Mice are a serious problem and while modern cats are not able to help, dogs are. Dogs can be trained to do many things, from saving a life to smelling the presence of drugs. What they can also do is smell the mice in your walls and hear their scratching. So if you see your dog going at the wall like it’s hungry you may have mice. The reason for this is that dogs have a heightened sense of smell and larger ears. Both allow them to be hunters and predators which makes them especially capable of finding rodents in a house. While house cats may toy with a mouse and even eat it they are not able to deal with an infestation. Not at all like feral cats which are no longer common. George Washington’s wife, Martha had a feral cat in the house to hunt mice and named him Geroge, but they are not cats you can pet. They are to be left to their hunting and not fed intentionally to get them to hunt for their food. Dogs are not likely to eat mice so much as to chase them. However, if your dog signals that something is in the wall it’s a good chance you have mice or rats. That is the time to call an exterminator. You can try treating them yourself but with snap traps and glue traps and domestic grade poison, all you will have are a few dead mice.
If you are worried you have a mouse infestation you can try inspecting the house. The easiest way to know if you have mice is by looking for feces. Mouse feces is very small and looks like a black grain of rice. If you find it in your basement the mice may just have gotten in. Unlike wild mice, European house mice have lost the ability to climb or jump and have to enter homes through the ground floor and often through foundation gaps and weep vents. These entryways, especially in old houses can be plentiful. Wall vents that are open or accessible and open plumbing vents are also easy ways to get into the house but the most common way they enter is through a door that is left open. While other entryways can be sealed either on your own or professionally the door must be used as a portal into and out of the house and cannot be sealed off. If the door frame does not meet in certain spots you can implement weather stripping or a door sweep if the base of the door does not meet the frame. This will keep out more than just mice. Doing this and inspecting your home regularly can help catch mice infestations at the start, making them much easier to resolve. Not taking regular checks can lead to mice entering right under your nose and living in the house for years before anything is done. This is when an infestation becomes hard to deal with. So call a professional to help. They can lay down tamper-proof bait stations with commercial-grade rodenticide that will kill off the mice safely and leave no dead mice on the floor.
