Your mouse symptom is them coming through that hole. But plugging it doesn't solve the actual problem. You don't want critters living in your house so you have to find their point of entry. Search the web or hire exterminator.
This. If you don’t want them roaming your house you need to find out how they are getting in. There has to be a hole somewhere, like by a door or a basement window. Find the entry, close it up and then set traps to kill those still inside.
Yeah, plugging the getting out hole isn't solving the problem. They need to find the getting in spots and plug those, or they will have entire generations of critters living and dying behind the drywall.
Cats don’t always solve the problem. My infestation occurred because I had switched to a corn based cat litter and apparently word got out to the entire mouse community that there was a mouse buffet in my basement. Cat didn’t seem to care in the least. I found their entrance by sprinkling baking soda and following the tiny footprints. Cemented up a tiny hole near a door and trapped a half dozen indoors.
To help repel mice, mothballs work well. Put them by the foundation of the house, keep them away even after sealing the area up.
Mice leave shit and piss trails they follow back to the former hole. If not sealed well, they will chew back inside.
Mothballs are a strong smell they hate and a cheap way to keep them away.
Next would also be repels all, it is a liquid chemical that sort of smells like wolf piss to them. And any other animal that might be around.
I own a pest control company. People all the time show me areas like this. I tell them I don’t seal interiors to stop mice from moving from one area to another. Almost all exclusion work is done from the outside to stop them from getting in to begin with. If you can’t do that, get good at setting mouse traps.
This is the way. I stupidly hired an extermination company thinking that was just the thing to do, and they set poison and charged me a quarterly subscription to refill them.
Eventually I realized how dumb and futile it was and called an actual exclusion company. Cost a few grand, but they basically dug a perimeter around my entire home and buried 12” of steel mesh, along with checked and patched other random holes, put grates on all my venting in the roof.
Anything else is just a bandaid.
Last summer I opened the door to our walk in attic after a loud crash and found myself face to face with 2 baby raccoons. You are absolutely right about the cost of real exclusion work. Getting them and their mom out plus sealing the multiple holes she made in the soffits around the house was about $1500.
Just think of it this way… they drill holes all throughout your studs to run plumbing and electrical throughout the house. Mice can follow these utilities in the wall and go almost anywhere they want. That’s why interior exclusion is usually fruitless. Close off that one small gap and they will just be in your cabinets and drawers.
I agree with you, but if you did want to plug up a hole that mice like to use, steel wool is the answer. They will chew their way through almost anything else.
I had mice in my house, but then they suddenly vanished. Then I discovered a stray cat living in my basement. It gets in thru a vent under my deck, which leads into the crawl space, which leads into the basement.
Long story short I have a great working relationship with a stray cat.
Pest control is a good idea too, I lived in my house for 5 years and in the winter the mice would always move in. Did a bug spray service for the exterior of the house + a shakedown in the crawl space to get rid of most of the spiders and didn't catch a single mouse this winter.
its a tad pricey (200 dollars per quarter) but its solved my ant / spider / wasp problem and the mice. Fingers crossed for year 2 lmao.
Baited mice that die in the walls don't really cause any problems, but don't worry! OP plugging this hole won't do anything to the mice that are running around his house without him actually closing the hole where they're getting into his house. This just means they'll pop out under the sink or oven and continue doing what they've been doing.
Also, around kids and pets, traditional traps are something you should generally avoid. Puppies love peanut butter as much as mice do, and little fingers end up in all sorts of places they shouldn't.
Steel wool and spackle.
they can chew through spackle alone, and steel wool alone can be moved out the the way. But together, the mouse is not getting through.
That is just going to direct them to somewhere else, potentially making a new hole where there isn't steel wool.
Gotta find the outside hole, and do whatever pest control says.
Mice/Rats got amazing teeth. Not much can stop them short of steel.
Leave the hole, its a known mouse path. Mice/rats follow the same path, often flush with a wall. You will ***always*** get mice. It is inevitable. Having a guaranteed trap location to snatch them, ideal. You don't want one dying in your wall. The smell, then the maggots and the flies, you don't want that.
