Scratching Under the Floor at Night: What Is It?
Almost everyone rings us because of a noise rather than because they have seen anything. The noise usually tells you more than you think.
When it happens
Timing narrows it down quickly.
Rats and mice are mostly active from dusk into the small hours, with a lull and then a second burst before dawn. If the noise starts within an hour or two of the house going quiet, rodents are the likely answer.
Squirrels are the daytime one. Noise in a loft that starts at first light, stops around the middle of the day and picks up again in the afternoon is much more likely to be a grey squirrel, and that is a different job.
Birds are early morning and usually at the eaves rather than through the space.
What it sounds like
Weight is the giveaway. Rats sound heavy: thumping, dragging, something being moved. Mice sound like fast light skittering that starts and stops. Squirrels sound heavier again and are noisy in a way that sounds deliberate — rolling, scraping, sometimes what sounds like something being dropped.
Gnawing carries. A steady rasping you can hear from another room, often at the same time each night, is usually a rat working on something structural.
Under the floor rather than above it
Noise from below rather than above points at the void under a suspended timber floor, and that changes where the way in is likely to be: airbricks, ground-level gaps, service entries, or a drain.
It is also the case that a ground-floor void connects further than people expect, frequently under partition walls and in a terrace under the neighbours too. So the noise under your front room may be coming from something that got in three doors away.
The practical step is to note where and when, for a couple of nights, before you ring. It is genuinely useful.
Before you book
Quick Answers
It only happens at night. Does that rule out squirrels?
Largely, yes. Squirrels are daytime animals — first light, a quiet middle of the day, then active again in the afternoon. Noise that starts when the house goes quiet in the evening points at rats or mice.
What should I tell you when I ring?
Where the noise is, what time it starts, and whether it sounds heavy or light. Two nights of paying attention narrows it down a lot before anybody arrives.
Book a Rat Control Visit
Rats in the loft, the kitchen, the garden or the premises — tell us what you have seen and where.
Get in touch
Book a Rat Control Visit
Tell us what you have seen or heard and roughly where. If it is urgent, ring instead — the phone is faster.
- Phone
- 01908 465226
- Message us on WhatsApp
- sales@miltonkeynespestcontroller.co.uk
- Milton Keynes Pest Controller Service
- Address
- South Row
Milton Keynes
MK9 3DQ - Covering
- Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and parts of Hertfordshire