One mouse is a very complicated situation. If you have never before in your entire time living in this house, seen a mouse then yes, one mouse may mean one mouse. That is if it is a field mouse or deer mouse. If it is a house mouse then it’s a blatant sign there are more. House mice often enter a home because they are pregnant. They need a safe place to give birth and after thousands of years living with humans, they know our homes are safe and that they can easily avoid humans. They will quickly reach maturity and breed more, this will continue for as long as they manage to live in your walls and as they grow and breed they will move up the floors of the house, spreading throughout the home like cancer. They will invade floor after floor until they are in the attic and at that point, you will be in real trouble. The cause of a mouse infestation is the presence of food on the property. If you have a bird feeder then you need to take it down, if you eat outside then you are not cleaning up enough, if you feed your pet outside, stop immediately. These pests are omnivorous and will eat anything they can get their hands on. They are also more likely to invade a house with uncut grass and flower beds or bushes near the home’s walls. They can use tall grass and flower beds to hide while they are made or find an opening into your home. However, the most common way mice enter your home is by an open back door.
How can you handle this infestation? How can you get rid of it? There are many things you can do, if you do them all then there will be no reason for the mice to live on the property at all and they may go so far as to vacate on their own. Wouldn’t that be a sight? But the reality is that the mice have already adapted to your home, permanently, if you removed them humanely they would die before they got off your property, they are essentially pets now and cannot survive outside. The best way to deal with them then is to remove their access to food and to replace it with domestic grade rodenticide poison in bait stations you can buy from home hardware. The bait stations will protect other animals from eating the poison, especially any pets in the home. The mice will have nothing else to eat and will be forced to eat the poison.
Start by sealing all of the food inside the kitchen in hard plastic containers that will make it difficult for mice to chew through. If you want to take it a step further store all food in glass that even a rat cannot chew through. Make sure to clean everything thoroughly, the dishes and cutlery and all the pots and pans used straight after cooking. Make sure to remove any food from the outside. Scrub your BBQ clean after every use and remove any animal feeders on the property. You will then want to cut your lawn very short and remove and wall adjoining flower beds or bushes. This can have a dramatic effect in reducing rodent presence on your property. Get rid of all detritus that could allow a rodent to hide and store your garbage in tightly sealed containers in your garage, make sure the door closes tightly to the ground. This will do more to prevent mice than all the treatments in the world.
