Does anyone know anything about pest control?

[TrueMetis]

So the place I'm living in has mice, I've been working on dealing with that sealing holes and placing traps. I though I had it under control until today. Today I found a mouse poking its head out of the wall after chewing through the damn drywall. So clearly the problem is worse than I thought. Anyone have any experience or knowledge on this subject, or am I gonna have to bite the bullet and hire a professional?

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, TrueMetis said:

So the place I'm living in has mice, I've been working on dealing with that sealing holes and placing traps. I though I had it under control until today. Today I found a mouse poking its head out of the wall after chewing through the damn drywall. So clearly the problem is worse than I thought. Anyone have any experience or knowledge on this subject, or am I gonna have to bite the bullet and hire a professional?

Hire a professional. They may be nesting deep in the walls where you cant get to them.

[Spockydog]

Get the professionals in. There is nothing worse than a house stinking of mouse piss.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Professionals and a cat.  Also buy rat sorb.  You will have mice die in your walls by the end of this and it smells.

[Fragile Bird]

Mice breed prolifically, half a dozen times a year, and can have a dozen babies each time if the food supply is good. Kinda like rabbits.

And, um, it’s spring.

If you are seeing evidence of lots of mice versus one or two, I’d have to agree, get a pro. If they are chewing through your drywall they are gathering nesting material and looking for food. The family must be fed!
 

Otherwise, traps of every kind, and poison. Some traps are really creepy and cruel, like glue traps. A quick snap is more humane and you can dispose of the body quickly. Rat/mouse poison is basically blood thinner, the critters eat it and bleed to death internally. Hence they go back into their nest behind the wall and die and molder. The pro will use the same techniques, let him deal with it!

[Cas Stark]

They make humane traps now that trap them alive.  

You need to board up whatever areas they are coming in from and/or get a cat.  A lot of our neighbors have mice.  We have cats and have none.

[Xray the Enforcer]

just friendly FYI to be careful what kind of traps you use. Do not use anticoagulent rodenticide because it kills many many birds of prey. And do not use glue traps because birds get stuck in them all the time. my friend works for a bird rehabber and they regularly get owls, hawks, and smaller birds in who needlessly suffer and die due to these two rodent-control methods. 

[Fury Resurrected]

22 minutes ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

just friendly FYI to be careful what kind of traps you use. Do not use anticoagulent rodenticide because it kills many many birds of prey. And do not use glue traps because birds get stuck in them all the time. my friend works for a bird rehabber and they regularly get owls, hawks, and smaller birds in who needlessly suffer and die due to these two rodent-control methods. 

They kill cats as well for the same reasons. My advice would be to hire a specifically environmentally friendly professional and as stated in the thread before- get a cat. The 2021 models are coming out about now so you will have a wide selection of adorable fluffy murder machines. My building has four units, which I did not know had mice at all until an exterminator showed up because there was no trace in mine (verified incredulously by the exterminator) and my unit is the only one that has cats. Usually, mice will come back even if they get all of them. They’re just too good at getting in once they’ve done it before and the spaces they can get in are so so small. But they can smell a cat and will avoid them if they can so even a cat that makes no attempt to hunt can be a good deterrent.

[DanteGabriel]

36 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

But they can smell a cat and will avoid them if they can so even a cat that makes no attempt to hunt can be a good deterrent.

Maybe the solution is to strategically sprinkle cat pee around the places they come in? In my neck of the woods people commonly recommend fox pee to discourage rabbits in the yard.

[ljkeane]

I don't know how accurate this is but I remember seeing somewhere that having a cat is a good way to avoid getting a rodent infestation in the first place, because they will avoid places they can smell cats, but once the mice/rats have already come in and found food they won't stop just because they smell a cat. Whether your cat will hunt down and exterminate the rodents probably depends on the cat's temperament (my current cat definitely wouldn't) and whether they're in places the cat can't get to anyway.

ETA: When we got an exterminator into my work to get rid of some mice he did say the glue traps were the most effective but they are quite unpleasant. There probably wasn't any danger to any other animals since they were all inside an office.

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, Xray the Enforcer said:

just friendly FYI to be careful what kind of traps you use. Do not use anticoagulent rodenticide because it kills many many birds of prey. And do not use glue traps because birds get stuck in them all the time. my friend works for a bird rehabber and they regularly get owls, hawks, and smaller birds in who needlessly suffer and die due to these two rodent-control methods. 

I was thinking of inside the house, not scattering poison outside around the house, where other creatures would eat the mice and die. If they are in your house they probably have nested there and are not going out.

eta: having owned pets all my life, it's (rat poison) been a worry. We've been very careful even when spreading fertilizer.  Same with the glue traps, I would never use them because of what I suspect is a horrible way to die. The traditional traps seem the most humane. Live trapping mice for release outside your house seems like an exercise in futility. Releasing them in a local park would just get them to invade someone else's house. 

[lady narcissa]

Yes for getting a professional.

But in the meantime use the old fashioned mouse traps with the thinnest layer of peanut butter.  Mice are clever, if you put cheese on them they can just get the cheese without triggering the trap.  Same with a thicker layer of peanut butter, they can somehow get some of it off without triggering the snap.  But a very thin layer is enough to tempt them and get them. Put the trap on the center of a piece of newspaper so you don't have to touch the trap and mouse, you can just pick up the newspaper from the edges, when picking it up to dispose of it.

Also, if you do seal up any holes, pack the space behind with steel wool before sealing it up.

And do not have any open food anywhere or any food in cardboard or plastic packages - everything should be in metal or glass or Tupperware like containers that they can't chew through.  They can get into your cabinets so this goes for any food in your house except in your fridge/freezer.

