You’ve seen the evidence of mouse infestation in the movies, pictures of abandoned houses, and maybe even your neighbors’ homes. When it is hushed, you may hear the tiny footsteps, see something move in the corner, or see small droppings in confined spaces, dark corners, and under furniture.
Once you tell them they have mice, you help them to get rid of the rodents. We are going to compile a list of some of the most effective ways to eliminate mice infestations.
1. Set Mouse Traps
Since there are already mice in the home, the best thing to get started is to lay down traps.
Some are called snap traps – these are designed to kill rodents that come onto the trap. They have weights-activated springs and snap down a bar to eliminate the mouse when they put their weight on the trap. Of course, to get them to do that, they should be covered in food that the mice enjoy for example peanut butter.
Placing these traps is key, so make sure to put them where you have seen droppings and partially eaten food since they are sure to revisit those places in search of their next meal. Place traps along the wall, mice use their whisker as feelers and mostly travel along side of walls. In addition, there are some other bait traps available commercially.
2. Close Gaps Into The House
Once you have established an effective system of mouse traps, we then want to cover your bases of preventing a re-infestation. One step in prevention is to close off entry points for them and check for house gaps.
Holes can begin to form even if you are diligent in keeping your home clean. They can be a natural occurrence of age since the house will be more prone to damage. You will want to check windows, doors, cabinetry, and other sealed points or places where water may tend to pool.
Rodents such as mice can force themselves through gaps as small as a nickel, so of course, they can fit through holes more prominent than that. Therefore, you will want to plug and repair any hole that they may be able to use.
3. Maintain a Clean House
Another prevention method is to make your home as undesirable as possible for these mice – they don’t like a clean home. They search for food much of the time. Scraps, crumbs, and grease are very enticing to them and will bring them into your home. Make sure that taking out the trash is on the chore list since mice eat that as well.
Sweep, mop, vacuum, and dust regularly to prevent inviting these rodents into your home.
4. Glue Traps as Another Option
If you want a trap to assist you with getting rid of your mouse population, glue traps can work to catch your house mouse. Rather than capturing by force, these small traps are filled with a liquid adhesive that will prevent anything that lands in them from walking away.
Often used to catch flies, these can also work to catch small rodents. Similar to the kind of mousetrap that we have talked about, you want to place these in locations that they frequent.
Mice tend to get stuck on these and try to escape, so you may hear the trap move about on the floor. The unfortunate circumstance is they get stuck and suffer a slow death from suffocation or a heart attack. For this reason, many people prefer snap traps. They’re a more humane approach.
5. Live Mouse Traps
If you are not interested in killing rodents, then live mouse traps might be best.
You place the metal containers somewhere that you see mice droppings, place some food debris inside, and wait. Then, the trapped mice can be taken outside to a safe location and released.
These cages can be entered and accessed from the outside but prevent mice from escaping.
6. Bait Stations
Bait stations are another means of killing your unwelcome rodents. These small boxes hold poisoned bait.
It would be best to consider when using bait with poison because the bait is meant to taste good. If you have children or animals in the home, you also need to invest in the station to house the bait – this will allow the small mice to enter, but not dogs, cats, or kids.
The bait attracts mice; they eat the poison and die shortly after.
7. Hire Professionals
The least labor-intensive and most effective way to get rid of mice is to call a pest control company. They have teams of highly experienced technicians that will remove mice and use various techniques to get rid of mice completely, prevent mice infestations in the future, and stop the spread of disease.
We will take care of what methods to employ and the materials needed to do so.
Contact us at Horn Pest Management to get an estimate. Don’t forget that we know how to help with other pests if mice aren’t your current problem.