Finding mice in your home is never a good sign. Now certainly, an infestation is a bit different than simply having a few rodents hiding in your walls. Mice are known to be breeding machines since they reproduce each year. However, as can be seen, just a handful of mice can become an army of disease-carrying vermin very soon. Following, we’ll explore a few signs of infestation to help you get an idea of what to look for, what to avoid, and how to fight back.
1. Holes
Where mice are going to enter is generally a part of your structure adjacent to some vulnerable area. If you had hail knock a hole in the wall near a skylight, mice might come in through that hole, chew up the wall, and come out in the corner of a basement room. Stick some steel wool in there, that’ll force the rodents elsewhere.
Look for entryways from mice in areas that aren’t highly trafficked. They’re generally going to be low to the ground, but you can find them in the rafters as well. Your walls are highways to mice, so they generally hang out hidden behind the sheetrock. Still, all the food’s outside of those walls, so they’ve got to come out. They’re often going to have holes near a food source.
2. Mouse Feces
Mice are mammals, they have similar digestive systems. Accordingly, they’ll leave the evidence of their engorgement in little mouse excreta that may look like a chocolate chip. Usually, they’re about that size, often smaller. When you see mouse feces, that means there are mice. Generally, these will be near where the mice nest. If you see mouse turds under a sink, the mice are near.
3. Urine Trail
Mice and rats dribble urine behind them as they travel. If you’ve got UV light available, you can find a mouse trail and track it through the house. If you turn on that black light and see all kinds of dribble light up all over the place, you know you’ve got a serious problem.
4. Rustling, Squeaking, And The Occasional Boot Mouse
When they travel at night, you’ll hear their little paws scrambling through the walls. And mice do make squeaking noises that are sometimes discernible. A dead giveaway that you’ve got too many mice in your home is sticking your foot into a boot and crunching one accidentally. This happens more often than you might expect in northern winter latitudes.
Time To Get A Cat, An Exterminator, Or Both
Hopefully, you can identify a mouse infestation before you find their excreta, urine trails, or step on one. Here’s another helpful article on how to get rid of mice, Once you know you’re dealing with an infestation, you want to handle it as quick as possible to prevent massive breeding. Get a cat. Clog up holes with steel wool. Set mouse traps with poison, call an exterminator.
One thing that can’t be ignored: if you’ve got mice, and you don’t do anything about it, that problem won’t go away. A mouse needs crumbs to survive. Your garbage is a buffet. Quite a few can live off your scraps before you notice them. Stop the mouse infestation before it starts by knowing what to look for, how to get rid of the rodents, and when to call an exterminator.