. 

Having a dead animal die in your attic or subflooring is SO GROSS that I would
have my  “Hork factor”. As a nod to Wayne’s World, if I vomited, the price went
up…and the customer never had a problem paying. 

But the real issue I have with rat poison is the secondary poisoning. As pest
professionals we have had very few options. The best we could do was to use
certain poisons such as TeraD3. TeraD3 and a few others are recommended by
certain animal rescue organizations but the fact still remains the same, rat
poison is still being put out into the environment. 


PEST CONTROL’S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

There is something that has always nagged at me. No one in pest control ever
talks about it. Each month when a pest control technician re-baits rodent boxes
there is almost always has uneaten, spoiled bait. I have looked EVERYWHERE about
where to dispose of the bait and I never find a PRACTICAL answer. I can
guarantee most pest control companies and homeowners are not following most of
these steps. 

I have no evidence, but I would suspect that most poison from homeowners and
pest control technicians are just being tossed in the garbage where other
creatures can eat it or it can end up in our soil.

WORST CASE SCENARIO-MAJORLY FRUSTRATING

Something that we call “The Worst Case Scenario” is when rats come up through
the plumbing”. This normally happens when, at some point” a bathroom, laundry
room or kitchen gets remodeled. 

Your sink and toilet pipes run from the sewer, connect to the sink or toilet
then run up and vent out the roof. On occasion, contractors will cut that pipe,
move the sink or toilet then never seal up that pipe. After that, they seal up
the wall thus hiding the pipe. In the luckiest cases, the pipe will be visible
from the attic where it can then be sealed but in most cases, it’s nearly
impossible to find. 

Rats will find their way from the sewer, up the pipe and into your wall, which
leads into the attic.

People with this problem often hire multiple pest control companies with ZERO
results finding out how the rats are getting in. Sure, you can trap the rats in
the attic but it never ends. And constantly setting traps, re-baiting traps and
cleaning out traps in attics is a VERY arduous task. 

The traps constantly be maintained or your rat population will quickly grow out
of control. 

Setting traps and rat poison outside around the perimeter is useless since the
rats are coming up from the sewer pipes into the attic.

The normal recourse is to hire a plumber to perform a smoke test. While this is
something that we definitely recommend, a smoke test could be $2,000-$3,000 and
there is NO GUARANTEE you will find the issue.

GIVE US A CALL OR TEXT TO SEE IF THE OWL TRAPS ARE A FIT FOR YOU. 

727-488-5657

SPREADING POISON INTO THE WILD 

By law, rat poison is to be secured in such a way that animal and other invaders
(like kids) can not get ahold of it where it can do harm. For example, you buy
some rat poison from Home Depot. You throw it up in the attic for the rats to
eat.

One of your curious rats takes a block of the poison and carries it from the
attic outside, into the yard. From there anything can happen. Your neighbor’s
dog can eat it, your cat could get ahold of it.

In a case like this, a squirrel could eat it only to be eaten by a hawk, which
then dies from the poisoned squirrel. 

On occasion we even see people buy poison from Amazon, Lowes or Home Depot and
put it outside, around their homes for ANYTHING to eat it!

The odd thing is that as pest control professionals, we must follow the law and
that includes following the label of pesticides. Unfortunately, the general
public can buy most of the same products and use them any way they like. 

IMPOSSIBLE TO SEAL MOBILE HOMES & HOMES WITH CRAWLSPACES

Some of the most frustrating cases are homes with crawl spaces and mobile homes.
The number one thing to do to prevent a rat infestation is to seal up the
openings. This can be very difficult if not impossible with mobile homes and
homes with crawl spaces. And even if it is possible, it can easily cost $3,000
OR MORE!!! And that does not always guarantee they will seal everything up.

I can’t tell you how often we get a frustrated caller that tells us they spend
$3,000 to seal up their mobile home and they still have rats!!!  Nothing against
the installers, sealing up mobile homes and crawl spaces is tough work. If you
miss just ¼”, rats will find their way back in. 

In other cases, someone like an a/c contractor may pull open the screen because
he needs to inspect the a/c ducts that the rats have chewed apart!

In cases like this, the only solution was to put out rat poison bait boxes. And
as we know, these boxes need to have fresh poison put in them every month or
they are worthless!

TILE ROOFS-THE HIDDEN MAZE INTO YOUR HOME

There are two questions we ask people when they call with a rat problem. 

 1. Do you have a crawl space underneath your home?
 2. Do you have a tile roof?

Tile roofs can act like a protected superhighway for rats and. It just takes one
broken tile, one tile offset or (especially barrel tiles) an unsealed valley.

Roofers will also lay tile up against an area where the soffit meets the roof.
If not done carefully. This will allow the rats to travel under the tile and
straight into the attic and you’ll never know it!

I can’t tell you how many times when we tell people that rats can get in through
their roof they reply with “Oh no, I just had a new roof put on!” However, even
the best roofer does not make a good rat proofer. Roofers are great and knowing
how to keep rain out…however, most are horrible at keeping rats out. In fact, we
had the owner of one of Tampa Bay’s best roofing companies hire us to get rid of
his rats. And guess how the rats were getting in? Yup, you guessed it, the roof!

The sneaky little rats will get under the tiles, travel (with overhead
protection from hunting owls) and find a corner of the plywood underneath the
roof and chew a hole to get in.

The good news is we have the solution to all of these issues! And no, we don’t
use the old fashion traps that everyone knows about. But we used to…and we used
them because we didn’t think we had a choice. **the exception is when we cannot
keep the Owl traps in stock**

We’ve used nearly all the traps on the market. 30 years of trapping rats I’ve
had an opportunity to see the newest, craziest traps…and up until recently, it
all came back to the good ol’ fashioned snap trap. I’ve always said “You can’t
build a better mouse trap.” But I was wrong. 

