Getting to the root of your mouse problem

Do you find yourself involved in a full-blown war with rats or mice? We can sympathize. Rats and mice can be a real challenge to fight, not to mention a major headache.

Finding an effective mouse control method can be very difficult and frustrating. You are probably in a situation where you think you have tried everything in vain. Hopefully, the following tips will help you get to the root of your mouse and rat problem.

Effective mouse control

When home or business owners notice evidence of mice or rats, a common reaction is to go to the local hardware or home improvement store to pick up some traps. While traps can definitely help with your mouse problem (we certainly use them), we recommend that you start at the root of your problem.

Effective mouse control begins with rodent protection in your home. Here are some ways you can help manage your mouse or rodent problem in general.

1. “Access Denied” – If you have a problem with mice inside your home or business, you have to wonder how they got there in the first place. Remember, rodents do not breed spontaneously, magically appearing in your attic with your entire family. They come from the outside! A first step to effective mouse control should always be to deny its access through each and every entry point to your property. Some common ways they enter your home or business are through:

  • Holes in your foundation / attic vents
  • Holes or gaps in your crawl space cover
  • Cracks (if they are large enough) in your foundation or property in general (especially under your eyes)
  • Dryer Vents – Remember, they have teeth and can chew through vents!

If you block your input source, you will no longer be able to enter or leave your home / business.

2. Starve them, that’s right! Think about it: what are rats and mice always looking for? Meal. If you make access difficult, they won’t survive too long. Once you’ve stopped them from leaving (since you’ve followed step 1 above!), They’ll be forced to go find food. This means that it cannot help them in any way (well, not exactly. I’ll explain that below). Keep in mind:

  • Pet food: don’t leave any running. Feed your pet enough to finish everything. When your cat got fed up and passed out during her nap and left food on her plate, guess who’s likely to reap the benefits? You have it: your rat or mouse ‘friend’.
  • Pantry items: holes in cereal boxes / potato chip bags / etc? Store them in plastic containers! This will prevent mice from sniffing your odors, and the plastic is much harder to chew.
  • Food On The Counter – Simply put, don’t leave anything where rodents can easily reach you.

3. Bait station, trap or both. Now that they are trapped on the outside or even inside, it is essential to eradicate them using a trap or poison. We recommend placing traps in your attic, pantry, bathroom, basement, under your house, etc. We also highly recommend using an outside bait station. While it is common to see bait stations in the ground at the base of a house or building, we prefer to place our bait stations where rats or mice actually live or frequent: trees, fences, or shrubs.

Now that you’ve starved your rodents and denied them access to your property, they are more likely to be attracted to the bait you’ve placed in the mousetrap or the scent of the bait in your bait station. Either way, they go for the food and get trapped, or they ingest the poison and share it with the rest of their group.

At Innovative Pest Management, we have been practicing pest control in Beverly Hills for over 30 years. If you reside in the West Los Angeles area, we will be more than happy to help you get to the root of your mouse problem. We can even ship one of our proprietary Dub’l Trub’l rat or mouse traps to your home or business. Call us today at (310) 322-1999 to see how we can help, or visit our website at the link above.

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