How to get rid of mice
I’ve never had an intense aversion to mice. Growing up, my family always had a cat (or two) and I never recall there being mice in the house. We did, though, have a five-foot-high firewood pile in the backyard that the field mice loved to nest in. The family cat spent hours out by that woodpile and would catch mice on a regular basis. I always wondered why the mice didn’t move but they never did. It may have had something to do with my mom’s bird feeders that supplied them with free food and water. My mom is one of those wonderful people who truly cares about all living creatures and wants to take care of them all (often, much to my dad’s chagrin).
Mice seek warm, cozy places near easily obtainable food and water sources (like my parent’s woodpile and my mom’s bird feeder). Especially during the winter months, they’ll find their way into your home looking for a place to build a nest out of things like shredded paper and fabric. They are tiny and can squeeze through holes as small as a dime. They’ll eat almost anything they can find. Once moved in, they can be difficult to evict – like a bad tenant or one of those disturbing Airbnb guests who refuse to vacate.
Besides being a bit destructive in their quest for food, mice can be disease carriers. And mouse waste can aggravate allergies and asthma. And the little critters have the potential to spread diseases like leptospirosis (a rather rare bacterial disease that can lead to kidney and liver damage), Lassa fever (an acute viral hemorrhagic illness transmitted by the African rat, and Hantavirus (a family of viruses spread via rodents) – though none of these are overly common. When cleaning up after mice make sure to wear rubber or latex gloves and wash surfaces thoroughly. Mice are not the tidiest houseguests, leaving droppings and debris from breaking into your food containers around.
How can you be sure you have mice and not rats? The most obvious way is what size droppings they leave behind. Mice droppings are small (about a ¼ of an inch), brown, and pellet shaped. Rats tend to be larger than mice. If you’ve ever taken the subway in New York City, you’ve very likely seen a rat and know firsthand that it can be quite large.
Rats are neophobic, meaning they have an intense fear of new and unfamiliar things. This means they will be suspicious of traps and other abrupt changes to their environment. Rats wander more than mice and do not nest in large numbers. Mice tend to stay close to home and are much more curious than rats, making them easier to trap.
So how do you get rid of mice once they’ve taken up residence? There are a few approaches to take but the first step is to determine how they got there in the first place.
Figure out where mice are entering your home and seal that entry point (or points) with metal mesh. Mice's teeth can’t chew through metal (thankfully). You can purchase stainless steel mesh by the roll if you have many openings to cover. Buy a pair of tin snips to cut the mesh to size.
Mice and other rodents look for toasty spaces and will gravitate into a hole or crack in your foundation because they can sense warmer air flowing from it. Look for openings in your foundation, where pipes enter your basement (if you have one), or where walls meet as well as around chimneys and vents.
As well as installing a mesh screen clocker, you can also stuff steel wool into holes and around pipes as mice are unable to gnaw through it.
After you have any entry points sealed up, determine what is calling the mice to your yard anyway. Are you inadvertently providing them with easy access to food and water and a great place to shelter? If so, start changing the environment to discourage them from staying or moving in. As evidenced by my mother, bird and squirrel feeders attract mice even with a cat in residence.
Once you’ve sealed your house and eliminated the ways for mice to come inside, you’ll need to decide how you want to deal with the ones already there. There are different types of mouse traps available. Which you use depends a lot on personal preference and what you’re comfortable with.
Both the Humane Society and the CDC advise against the use of glue trays, traps, or boards. When stuck in these traps, mice suffer a slow death by starvation, making them an unnecessarily cruel and inhumane pest control method.
Most people are familiar with these kinds of traps. To use, add bait, such as peanut butter, then engage the spring trap. When an unsuspecting mouse settles in to eat the peanut butter, it triggers the trap which snaps closed with fatal results for the mouse.
Mice are lured inside these traps by food. Once inside, the trap delivers an electric shock which kills the rodent immediately. The traps are equipped with a removable chamber in which you place the bait. The chamber also allows for disposal without touching or handling the remains.
Many professional exterminator companies use poison bait stations which are small, lockable containers within which you place a piece of poison bait. The mouse consumes the bait, then dies from the poison in another location.
The downside of this type of trap is that a mouse could expire somewhere in the walls of your house making it difficult or impossible to locate the corpse. Small rodent corpses will smell for a couple of weeks as well as attract flies. The poison is also a risk to pets, wildlife, and children.
Live mouse traps allow you to capture and (attempt) to relocate your unwanted mice tenants. Use bait to lure the mice inside, then transport the mouse inside the trap to a location somewhere at least two miles from your house. The farther you take them, the less chance you’ll have that they’ll make their way back. PETA recommends checking live traps as often as every hour as rodents can die from stress-induced disorders or dehydration within a few hours.
Mice (and rats) are considered to be smart animals. Just as dogs and cats do, they are able to recognize their names if given one and will respond when called. Both are also social species who become attached to one another and enjoy playing and living together. While it's perfectly understandable to not want them in your home, consider live traps if you want to remove them as humanely as possible.
Cats, hawks, and owls are natural predators of rodents. While indoor cats may not be especially effective at killing mice (they have no need to consume them for food), their scent can deter rodents from setting up inside your house. Indoor/outdoor cats and barn cats are much more adept at actually catching mice and will often eat them. The only problem is that they do not always consume them entirely so you could come across some unsavory-looking leftovers.
If you want to attract owls to your barn, consider a nesting box. Owls consume around four mice per day and are very useful on an agricultural farm.
Soaking rags or cotton balls in ammonia and leaving them where you see rodent activity will discourage mice from staying as they do not like the smell (though it's likely your cat or dog will not be too happy with the scent either). A strobe light, ultrasonic repeller, or even a radio playing near an entry point will also help drive them away.
Preventing rodents in the first place is decidedly easier than getting rid of them, especially if, like me, you’re not a fan of traps.
Inside your home, keep all food in airtight containers of metal or plastic. I love these bright red stainless-steel canisters from Le’raze. They’re also available in silver/grey.
I use these thick plastic airtight containers from Chef’s Path to store crackers, cereal, oatmeal, and the like. I never leave anything hanging around in its cardboard box.
Don’t leave produce out on your counters or pet food out overnight and wash the dishes before going to bed if possible.
Outdoors, keep bushes around your house trimmed so they don’t offer sheltered places for mice to congregate. Secure the lids of any outdoor garbage cans and make sure to clean up your outdoor grill if you have one.
Or, of course, you can take my mother’s approach and build mice-friendly log villages next to a daily, free buffet station of seeds and bread. This way, the mice have everything they need out in the yard and won’t have the inclination to move into your house.