Mice are some of the most adaptable creatures on the planet. They are willing to do just about anything at all to find a food source and a place to nest in the winter and they rarely try to make a natural nest. They prefer human homes to live in during the cold months and they don’t seem to mind that they are very much unwanted guests. While it does not have to be winter for a mouse family to take up in your home or yard it is far more likely in the winter. So it is important to prepare for such things and make sure your family is safe from the danger of a mouse infestation in the beloved family bbq.
Mice are very fond of the smell of old food. They are attracted to it, for more than just consumption, but also for the sense of being near food which is something mice like. They love the scent of food and will even sleep near it. This is why a bbq is the perfect place for a mouse nest. Now, most people use their bbq in the summer months and even in the spring if it’s warm enough. But it tends to get covered in the winter and just sort of hangs out in the backyard, completely alone. It’s a target and the mice want to get in. They will crawl up the legs or jump from the deck fence onto the bbq and either crawl under the bbq cover or chew straight through it if they are cold and desperate. They enter the bbq through a side opening for heat ventilation and then begin building a nest out of whatever they can find on your property.
You can prevent this from happening, however. You simply have to thoroughly clean your bbq after each use, burn off remaining food by leaving it on after you finish cooking, for another ten or twenty minutes or so. Cover it with a strong zipped up cover, make sure its nice and tight. Make sure your yard is clear of food sources and cover your gardens in steel mesh buried at least a foot into the ground in an L shape to prevent burrowing animals. Don’t keep old newspaper and cardboard, it attracts mice and makes sure all your vents are intact or blocked.
If cleaning does not get rid of them you will have to bring out the big guns. You can set up snap traps in the barbecue and you can use poison, both of these options will make the bbq unusable due to dead mice but it can be cleaned with bleach or something stronger and it will be safe to use once again. If you have pets on your property and you want to use domestic grade rodenticide poison you must purchase a tamper-proof bait station to house them. These can be bought from Amazon or any local hardware store and are easy and intuitive to operate. They tend to have a pole to hold the rodenticide in place, so mice cannot drag out whole large pieces. Be sure to put the rodenticide on these poles and not just splayed on the ground or you will start finding dead birds and squirrels on your property.
There are also ways to make your yard harder for them to navigate. Try cutting your grass buzz cut short and then removing any gardens or bushes up against the house. Mice use tall grass and flowers and bushes to hide while they chew an entryway into the house. Removing this makes it much harder to enter. Remember that snap traps can only do so much. Removing what they want and then replacing that food access with rodenticide bait will offer much more success and kill off the infestation much faster.
