How To Get Rid Of Mice From Your Home, According To An Expert

Despite our legendary Southern hospitality, there’s one houseguest that’s never welcome: mice! These rodents can infest all aspects of a home, including the shed, garage, attic, or even lawnmowers, automobiles, and barbecue grills. They make no distinction about where they’ll set up, as long as it’s cozy, warm, and dry.

Mice contaminate food, chew up everything in sight, and spread illnesses through their urine, saliva, and droppings, says Sheldon Owen, a wildlife extension specialist at West Virginia University. Mice also are incredibly proficient at reproducing: Gestation takes just a few weeks, with six to 12 pups per litter and up to eight litters per year. Babies are mature enough to have their own babies in six to 10 weeks. (You do the math! ) Under the right conditions in your home, a few rodents can become a lot of rodents in a relatively short time, says Owen.

Here's everything you need to know about mice in your home, how to get rid of mice, how to keep mice out, and more.

Why Do Mice Come Inside Our Houses?

While mice predominantly live outside, a person's house can be very appealing, especially if it is messy. They may come inside to get better access to food, especially if you aren't wont to vacuum up food crumbs. They also may come inside to find better shelter from predators like snakes or from the elements and cold temperatures.

Why Are Mice Bad Inside Your Home?

Once they get inside your home, mice can cause a lot of damage. They will eat your food, bite holes into your clothes, and gnaw on your insulation, drywall, and other building materials, which could cause a fire.

Mice also can make you sick. “They transmit diseases such as hantavirus and leptospirosis,” Owen says. “A buildup of their feces in attic insulation, for example, may lead to illnesses such as histoplasmosis. Or they may be carrying Lyme disease-infected ticks, which can then bite you or your pets.”

Mouse Types

The house mouse (Mus musculus) is the most common rodent species that will take up residence indoors in the South, says Owen. Other types that may come indoors include:

• Black, or roof rat (Rattus rattus) and Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus), which typically are found in more urban settings.
• White-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) and deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus), which are found in more rural settings because their natural habitats are forests and fields. Deer mice are the most common spreader of hantavirus.
  

How To Keep Mice Out Of Your House

“As much as possible, try to keep rodents out in the first place by limiting access and reducing potential attractants,” says Owen. A few steps you can take to make your home less welcoming include:

Mind The Gaps

Keeping any type of rodent out starts with inspecting your home, garage, and shed. Look for easy access points. Mice are small (5 to 7 inches long) and can squeeze through openings about ¼-inch in width. Seal gaps and holes around windows, doors, fireplaces, pipes, dryer vents, and floor drains; use copper wool to plug large holes because it’s harder for them to chew through than steel wool. Avoid using screens, wood, or rubber, which they can gnaw. You should also make sure door sweeps and weather stripping are intact.

Keep Things Away From The House

Mice and rats are good climbers and jumpers, so trim back vegetation and shrubs so they’re not touching your house and providing shelter and easy access into your home. The same goes with stacks of firewood. Additionally, you want to hang bird feeders, which mice may try to eat from, away from the house

Keep Things Clean

Mice like to nibble on things like grains, cereals, nuts, and fruits, but they'll eat pretty much anything. Seal dry goods, such as pet food and birdseed, in airtight containers in the pantry or garage so mice can't get into them. You should also reduce indoor and outdoor clutter, including brush piles and cardboard boxes, which can camouflage rodent activity.

How To Identify Signs Of Mice Infestation

Mice and rats are nocturnal, so you may not necessarily witness them running across your kitchen floor—though that occasionally does happen! But there are a few other telltale signs they’re present, says Owen:

• Droppings that resemble brownish or black grains of rice, especially in drawers, cabinets, under sinks, and in other areas not in plain view.
• Chewed-up bits of insulation, paper, foam, and other materials, which are used to line a nest.
• Dirty smudges along walls and other surfaces, indicating a heavily-used pathway or entry point.
• Nests, gnawed wires, or droppings in grills and unused cars and outdoor machinery, such as lawnmowers in the garage or shed.

Which Mouse Trapping Method Is Best?

Besides sealing entryways and practicing good sanitation in and around the house, you’ll also need to exterminate these freeloading visitors. There are several methods to get rid of mice, besides adopting a cat or employing Little Bunny Foo Foo to bop them on the head, of course.

The Best Method

While some won't like it, “the most effective method is a simple snap trap,” says Owen. “It’s quick, humane, efficient, and inexpensive.” Small traps work for mice. Bait the trap with peanut butter, and use a small amount so the rodent has to work to remove it. You also can set out baited traps without setting the snap to allow the rodent to become comfortable with it before setting the snap, says Owen.

Should You Use Live Traps?

Live-catch traps are not recommended for a number of reasons. “Because what do you do once you catch it? You can’t release it outdoors or it will come back into your home, and it’s not legal in most states to relocate an animal on private or government property,” says Owen.

Don't Use Glue Traps

Some people like glue traps, which have a sticky substance the animal gets mired in because they don't kill the mouse. However, these are not preferred because they're not humane, and they may bring you in contact with a live animal, says Owen. And then what? Additionally, this type of trap, as well as the live trap, can scare mice into urinating, which can cause disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What About Poison Baits?

As for toxicants, or poison baits, they can be effective, but any animal—including cats and dogs—can get into them and be negatively impacted, says Owen. There’s also the fact that the rodent will eat the toxicant and then go away to die inside your walls, which leaves you with a terrible odor for some time. Or if the rodent doesn’t eat enough of the poison and just gets sick, it will become bait-shy and avoid the bait after that.

Do Repellants Work?

No matter what you’ve read, repellants such as essential oils, cinnamon, putrescent eggs, blood meal, predator urine, and capsaicin (the chemical compound that makes peppers spicy) don’t work well to keep rodents away. “There’s been a lot of research recently, but most of these products have low or no effectiveness,” says Owen.

Sonic and electromagnetic devices also don’t work. “The marketing is outpacing the research,” says Owen. “The science doesn’t support these claims. You’ve got to evaluate what you have to lose. A $30 bottle of repellant with iffy results or a $1 trap?”

Where To Set Up A Mouse Trap

Mice are inquisitive and will investigate anything new, says Owen. But there are specific pointers for ensuring your trap catches the intruder. First, mice prefer to travel up against walls and linear edges. Set your trap perpendicular to the wall with the trigger end against the vertical surface. In tight spaces, you can set two traps parallel to the wall, facing either direction.

When To Call The Exterminators

This typically is a DIY project. However, if you don’t want to handle this yourself or if you suspect you have a serious infestation, hire a professional pest control company, Owen says. Besides extermination, these companies also may be able to assist with locating and sealing entry points or making other recommendations for exclusion.

How To Clean Up After Rodents

With trapping, once you have a successful catch, wear disposable gloves, and pick up the entire thing, and tie it up in a plastic bag. Place the whole thing in the regular trash, and wash your hands. Keep setting traps until you no longer see signs of mice, says Owen. However, you should clean the traps between uses if you plan to reuse them.

After you’ve gotten your invasion under control, it’s time to clean up the mice's mess. Wear disposable gloves, and spray down urine and droppings with a bleach solution (1.5 cups of household bleach in 1 gallon of water) or a general-purpose household disinfectant (make sure it says “disinfectant” on the label).

Soak the area well, let it sit for five minutes, then clean up droppings with paper towels, and dispose. Clean the surface again with disinfectant, and wash your hands. You also can spray down the dead rodent or its nesting materials with disinfectant before disposing of them.