One of the most common questions exterminators hear in the winter months is “How do I get rid of mice?” Mice invade homes during the winter months to find a warm place to live and raise their young. There are three main things mice always do. They are always eating. They are always pooping and they are always breeding! This is bad news if it is an infestation. They can often go unnoticed in a home until droppings appear on kitchen cabinets or behind the bed.
There are several key things to answer the question of how do I get rid of mice. Mouse control begins with sealing the areas where they are exiting the house. The hardest area to stop them is in your garage. Garage doors make it easy for mice to get into your home because the rubber on the bottom of the door is easy to slide off if you are a mouse. Mice have collapsible skeletons and only need a space the size of 6mm to enter a building. Unless you’re willing to buy a new garage door (which costs several thousand dollars), you should keep baits and traps on both sides of the garage door at all times to stop mice in their tracks.
If you have a crawl space, you should check the foundation vents around your house. If you’ve had the same foundation vents in your home for 40 years, it may be time to replace them. If any of the dock vents screens are cracked, even slightly, mice can move in and out of your crawl space. You can even find droppings around the vent. Until you replace the foundation vent, you should put copper mesh or some other material into the holes in the foundation vents to ensure that they do not continue to enter the house through the vents. Check the pipes that pass through external walls. These are areas where mice can run into a house. You can use any hard-set filler to seal in any signs of a mouse infestation.
Sealing off all the vulnerable external areas of your home goes a long way in solving the problem of how to get rid of mice.
Take bait traps and place them in crawl space, garage, and attic. If you have a basement, and especially an unfinished basement, you can also place the mouse traps in the basement. Using bait is the most effective way to eliminate a mouse infestation.
Exterminators also use snap traps. If you ask the exterminator how I get rid of mice, they will probably tell you to use traps and baits as well. Instant traps will help you identify that you have mice if you are not sure what is going on. You can use peanut butter on snap traps to attract mice to snap traps.
How do I get rid of mice? I use bait most of the time. I can use a trap or two, but the bait will clear an infestation in a few weeks if they are set correctly. Make sure snap traps and bait are along the walls where mice often travel.