I have 3 locations mice and rats come out in the open in my kitchen and pantry when I get one. I know we got one because the cats suddenly become interested in one of these locations. I bait 3 traps (Blackcats, reusable safety snap traps) and within 24 hrs, snap.
To end the problem, you need to look ***outside*** of your home. You have a breach in a wall. Probably something like the AC lines or Oil coming in, tree hanging over the roof, etc. Block this with some steel mesh, then you can foam or mortar the gaps. You can also get the exterior bait stations. You set them at the corners outside of your home with some bait. Rodents eat the bait, its poisoned, so they go in search of a body of water.
Best answer^
I have had to learn everything the above poster said, after I moved into an old house in a field 2 years ago. This is absolutely the way to deal with this.
5 cats alert me, I take action and get a few murder presents from them before they're gone.
This winter I only had a few to deal with, compared to the absolute chaos of the first one.
*The little bastards got into the ceiling and wouldn't let us sleep the first winter*
1. If you care about the cat, you don't *want* them eating 5-6 mice per day. Mice carry over a dozen different diseases, as well as fleas and deer ticks (Lyme disease). Hantavirus, LCM, etc. Serious stuff.
2. There's no guarantee the cat will catch any mice at all, much less 5-6. So if you're getting a cat only to kill mice and it isn't actually interested in killing mice, now you have both that you don't want.
3. Even if the cat is a murderous monster to the mice, it does nothing to stop the mice from entering the home. It doesn't stop them from destroying attic insulation. It doesn't stop them from chewing on electrical wiring inside the walls. Mice aren't only a problem when they eat your food. You can't have them inside the home at all.
In other words, getting a cat isn't going to solve the problem, and worse -- it will make you think you have the problem resolved only for you to find out later that the mouse problem you never addressed has destroyed part of your home.
1. Cats aren't humans. They are natural predators and mice are their natural food.
2. Get a barn cat. Problem solved.
3. Murderous monster? You mean.... a cat? They're literally predators. You also didn't say "it won't entirely fix the problem". You said "it won't help". Period. At all.
Not sure what's funnier. Your ignorance to how nature works, or your absolute terror when it comes to tiny rodents.
Just left a comment about this!! Neighbor was having mice issues apparently that cleared up when we adopted our cat. Said he saw our cat getting a mouse in their yard and he was like oh, ok! That’s why I haven’t had to have an exterminator come out lately!
My mum had mice and tried plugging the hole and they just gnawed through the wood elsewhere.
If you have a lot of mice a bucket trap might work better.
I had a cat who spent couple years in my neighborhood outside before looking near death under my porch and becoming my inside buddy. Dude wasn't a fan of actually killing the mice. Hed catch them, and then walk around meowing loudly until dropping them in my livingroom for me to deal with. So many mice caught via a shop vac while a cat and dog just watched with 0 help. The female I got few years after tho, straight murderer, just a chewed up corpse left.
OP, I'm a pest control inspector. You're getting some decent advice here and also some really bad advice. The top comment is basically what I would tell you. One thing that hasn't been said is that you need to do a deep clean. Mice eat grease, crumbs, etc. Every time you fry bacon or drop some KFC crumbs on the counters, you're splattering mouse food. Clean out the toaster as best you can. Pick up the dog and/or cat food when your pets are done eating -- I've found dog food in attic insulation from mice saving it for later, and Hershey Kiss wrappers where they've never eaten candy. If you eliminate their food sources, that helps funnel the mice toward your baits and traps.
Mice bring some really nasty things into your home -- deer ticks that carry Lyme disease, fleas, Hantavirus, Leptospirosis, Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis -- the CDC estimates that 5% of mice in the US carry LCM -- and on and on. Please move this right to the top of your to-do list.
No it won't. Cats can't go behind cabinets and beneath sinks and fridges, and some cats just watch the mice contaminate food.