[Fury Resurrected]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I was thinking of inside the house, not scattering poison outside around the house, where other creatures would eat the mice and die. If they are in your house they probably have nested there and are not going out.

eta: having owned pets all my life, it's (rat poison) been a worry. We've been very careful even when spreading fertilizer.  Same with the glue traps, I would never use them because of what I suspect is a horrible way to die. The traditional traps seem the most humane. Live trapping mice for release outside your house seems like an exercise in futility. Releasing them in a local park would just get them to invade someone else's house. 

Unfortunately inside mice do go outside and vice versa. An indoor cat at my dad’s died from eating a mouse that was poisoned inside a neighbor’s house. Mice travel A LOT

[CelticBrennus]

Having worked as an exterminator in a past career, I think the best home treatment method would be to use the cheap and simple snap traps.  While there are versions that trap mice alive, think about what you will do with them after you catch them.  Simply releasing them outside is not a highly viable solution.  Sticky traps are simply not very effective, and professionals tend not to use them, except to make a customer happy.  They are certainly not less cruel.  We would frequently see little tiny mice feet stuck to the boards, where the mouse chewed its own legs off, or a half eaten rat or mouse, where its buddies ate it alive when it got stuck.  

The key to successfully using traps is a combination of placement and bait, with placement as the more important factor.  Generally, when mice explore, they will run along walls or other areas where they are fairly sheltered.  Traps inside of cabinets, along baseboard, in the basement, behind the fridge or stove are good starts.  Also, monitor where you find droppings, as that will be an indicator of movement patterns.  Use dropping locations to help identify trap placement locations. One trick can be to set a trap along a baseboard, but make a cardboard shelter for it, so when the mice run, they see a shelter to run too, and run into the trap.  

As for bait, forget cheese or dairy based products.  Peanut butter is excellent, as is Nutella.  Small slices of Slim Jims can be useful too.  Dont forget that mice also need bedding material, and will take that too.  Rip the cotton off a q-tip and wrap that around the trigger.  

Buy 15-20 or more traps, set them and place them around the house.  Monitor where you catch mice, and reset them.  If you get nothing in an area, move the traps around after a couple days.  

Baits are good tools to control the population as well, although there could be a possibility of a bit of a smell.  However, mice are not terribly large, so the smell dissipates pretty fast, if you notice it at all.  

If you want to call a professional, I would generally suggest a local company rather than the Orkin or Terminix's of the world, given what I know about the industry.  

As a rule, there is virtually no element of common household pest control that a person cant do on their own with minimal research and over the counter supplies.  

Also, wear gloves when handling dead mice, and wear a mask when vacuuming or cleaning the droppings.  If possible, before vacuuming, use a spray bottle and spray some water over the droppings to cut down dust.  Lots of very unfriendly stuff can be found in droppings. 

If you want more help, feel free to message me. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

All of this is great advice.  We hired a local company when we did have a mouse infestation last May (despite our cats, but it is a 100 year old house...).  There were some holes that they plugged pretty efficiently, which is why we had a mouse die inside one of our walls and thus the ratsorb recommendation to mask the smell (it’s sort of magic).  The local company used snap traps.  No poison.  We have not had a problem since.  They come back a couple of times a year now for maintenance...

[TrueMetis]

9 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Professionals and a cat.  Also buy rat sorb.  You will have mice die in your walls by the end of this and it smells.

We actually have two cats, they've never been all that useful. Though part of the reason I thought it was handled was the one that did exhibit some stalking behaviour had stopped.

8 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Mice breed prolifically, half a dozen times a year, and can have a dozen babies each time if the food supply is good. Kinda like rabbits.

And, um, it’s spring.

If you are seeing evidence of lots of mice versus one or two, I’d have to agree, get a pro. If they are chewing through your drywall they are gathering nesting material and looking for food. The family must be fed!
 

Otherwise, traps of every kind, and poison. Some traps are really creepy and cruel, like glue traps. A quick snap is more humane and you can dispose of the body quickly. Rat/mouse poison is basically blood thinner, the critters eat it and bleed to death internally. Hence they go back into their nest behind the wall and die and molder. The pro will use the same techniques, let him deal with it!

Like I've only seen one or two, this one chewing through the wall was the first I've seen in months, I had set up traps in the areas I was able to identify droppings and got a handful (after altering my methods for the traps a couple times, little bastards managed to get the peanut butter more than once) then didn't get any and thought I had gotten it dealt with cause I had filled holes I knew they were coming through and saw no signs of droppings or anything other indications of mice that I could find.

Anyway thanks for the opinions folks, time to start looking at local pest control companies I think.

[Castellan]

Get a professional.

I have a cat that is an amazing hunter of rodents outside at night (well actually she's now retired from that hobby due to arthritis). We had ONE rat in the house a while ago and the amount of mess it made was disgusting. The cat actually brought it in but did not have a good enough grip and dropped it - within a second it had disappeared into the house. Then we realised it had ensconced itself behind the fridge. We'd see a momentary blur as it ran between the fridge and the stove sometimes at night. Anyway after a few weeks we caught it in a humane trap and released it away from houses. But we found it had got into the water drip tray at the back of the fridge and up the back of the oven and made a nest in the insulation and disconnected some wires. The amount of stinking faeces and pee in both places was incredible. We had to take the top off the stove, re-connect wires, replace some insulation, vacuum out faeces and then pick the rest our with wooden skewers, tweezers and other tools.

There is no real point to this other than if this is what one rat can do imagine a few of them. I think mice are not nearly as bad but nevertheless..

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

In the UK I believe the poison they use against rats dehydrates them, effectively mummifying them so the ones that die behind the walls don’t rot and stink the place down. Thats how it was done at a colleague’s flat he rents, where rets were getting in.