‘Tis the season—for mice.
When the cold winds of winter start whipping through the Northeast, rodents start looking for warm, cozy places to call home. That often means moving in with you.
If you’ve discovered evidence of mice in your home, you’ve got to evict them as quickly as possible for your safety, health, and sanity.
Mice can damage insulation, pipes, and electrical wiring and can even compromise your home’s structural integrity. They contaminate food and surfaces with their droppings and urine. And they make you want to scream because they spread bacteria and disease.
So if you want to take back the season and make it the most wonderful time of the year, it’s time to implement these seven rodent control measures and get rid of the pests for good:
1) Rodent-Proof Your Home
Mice sneak into your home through cracks, loose weather stripping, and utility entry points.
Figuring out how mice are getting into your home is the first step toward keeping them out once and for all. Arm yourself with some steel wool and caulk and take a walk around the outside of your home. Seal any crack, hole, or opening that is the size of a dime or larger.
2) Track the Mouse
To catch a mouse, you have to think like a mouse—or at least know where the mouse lives, travels, and likes to explore.
Mice don’t travel far from food and nesting areas. Look around your home for droppings or rubbings along baseboards and walls to figure out where the mice are most likely to be. Once you determine where the mice are likely living and which routes they’re taking to find food, you’ll be ready to start trying to trap them.
3) Choose the Right Trap
Now it’s time to choose the tools you will use to trap the mouse. You have a lot of options when it comes to catching the mouse. You can use standard snap traps, sticky traps, bait stations, poison, electric traps, or a variety of other “better” mousetraps.
Which one is right for you depends on your feelings about killing mice, trapping them and setting them free, and minimizing mouse pain and suffering.
Whichever mousetrap you choose, one thing is certain: Proper placement is critical.
4) Properly Place Your Traps
Randomly placing traps does not work, but placing traps in areas of your home where mice are nesting or traveling does.
Place snap traps perpendicular to the wall, with their triggers facing the baseboards, so the mice run directly into the bait as they scurry along walls. If you’re using bait stations, place the entryways so they are along the baseboards. Sticky traps can be placed anywhere you’re certain mice are traveling.
5) Catch and Repeat
You have more than one mouse. Even though every homeowner wants to believe there is only one mouse, rodent management pros know there’s almost always another.
That’s why you need to catch the first one and then repeat the process. Track, place traps, catch, and continue the process until you no longer see any signs of mice.
6) Keep It Clean
Keeping your home clean won’t get rid of mice, but poor sanitation will certainly attract mice. It’s that simple: Keep it clean.
7) Call a Rodent Control Professional
If you’ve tried these tips and still have mice, it’s time to call a rodent control and pest management specialist. The experts at Bain Pest Control Service have been helping homeowners deal with mice since 1952. Contact them today to start getting rid of pests for good as early as tomorrow.