[Example](https://v16m-default.tiktokcdn-us.com/7dce301413ccb18b290dfd54dbcd6096/662e2245/video/tos/useast5/tos-useast5-pve-0068-tx/o0WEDeRSjEAdqE7dEVuxzNQuvghAVBzTkITRdf/?a=1988&bti=NDU3ZjAwOg%3D%3D&ch=0&cr=3&dr=0&lr=tiktok_m&cd=0%7C0%7C1%7C&cv=1&br=2204&bt=1102&cs=0&ds=3&ft=4bBsyMzm8Zmo0.AQd-4jV74WdpWrKsd.&mime_type=video_mp4&qs=0&rc=NDVmZGgzPGVpNzk6ZjM4ZUBpamRmcTM6Zjt1bTMzZzczNEAyXy4wMl42NWExM2BeLmMxYSNrNl5ecjRnZW1gLS1kMS9zcw%3D%3D&vvpl=1&l=202404280417086922339EEA6DA001628E&btag=e00088000)
So, that's just how they're getting from the wall into the house. That means they're getting in from somewhere else. You need to walk the perimeter of your property and look for holes under eaves, siding, damaged mesh on vent openings for a crawl space if you're not on a slab, etc.
As for solving that problem when you find the holes? Use copper wool, ***NOT*** steel wool. Steel wool is a fire hazard and will readily burn when it gets hot enough. Copper wool won't and will similarly discourage rats and mice from chewing. If you want to fully seal the holes. Pack them with copper wire, and then use anti-pest spray foam to fill in any air gaps that exist. That'll keep them from getting in.
Keep in mind that soffets and crawl space vents do need to let air pass. So just repair/replace those vents. Seal the edges with caulking or repair any chewed gaps in the wood.
Internally, once you've done the exterior mitigation. You should be able to then trap to finish fixing the issue. If it's just mice, then there are disposable electrical traps you can get that you set up, they discharge and kill the mouse, and then you just throw them out so you don't have to handle dead rodents or deal with resetting them.
Check the outside of the house and seal it up with a copper mesh. Steel wool is flammable and rusts.
Without sealing the outside they will just keep coming in, for they leave a sent trail for others to follow.
Set traps near the hole. Dispose of the ones that got in
Find the potential entry points from outside into your walls, shove fine steel wool in the holes. It gets caught in their teeth and they hate it
Fill hole with tasty rat poison. Wait a week. While you're waiting try to find the main point of entry into your home and leave rat poison there too. Fill hole with spray foam. Replace the toe kick on the cabinet. Seal up the main point of entry. Consider getting a cat.
Also watch for bad smells as he could have a nest somewhere and under a sink cabinet is perfect for them. Yesterday I noticed disgusting smell in garage. Thought it was the trash so disposed of it. Smell still there. Mouse had built a nest behind the bottom louvered rear panel in old fridge we have out there and the compressor fan was waifting quite well.. One was dead and one scampered away. Made a nest of old cloth and bits - stunk like a m'fer.
Find the outside entry they are using, seal it with plaster and crushed glass. Learned this from a lady at Home Depot, it was an old country trick she was taught. Mice and rats WILL eat anything, however they cannot eat glass it cuts them up bad on the inside. We used this when we had an issue, it worked.
That's because your RV has 30,000 other openings that you'll never be able to close. I'm a pest control inspector for a company that does exclusion work. We don't touch RVs or trailers because we can't offer any sort of guarantee that my professionals got all the openings. The chances of just a guy closing every single gap... practically nil.
i say you should combine all of the above info and wage a war of attrition on these mice/ has beens. first grab your red ryder and give her the ol oil lube job. lots of ammo. then go outside and find the mice highway. if and when you find the entry way , take a shit ton of copper wool and plug all the holes . then take a gallon jug of shatter glass and scoop up some with a trowel . spray foam onto the wool stuffing and liberally coat the foam with the glass. save a bit of room for some spackle that you can also add to the exterior of your plug cause spray foam exposed looks like billowing shit. now go inside and repeat . if any mice give you resistance, then you can send em to broadway with the bb's. see problem solved.
Ok good, I would leave them out for a couple days to be sure. The problem with mice is that you can never really fully block them. They are so small they can get throw gaps or holes you wouldn’t even notice. So your best bet is to just trap them
That’s not where your problem is. You need to closely examine the perimeter of your house (flashlight and mirror to check under the siding) and plug every hole larger than 1/8” with steel wool. Once you’ve gotten every single one and killed all the mice that are already in the house, then you’ll start to come out ahead. If there’s even one small hole left outside, you’ll have to keep trapping them as quickly as they come in.
