Discovering you have mice or rats living in your home is very unsettling. You need to decide how to best go about resolving this, quickly and safely. Situations involving mice and rats do not go away on their own and they will only get worse with every day that passes.
There are several species of rodents that live exclusively inside human dwellings. Man-made structures provide shelter, warmth and an absence of predators; animal populations have now actually evolved to take advantage of this. Because of how quickly they multiply, mice and rats can overrun a home oftentimes before you are even aware there is a problem. To learn what steps to take and how mouse or rat removal and prevention actually looks in real life, keep reading this article as we explain the entire process.
Inspection
Once you even suspect you are housing rodents it’s time to contact a local wildlife and pest control company to set up an onsite inspection. This will allow you to fully understand the scope of your mouse or rat problem and also give you an idea of the costs and expected timeline. Although the steps are similar for most jobs, your individual home will present unique circumstances and challenges, so it’s essential to get a professional wildlife technician to come and assess the situation.
Why Inspections Are So Valuable:
- Learn exactly what is going on and what needs to be done to fix it.
- Identify all problem areas and structural vulnerabilities as they pertain to mice and rats.
- Inspect for contamination: because mice and rat populations can grow to considerable numbers, their waste can accumulate rapidly. Attic, basement and garage inspections will tell you just how bad this situation is and what hazards your family may be exposed to.
Once you have all the facts, you are finally in a position to make an informed decision. Resolving a mouse or rat problem is not as simple as setting a few traps or spreading some poison. To get the job done safely and effectively, you need the training, expertise and the right equipment. A rodent prevention job takes a whole team of trained experts as every potential vulnerability from the roof to the soil must be assessed and made rodent proof.
How We Get Them Out
We don’t physically trap or poison the rodents. Those approaches will never completely resolve the issue or prevent more critters from coming into your home. The only way to guarantee that an animal isn’t going to get where you don’t want it to get is to put up a physical barrier preventing that animal from crossing. Where to put these barriers and how to build and maintain them is where the experience, training and expertise of your wildlife professional come into play. Poisons are only effective as a means of population control and their use can also create unforeseen and undesired consequences such as dead animals inside walls or ceilings or non-target species ingesting these poisons such as pets or birds of prey.
This brings us to the only guaranteed 100% effective way to permanently resolve your rodent issue. The previously mentioned barriers will prevent any rodents from gaining access, but how do you get the ones inside out? A trained professional will find the entry points being used by mice or rats (there can be several) and cover them with one-way doors. These contraptions allow the animals to push through a small spring-loaded gate to get outside which then snaps shut, locking the animal out.
How this works:
Secure all pre-identified entry areas as well as the vulnerable areas ie spots that may become entry points in the future. The key point to realize is that mice and rats do not stay inside your home forever. They do leave for food, water and to mate; this constant coming and going is what we as wildlife professionals count on as we use their natural instincts against them to lock them out, permanently.
Rodents store food and will cache it inside your walls and attic. They will try to get back inside to retrieve it. There simply is no quick fix or single adjustment that will eliminate a mouse or rat problem. The fact that there will be food stores inside your home also means that rodents can stay inside for extended periods vs for example a raccoon or skunk which will leave every day, weather permitting. We leave the doors on for up to 6 weeks in order to ensure that nothing gets trapped inside your house.
Timeline
The entire process takes between 4-6 weeks. The actual amount of time will vary slightly depending on the time of year as well as the scope of the issue. During the colder months, critters are more reluctant to vacate and in the warmer months, they are a little quicker in doing so.
Having said all this, the bulk of the population will leave in the first 2 weeks. We allow the extra time as there are always a few who take advantage of food supplies and stay a little longer. We want to make sure enough time has passed before we seal everything up for good.
It may be tempting to attempt some of this on your own to save a few dollars, however as you have just learned its a rather involved process best dealt with by your local wildlife and pest removal experts.