Do you use rat poison in Burnaby?

Not as a default and never the second-generation anticoagulants (SGARs — brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, difethialone) that British Columbia restricted in 2023. SGARs devastate raptor and pet populations through secondary poisoning, which is a documented risk in Burnaby given Burnaby Mountain + Burnaby Lake raptor activity. We default to mechanical trapping (snap traps) plus exclusion. For commercial back-of-house we use tamper-resistant exterior bait stations with first-generation anticoagulants only where exclusion alone won't carry the program.

How are mice getting into my Burnaby Heights house?

Mus musculus can squeeze through any gap larger than 6mm — about the diameter of a pencil. Older Burnaby Heights single-family stock typically has gaps at the garage door perimeter, plumbing penetrations under the sink and behind the laundry, the dryer vent, the rim joist where the sub-floor meets the foundation, and crawlspace vents without screen. Mice find the same gaps generation after generation; sealing them is what breaks the cycle.

There are rats in my Brentwood condo parkade — what can I do?

Parkade rats are usually a strata-level issue, not a unit-level one. The right move is to document what you see (photos help), report it to your strata council, and ask them to engage their pest contractor for the parkade + garbage room. We can do an independent suite + parkade audit and produce a formal report you can take to your council if your strata isn't responding — that's a common Brentwood scope.

How do I tell rats from mice in my Burnaby home?

Droppings are the most reliable sign. Rat droppings are 10-20mm long, dark brown to black, capsule-shaped. Mouse droppings are 3-7mm, granular, often pointed at the ends. Urine smell is also distinctive — rat urine has a strong ammonia smell that mouse urine doesn't. Send us a clear photo of droppings on WhatsApp and we'll identify the species and give you next steps before we ever come out.

Why are there rats in my Lougheed townhouse?

Townhouse complexes in Lougheed and Edmonds have shared-wall cavities, common-area landscape voids, and shared garbage-room infrastructure that allow rodent populations to cycle between units. Single-unit treatment in a townhouse complex is often a holding action; if neighbouring units have unaddressed activity, the rats will return via the shared infrastructure. Strata-wide coordinated treatment is the actual fix in most cases — we do these as a regular Lougheed scope.

Will the rats damage my house?

Yes, if untreated. Norway rats and house mice gnaw on electrical wiring (a documented residential fire risk), insulation, soft wood, and stored items. Long-term infestations compromise attic insulation R-value and contaminate stored food. They are also reservoirs for hantavirus (rare in Burnaby but documented), salmonella, and leptospirosis. Faster intervention is meaningfully cheaper than waiting.

How long does Burnaby rodent control take?

Inspection + initial exclusion + trap deployment is typically a 2-3 hour visit. Active trapping then runs 14-30 days with 1-2 service visits depending on population size. Burnaby Heights single-family work often resolves faster (small populations); Lougheed townhouse strata-coordinated work runs longer because the scope is wider.

Burnaby Rodent Control — Rats + Mice, 60-Day Guarantee | The Wild Pest

The three Burnaby rodent profiles

High-rise basement-parking Norway rats, Burnaby Heights house mice, and Lougheed townhouse strata-wide cycling. Each one needs a different fix.

Burnaby rodent calls split into three distinct ecologies that share a city boundary. Each one has a different source pattern and a different solution.

Metrotown + Brentwood high-rise basement parking + commercial: Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) cycling between garbage compactor rooms, loading bays, and adjacent commercial back-of-house. The single-unit symptom is usually rats in the parkade or hallway, not in the suite — but suite activity does occur on lower floors with bypass routes via electrical conduit.
Burnaby Heights + Capitol Hill + South Slope older single-family: house mice (Mus musculus) in basements, crawlspaces, and garages. The 1950s-1970s housing stock has decades of accumulated entry-point gaps; the mice find them and reuse them generation after generation.
Lougheed + Edmonds townhouse complexes: shared-wall + shared-wall-cavity activity. Norway rats and house mice both cycle between unit garbage rooms, common-area landscape voids, and unit interior wall cavities. Strata-wide treatment is often required — single-unit work is a holding action.

If we don't tell you which one of these your situation is during the inspection, we haven't done the inspection yet.

