Having a few stray animals around your storefront can quickly become an expensive and unpleasant problem to deal with. If you are tired of having stray animals around your store, then you need to come up with a comprehensive and humane pest control plan.
Limit Their Access to Water
If an animal doesn’t have access to water, then it is going to find another home. That is why you should inspect the area around your storefront for any signs of standing water or excess moisture. You might notice puddles of water around hoses, sprinklers, spigots, downspouts, and rain gutters. Even a faucet with a slow leak could provide one or two stray animals with enough water to survive.
Ask Customers to Not Feed Them
Birds, cats, dogs, and other wild animals may look cute to some and scar away others. Many people feed stray animals without even thinking about what the repercussions could be. In addition to attracting more strays, feeding certain animals human food could be incredibly bad for their health. At the very least, you should put up a few signs asking customers to avoid feeding them. Those signs can also include a little bit of information about the dangers of interacting with stray animals.
Get Rid of Excess Trash
Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much for trash to begin accumulating around a storefront, and your other bins might not be big enough for some of that garbage. Over time, pests could begin to accumulate around your store because that trash provides them with food and shelter. Renting skip bins with lids to get rid of the trash is going to improve the appearance of your storefront and deter stray animals. Animals like to have access to food that may be in your garbage. If you don’t allow access then they will keep moving and find somewhere easier for them to nest.
Contact a Pest Control Expert
Limiting their access to food and shelter is a great start, but you might need to call in the professionals at some point. A pest control expert should be able to safely trap and relocate the animals. They can also take injured and sick animals to a nearby vet who will be able to treat them. In many cases, calling a pest control expert is one of the most humane things that you can do for stray animals.
While it might be tempting to simply shoo those animals away and hope for the best, they will continue to come back if they think that they can find food, water, or shelter. Once those amenities have been eliminated, the stray animals should move along on their own.