How Do Mice Keep Getting Into My Hot Springs Home?

How To Identify House Mice

House mice can fit through holes as small as a dime and cracks as wide as a pencil. That’s an extremely small hole for an animal to fit through and infiltrate your home. If you think you’re seeing a rodent but aren’t sure what it is, these are the characteristics of the common house mouse:

• Dusty gray fur with a cream-colored belly
• Small, round bodies about 3 ¾ inches long
• Tails are about as long or longer than their bodies

House mice will consume nearly any human food, but prefer grain-based products like cereal. They usually inhabit a range of about five square feet, but as social creatures, they have complex social networks that may number into the dozens of members. Mice often create nests out of insulation, paper, and fabrics and may cause damage to wood and electrical wires.

Not only do house mice pose a safety threat through damaged wires that can short or cause a fire, but they can also risk the health of household members who come in contact with their feces or even dried urine. Mice can spread diseases like salmonella and rat-bite fever and worsen asthma in children with their urine droplets. Touching a mouse corpse is an especially risky interaction that may jeopardize your health.

Seven House Mouse Prevention Tips

As previously mentioned, house mice can fit through tiny holes. The most effective means of preventing house mice involves proper home maintenance and sanitization, as food availability is one of the biggest draws for rodents. Make your home impregnable with these tips:

1. Seal any openings in the foundation or exterior of the home with silicon-based caulk.
2. Repair leaking pipes and other causes of standing water around the home.
3. Keep outdoor trash sealed tightly and away from the home, and keep indoor trash sealed and regularly taken out. Sanitize trash receptacles at least once a week.
4. Keep your house clutter-free. If storage boxes are a must, then use sealable plastic containers, not cardboard.
5. Vacuum regularly and sanitize surfaces. Don’t leave spills or food sitting out.
6. Keep stored food in glass or metal containers.
7. Move woodpiles and other debris or lawn decorations at least twenty feet away from the home, and inspect anything outdoors thoroughly before bringing it inside.

While keeping a tidy home and lawn can go a long way toward pest prevention, mice are smart and stubborn animals that don’t respond well to simple traps. To eliminate an entire infestation and finally gain back your peace of mind, let the rodent control professionals take care of the mice.

You Can Rely On Advanced Pest Control

Not only are DIY methods a health and safety risk, but they’re also often ineffective. Not only do mice easily learn from and avoid traps to render them useless almost immediately, but poison traps are dangerous to you and your pets. They may even draw other pests inside if mice corpses accumulate in hard-to-reach places.

Let Advanced Pest Control take out the guesswork and keep you safe. Call Advanced Pest Control today to effectively eliminate the mice in your Hot Springs home.

• tags:   house mouse identification , mouse control , mouse prevention