Snap traps are VERY high maintenance. They need to be re-baited every 2-3 days.
They need to be safely set, without snapping your fingers. They also need to be
set in areas that will prevent kids, pets and wildlife from getting caught in
them so your areas of placement are very limited, which can affect how well they
work.

Plus, the trap can be incredibly inhumane. When things go perfectly, the rat is
hit in just the right spot so they die quickly if not instantly. But the sad
truth is that many, many times it is not a clean hit. The rat gets hit on the
snout or a leg or paw only to die a very slow and agonizing death.

When traps are not secured they can be dragged away by a rat that was not caught
cleanly. This means you may need to manually “dispatch the rat”, not something
for the faint of heart.

In other cases the trap may get dragged off into a part of the attic that is
inaccessible and then die…causing a horrible smell…then flies…then maggots. Ew.

The glue board trap seems to be an old standby, not just by homeowners but by
many in the pest control industry. The glue board is perhaps one of the worst,
most horrific traps in all of history. 

When rats are caught cleanly in a glue board, they will still die a slow and
agonizing death. When they are not caught cleanly, they will drag the trap
away…and still die a slow and agonizing death.

Many people will choose to just throw the animal and trap into the garbage.
Again, a slow and agonizing death. But the alternative, again is to dispatch the
animal by hand and many people just don’t have the stomach for that. 

The other miserable thing about glue boards are the countless other things that
get stuck on them. As you might guess, they are very sticky. Unfortunately, many
people will put them out in the open outside. We have seen them stuck to the
faces of opossum faces. They are notorious for catching lizards and snakes.

A little tip…if you ever find a glue board with a non-target animal stuck to it,
pouring vegetable or oil on it will break down the glue and set it free.

THE OWL TRAP

It took some time to figure out how I could best use the The Owl Trap in my
business. The thing is, compared to snap traps, glue boards and all the other
traps, the Owl Trap is expensive. And of course, we are always taught, you can’t
build a better mousetrap. 

 After a bit of research, it hit me. They are expensive for me to purchase but
in the long run, the benefits outweigh the cost. And while the Owls cost me more
upfront, they last MUCH longer and require WAY less maintenance and the best
part…they solve nearly every problem we have with traps and poison 🙂

Give us a Call or Text to see if the Owl Traps are a fit for you. 

727-488-5657

We offer discounts for Mobile Home Parks, Apartments Complexes, Condo Complexes
and Commercial Buildings!



EXCELLENT
Based on 134 reviews

Marcus Hammel
June 17, 2022.
Spoke with Dusty on the phone to discuss our pest issue. Dusty was extremely
professional and took the time to talk me through ideas on how to resolve the
issue on our own. It was evident in speaking with Dusty that he really knows his
profession and he wants to help anyone in need. Thank you again, Dusty! I really
appreciate your advice!

Dusty has excellent videos on YouTube so be sure to subscribe to his channel and
I would recommend you call him for any pest control needs.
Read more
Ron Allen
April 16, 2022.
Creepy Creatures specifically Dusty and Joe have gone out of their way the past
7 plus years to make sure we stay pest and rodent free. They service 2 of my
homes in the area and Joe, responds whenever we call. This is the way to conduct
a home service business! Top Notch!

If you need a pest control service call Creepy Creatures!
Read more
Judy S Hallstrom
April 16, 2022.
Excellent reliable service and amazingly effective! Service reps are very nice
and thorough. Price is great and I recommend them to everyone! They are aware of
the importance of beneficial insects and take care around my gardens. Great
company !
Read more
Skip Showers
March 17, 2022.
Wouldnt call any but Dusty! He gets the job done
 
Annette Austin
February 1, 2022.
I have used this service more than once and could not be more pleased. They are
there when they say they will be. Their performance is excellent. And their
pricing is really great. Joe, the young man who set the traps is very
professional and follows up to make sure the critters are gone. Recommend them
highly.
Read more
Cathy G
January 18, 2022.
The tech went above and beyond the call of duty! He returned as often as we
needed him. We live next to a preserve and were invaded by some tricky rodents.
Even while we were away for an extended time, the tech came and checked our
attic at my request, reporting back while onsite to sooth my troubled mind.
Great company!
Read more
charles showers
January 7, 2022.
When I get aBug problem I called Dusty! and he unbugs my house! Dustys the Best!
Dusty always gets the job done ! Dusty your the Best!
Read more
Eric Vanderlaan
November 24, 2021.
Just fantastic people! We thought we might have termites and didn't. Instead of
"treating" what didn't exist they we're honest and helped point us in the
direction of what we needed. Really trustworthy people.
Read more
Shari Anders
November 4, 2021.
I have roof rats who were chewing holes through my screened lanai area off the
backyard. Since hiring their services and setting the traps I have found two
more dead rats on the pool deck area. Matt has always informed me when he’s
coming out and what he’s done.

Thanks for your service!
Read more
Michele McKinney
October 8, 2021.
I have never met such professional and thorough people. A gentleman named Joe is
the one that comes to treat my home. He is so incredibly knowledgeable,
intelligent, and he just doesn't miss a thing. For years I have never been able
to get rid of those little ants that you get inside your house. When Joe told me
he would take care of them, my first thought was "yeah right!" After the first
visit I never saw them again. I was completely amazed! I recommended this
company to my mom because my dad is a contractor and he had done everything he
could and still could not figure out how to get rid of those ants. They
experienced the same results. They never saw another ant again. I don't know how
they do it , but I am incredibly grateful to have found this company. I will
always be a lifelong customer.
Read more


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