Keeping mice out of your home is a process that everyone should go through. Mice are a hazard and can cause many issues and illnesses. They can defecate on your food and give you, your children and your pets bowl disruption and other illness. They can bring fleas and ticks into your house which are difficult to deal with and expensive when pets get them. They can also cause respiratory illnesses like Hantavirus and will urinate in the walls ruining your insulation and causing bad smells. There are a lot of reasons to get mice out of your home or, better yet, prevent them from ever getting in. But what does that look like? How do you get mice out or stop them from getting in? There are many ways. Some are more effective than others and some may just be hearsay. Either way, here are some examples.
One of the age-old methods of dealing with mice is using traps. Snap traps are very common and have been in use for over a hundred years by humans trying to catch mice, it was originally invented in 1894 as a fast way to get rid of them. Sadly, if you have a severe infestation it won’t be fast enough. The main issue with snap traps is that they don’t tell you anything about the infestation. Live traps and glue traps can tell you a general idea of how many mice are in the house but otherwise, you are left not knowing how bad it is because the mice themselves are always hiding and avoiding humans. Most of these types of traps are also dangerous to you, your pets and your family, especially snap traps and inhumane to the mice. Snap traps don’t always catch the mouse but can severely injure them. Snapping off their tale or taking a limb which means they will likely crawl back to their nest where they will die in the wall and make a mess and a terrible smell. Multiple mice caught in a glue trap will starve and begin eating each other which can be a gruesome sight to see when you have to clean it up and dispose of it. Of all the options humane capture traps are the least messy but where do you let the mouse go? If you let it out into the back yard it will just find an opening, or make one and go back inside. You will need to take it further away, as much as a kilometre away to a park and release it there. Otherwise, it may be able to find its way back to your property. There are ways to deter them like dipping cotton balls in vinegar or clove oil and putting them around the house. The mice will avoid them and possibly want to leave but the issue with all of these methods is that they are all too slow and ineffective. Mice can reproduce rapidly, in four weeks a female mouse can give birth to a litter of up to 14 babies and those babies can mate in just two weeks. To keep up with this you will need a commercial treatment using commercial-grade rodenticide, it’s an anticoagulant chemical that allows mice to die inside the walls without making a smell. The technician can also check on the bait stations that contain it and confirm the level of the infestation. In this way, it tells you very clearly the level of activity in your house which is one of the main reasons it is better than domestic treatments, more effective and safer.