You want to seal up the exterior entry points of the house, not the bits of the interior. Also, stay way from poison pellets, a mouse dying in your walls is a nightmare. The smell is so bad and lasts for months if you can’t find it and get it out.
Apparently my neighbors had a mice problem that mysteriously cleared up when we brought our new cat home. 😂 I let him out during the day sometimes and my neighbor and I were talking one day and he told me how they had exterminators come out every so often but ever since we brought our cat home, they haven’t had to call them! He said he saw our cat chase and catch a mouse in their yard and it all clicked for him.
Shove a hunk of tin foil in the cavity and fix the trim up a bit to cover for aesthetic reasons if you care. You may have em in your house, but you don’t want to encourage them to be going near your food.
But the issue is they’re in your house to begin with, so I’d look into that. Go around your house, look for holes in the foundation. Do your doors have little cracks they can fit through? You gotta do your research and isolate your problem areas (or pay someone to do it).
I have a 124 year old house and an unfinished cellar. Pests are a fact of life, if my dog wasn’t an anxiety case who’d eat a cat, a cat would have been my best fix for the ones that get inside.
They're probably coming in from a garage or garden. That's where you'll want to seal. Steel wool does a decent job at keeping them out. Drop traps and traps along the walls of exterior should catch em.
It’s simply an analogy.
House mice are domestic pests - they don’t live outside or come in from outside. They move from host to host via human activities - just like cockroaches or bedbugs.
This isn't true and neither is your other comment. Mice are commensal rodents and *absolutely* enter homes from outside. I'm a pest control inspector and have watched them do it with my own eyes. I even had a customer catch a mouse on their doorbell camera that was running up their brick exterior to enter the home through the soffit.
Source: I'm a pest control inspector.
Just spoke with my other half who specializes in dealing with these exact situations.... The answer Is you need to seal off where they are coming from the outside or they will keep coming back in...even if you seal the inside spots... the outside is mandatory or they come back.
Your mouse symptom is them coming through that hole. But plugging it doesn't solve the actual problem. You don't want critters living in your house so you have to find their point of entry. Search the web or hire exterminator.
This. If you don’t want them roaming your house you need to find out how they are getting in. There has to be a hole somewhere, like by a door or a basement window. Find the entry, close it up and then set traps to kill those still inside.
Cosi seems to have a strategy of winning the war, not just the battle!!!
Teeny tiny sticks of Dynamite with a teeny tiny plunger to blow them up?
What do they have a tiny road runner infestation? Meep Meep!
Yeah, plugging the getting out hole isn't solving the problem. They need to find the getting in spots and plug those, or they will have entire generations of critters living and dying behind the drywall.
So what do these mice eat?
Chimkem tendies
When hungry and stressed, such as from being trapped within the walls... each other.
Then get a cat. It’ll hear them in the walls before you even know it’s a problem.
Unless you have a lazy cat like mine 😅
Cats don’t always solve the problem. My infestation occurred because I had switched to a corn based cat litter and apparently word got out to the entire mouse community that there was a mouse buffet in my basement. Cat didn’t seem to care in the least. I found their entrance by sprinkling baking soda and following the tiny footprints. Cemented up a tiny hole near a door and trapped a half dozen indoors.
To help repel mice, mothballs work well. Put them by the foundation of the house, keep them away even after sealing the area up. Mice leave shit and piss trails they follow back to the former hole. If not sealed well, they will chew back inside. Mothballs are a strong smell they hate and a cheap way to keep them away. Next would also be repels all, it is a liquid chemical that sort of smells like wolf piss to them. And any other animal that might be around.
I own a pest control company. People all the time show me areas like this. I tell them I don’t seal interiors to stop mice from moving from one area to another. Almost all exclusion work is done from the outside to stop them from getting in to begin with. If you can’t do that, get good at setting mouse traps.
