Rodent Removal in El Cid

El Cid gives a climbing rodent everything it needs in one block: a mature tree canopy that touches roofs, tile and wood rooflines built before anyone thought about quarter-inch gaps, and fruit in the yards for most of the year.

The neighborhood is one of the city's historic districts, built largely in the 1920s boom in Mediterranean Revival and Mission styles on the ridge beside the Lake Worth Lagoon. About eight percent of the city's houses predate 1940 and a large share of them are here and in the three neighboring historic districts. What that means on a ladder is wood soffits and fascia with joints that have moved, original gable and roof vents with corroded screening, barrel tile laid over board decking with open ends at the eave, and in a few houses a crawl space rather than a slab.

Then there is the canopy. Banyans, ficus hedging grown into walls, live oaks and royal palms run right over the rooflines on most El Cid streets. UF/IFAS describes the roof rat as arboreal, traveling along branches, wires and palm trunks, and able to range about 150 yards from its den. On a street like this that range covers a dozen houses, and a branch resting on a tile hip is a bridge that no amount of sealing at ground level affects.

The findings fall into three groups: the way in at the roof, the route to the roof through the trees, and the food that keeps the population up.

• Open ends in the first course of barrel tile at the eave, with no bird stop fitted, which is a half-round opening along the whole edge of the roof.
• Wood soffit boards sprung at a joint or at a corner return, often where a gutter has been replaced.
• Original louvered gable vents with screening that has rusted through at the bottom corner.
• Gaps where a later addition meets the original roofline, which on a 1920s house is rarely a clean junction.
• Branches and ficus hedge growth resting on the roof or within a foot of it.
• Mango, avocado or citrus fruit dropping in the yard, and in this neighborhood the trees are old and productive.

Inside, the attic in an El Cid house is often a tight space under a framed hip roof with little or no insulation, which makes the runs along the top plates easy to read and the droppings easy to find. UF/IFAS describes roof rat droppings as a quarter to half an inch long, banana shaped with pointed ends, and that identification decides whether the work goes up to the roofline or down to the slab line.

Exclusion on a historic El Cid house is done with materials that sit inside the existing detail, so the work is invisible from the sidewalk.

The parts that do the sealing are galvanized or aluminum bird stop at the tile eave, stainless or galvanized mesh behind a vent louver rather than over it, steel wool and hardware cloth packed into a soffit gap, and sheet metal let in behind a fascia joint. All of it can be painted or finished to match. None of it changes a profile or a sightline, which matters in a district where exterior changes get attention.

What does get noticed, and what homeowners here regret, is expanding foam. It shows as a cream-colored line along a historic eave, it fails as a barrier because rodents chew through it, and in a tile roof it can block the ventilation path under the tile. Department of Energy guidance puts bird stopping among the measures recommended for a tile roof, which is the correct part for the job and also the one a review body recognizes.

The tree work is the other half and it is usually the cheaper half. Cutting branches back from the roofline, thinning a ficus hedge away from the wall, and clearing palm boot material removes the route. A sealed house under a branch that touches it still gets tested every night.