Our Burnaby rodent control method

Find the source. Seal the entry. Then treat. Snap-trap default, no SGARs near wildlife.

British Columbia restricted second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs — brodifacoum, bromadiolone, difenacoum, difethialone) for general use in 2023 because of their devastating effect on owls, eagles, raptors, and pets that secondary-feed on poisoned rodents. Burnaby Mountain and Burnaby Lake Regional Park both have meaningful raptor populations; the SGAR risk in Burnaby is real. We don't use SGARs in residential Burnaby work. The professional approach is exclusion + mechanical trapping (snap traps), with sanitation guidance to break the food cycle.

Find the source

25-point inspection of the property perimeter, foundation, attic, crawlspace, and (for high-rise units) the parkade + garbage room + adjacent commercial vector. For Lougheed townhouse work this includes the strata's common-area landscape and common garbage rooms — the source is rarely the single unit calling.

Seal the entry

Physical exclusion at every gap a mouse can squeeze through (anything larger than 6mm) and every gap a rat can squeeze through (anything larger than 12mm). Steel wool + foam at plumbing penetrations, hardware cloth at attic ventilation, weather-stripping on garage doors, copper mesh in soffit gaps. For high-rise condo work, suite-level exclusion is followed by recommendation for parkade + garbage-room remediation if the source is there.

Then trap — snap-trap default

Snap traps placed along confirmed rodent runways, covered for safety with kids and pets, and serviced on a 7-14 day cycle until activity drops to zero. For commercial back-of-house in Metrotown + Brentwood we deploy tamper-resistant exterior bait stations with first-generation anticoagulants only where SGARs would otherwise be used. We never deploy poison without a documented exclusion plan first.

Sanitation + structural feedback

Most Burnaby rodent calls have a sanitation contributor — open compost, unsecured garbage, bird-feeder spillage, pet food left out, fruit drop in older yards. We document specific contributors with photos and give you a written remediation list. Exclusion + traps will only hold if the food access is closed.

Photo report inside 30 minutes. Before-and-after photos of every entry seal, every trap placement, and every sanitation contributor we identified. You see exactly what we did, where, and why.

60-day return guarantee

If rodent activity returns within 60 days of your final Burnaby treatment, we come back. No charge. No argument. The return visit is a fresh diagnosis — if rodents came back, we either missed an entry point or a new source opened up (a strata neighbour's garbage gap, a fresh bin gap, a construction site nearby). Our job on the return is to find what changed and address it.

Burnaby rodent control pricing

Service	Starting at	What's included
One-time rodent inspection + treatment	$349	25-point inspection, exclusion plan, snap-trap deployment + initial 30-day service, photo report, 60-day guarantee.
Full residential exclusion + trapping program	$549	Full perimeter exclusion (all entry points sealed), trap deployment, 14-day + 30-day follow-ups, written sanitation report, 60-day guarantee.
Burnaby Heights single-family mouse program	$449	Basement + crawlspace + garage exclusion + trap deployment, 30-day service. Designed for older 1950s-1970s housing stock.
Brentwood / Metrotown condo unit + parkade audit	$299	Unit-level exclusion + trap deployment + parkade-source assessment with strata report.
Lougheed townhouse strata coordination	Custom quote	Multi-unit + common-area treatment with strata council engagement and BC IPM-compliant documentation.
Commercial back-of-house (Metrotown / Lougheed)	Custom quote	Tamper-resistant exterior stations, interior trap monitoring, sanitation audit, BC IPM-compliant documentation.

Burnaby neighbourhoods we treat for rodents

Same-day across all of Burnaby. 25 km from our North Delta dispatch hub.

Brentwood — Skytrain corridor high-rises, parkade + garbage room sources
Metrotown — high-rise + commercial corridor, the densest rodent commercial pressure in Burnaby
Lougheed — townhouse complexes with strata-wide cycling, Skytrain corridor mixed-use
Edmonds — high-density rental + Skytrain access
Burnaby Heights — older single-family + walk-up apartment, persistent house mice
Capitol Hill — older single-family with mature canopy
South Slope — single-family + townhouse mix
Burnaby Mountain — SFU campus + adjacent housing, raptor-aware treatment essential
Burnaby Lake area — wildlife interface, raptor-aware treatment essential

Burnaby Rodent Control