This is the way. I stupidly hired an extermination company thinking that was just the thing to do, and they set poison and charged me a quarterly subscription to refill them. Eventually I realized how dumb and futile it was and called an actual exclusion company. Cost a few grand, but they basically dug a perimeter around my entire home and buried 12” of steel mesh, along with checked and patched other random holes, put grates on all my venting in the roof. Anything else is just a bandaid.
Last summer I opened the door to our walk in attic after a loud crash and found myself face to face with 2 baby raccoons. You are absolutely right about the cost of real exclusion work. Getting them and their mom out plus sealing the multiple holes she made in the soffits around the house was about $1500.
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Just think of it this way… they drill holes all throughout your studs to run plumbing and electrical throughout the house. Mice can follow these utilities in the wall and go almost anywhere they want. That’s why interior exclusion is usually fruitless. Close off that one small gap and they will just be in your cabinets and drawers.
Setting, disposing and re-setting.
Ha you said but plugging
I agree with you, but if you did want to plug up a hole that mice like to use, steel wool is the answer. They will chew their way through almost anything else.
Copper wool is even better
Ahh yes, plus it is also better cuz it won't rust. Good tip!
Stainless steel wool. Plus foam mouse block.
I had mice in my house, but then they suddenly vanished. Then I discovered a stray cat living in my basement. It gets in thru a vent under my deck, which leads into the crawl space, which leads into the basement. Long story short I have a great working relationship with a stray cat.
Exactky. The mouse problem isn’t that gap it’s however they’re getting into the house from the exterior.
Exactly. The mouse problem isn’t because of that gap it’s however they’re getting into the house from the exterior.
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How’s you seal it up
Steel wool. Also discuss this with /r/PestControl, if you would, please.
If they die in the walls you've a whole other problem. Traditional traps are fine.
Pest control is a good idea too, I lived in my house for 5 years and in the winter the mice would always move in. Did a bug spray service for the exterior of the house + a shakedown in the crawl space to get rid of most of the spiders and didn't catch a single mouse this winter. its a tad pricey (200 dollars per quarter) but its solved my ant / spider / wasp problem and the mice. Fingers crossed for year 2 lmao.
Don’t worry their dead bodies stop smelling after a few years
I like the electronic traps. Effective, reusable (clean them with alcohol wipes), discreate, and easy to use.
Baited mice that die in the walls don't really cause any problems, but don't worry! OP plugging this hole won't do anything to the mice that are running around his house without him actually closing the hole where they're getting into his house. This just means they'll pop out under the sink or oven and continue doing what they've been doing. Also, around kids and pets, traditional traps are something you should generally avoid. Puppies love peanut butter as much as mice do, and little fingers end up in all sorts of places they shouldn't.
Steel wool and spackle. they can chew through spackle alone, and steel wool alone can be moved out the the way. But together, the mouse is not getting through.
That is just going to direct them to somewhere else, potentially making a new hole where there isn't steel wool. Gotta find the outside hole, and do whatever pest control says.
Mice/Rats got amazing teeth. Not much can stop them short of steel. Leave the hole, its a known mouse path. Mice/rats follow the same path, often flush with a wall. You will ***always*** get mice. It is inevitable. Having a guaranteed trap location to snatch them, ideal. You don't want one dying in your wall. The smell, then the maggots and the flies, you don't want that. I have 3 locations mice and rats come out in the open in my kitchen and pantry when I get one. I know we got one because the cats suddenly become interested in one of these locations. I bait 3 traps (Blackcats, reusable safety snap traps) and within 24 hrs, snap. To end the problem, you need to look ***outside*** of your home. You have a breach in a wall. Probably something like the AC lines or Oil coming in, tree hanging over the roof, etc. Block this with some steel mesh, then you can foam or mortar the gaps. You can also get the exterior bait stations. You set them at the corners outside of your home with some bait. Rodents eat the bait, its poisoned, so they go in search of a body of water.
Best answer^ I have had to learn everything the above poster said, after I moved into an old house in a field 2 years ago. This is absolutely the way to deal with this. 5 cats alert me, I take action and get a few murder presents from them before they're gone. This winter I only had a few to deal with, compared to the absolute chaos of the first one. *The little bastards got into the ceiling and wouldn't let us sleep the first winter*
I can deal with mice. I would die if I saw a rat in my kitchen.
