Over the years of doing inspections in the great Northwest I have run into my share of Rodentia Furrius.

The basic rat in the Seattle area is six to eight inches long, without a tail, and it generally tries to be invisible. When I am in an attic or crawl space I will see waste and damage, but very rarely see the rodents themselves.

Over the years I have done inspections for people who are moving from the East Coast to the West Coast and a few times I have found the house to have rodent issues. This has turned out to be quite interesting. I’ve had two different clients who, when I came out of the crawl space and mentioned that they have a rat intrusion in their potential new house, have had the color drain out of their faces and have had to sit down. Now I know people do not like rats in their house, but my thought is that this was a bit of an overreaction. However one of the clients then proceeded to tell me that when he was an 8 year old kid in the Bronx, he was walking down the sidewalk and he took a shortcut down an alley but when he got part way through a pack of rats chased him back up the alley and up the street! 

Clients have stated that East Coast rats are brazen and bigger. They wait for the subway with you and do not give a damn if you are standing next to them.

Sounds like our Northwest rats are in the bush leagues.