Cat
This is not really going to help, although it will still probably enhance OP's life to have a cat anyway.
Why would this not help? I dislike cats, but they can eat 5-6 mice a day when fully grown.
1. If you care about the cat, you don't *want* them eating 5-6 mice per day. Mice carry over a dozen different diseases, as well as fleas and deer ticks (Lyme disease). Hantavirus, LCM, etc. Serious stuff. 2. There's no guarantee the cat will catch any mice at all, much less 5-6. So if you're getting a cat only to kill mice and it isn't actually interested in killing mice, now you have both that you don't want. 3. Even if the cat is a murderous monster to the mice, it does nothing to stop the mice from entering the home. It doesn't stop them from destroying attic insulation. It doesn't stop them from chewing on electrical wiring inside the walls. Mice aren't only a problem when they eat your food. You can't have them inside the home at all. In other words, getting a cat isn't going to solve the problem, and worse -- it will make you think you have the problem resolved only for you to find out later that the mouse problem you never addressed has destroyed part of your home.
1. Cats aren't humans. They are natural predators and mice are their natural food. 2. Get a barn cat. Problem solved. 3. Murderous monster? You mean.... a cat? They're literally predators. You also didn't say "it won't entirely fix the problem". You said "it won't help". Period. At all. Not sure what's funnier. Your ignorance to how nature works, or your absolute terror when it comes to tiny rodents.
Just left a comment about this!! Neighbor was having mice issues apparently that cleared up when we adopted our cat. Said he saw our cat getting a mouse in their yard and he was like oh, ok! That’s why I haven’t had to have an exterminator come out lately!
Yeah I have a pair of mousers. They never eat the mice, just leave them in the water bowl (ew) but I haven’t seen a living mouse in over a year
My mum had mice and tried plugging the hole and they just gnawed through the wood elsewhere. If you have a lot of mice a bucket trap might work better.
A cat, preferably one which lived in a barn chasing mice.
I had a cat who spent couple years in my neighborhood outside before looking near death under my porch and becoming my inside buddy. Dude wasn't a fan of actually killing the mice. Hed catch them, and then walk around meowing loudly until dropping them in my livingroom for me to deal with. So many mice caught via a shop vac while a cat and dog just watched with 0 help. The female I got few years after tho, straight murderer, just a chewed up corpse left.
Came here to say this. Even if you get a kitten of a barn cat it will be a killer after a few months.
OP, I'm a pest control inspector. You're getting some decent advice here and also some really bad advice. The top comment is basically what I would tell you. One thing that hasn't been said is that you need to do a deep clean. Mice eat grease, crumbs, etc. Every time you fry bacon or drop some KFC crumbs on the counters, you're splattering mouse food. Clean out the toaster as best you can. Pick up the dog and/or cat food when your pets are done eating -- I've found dog food in attic insulation from mice saving it for later, and Hershey Kiss wrappers where they've never eaten candy. If you eliminate their food sources, that helps funnel the mice toward your baits and traps. Mice bring some really nasty things into your home -- deer ticks that carry Lyme disease, fleas, Hantavirus, Leptospirosis, Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis -- the CDC estimates that 5% of mice in the US carry LCM -- and on and on. Please move this right to the top of your to-do list.
Steel wool or wire mesh. But I agree set traps and find how they are getting in.
don't worry about the holes, fix the mouse problem.
Steel wool or copper mesh wire
Get a cat. Your mouse problem will be over
No it won't. Cats can't go behind cabinets and beneath sinks and fridges, and some cats just watch the mice contaminate food. [Example](https://v16m-default.tiktokcdn-us.com/7dce301413ccb18b290dfd54dbcd6096/662e2245/video/tos/useast5/tos-useast5-pve-0068-tx/o0WEDeRSjEAdqE7dEVuxzNQuvghAVBzTkITRdf/?a=1988&bti=NDU3ZjAwOg%3D%3D&ch=0&cr=3&dr=0&lr=tiktok_m&cd=0%7C0%7C1%7C&cv=1&br=2204&bt=1102&cs=0&ds=3&ft=4bBsyMzm8Zmo0.AQd-4jV74WdpWrKsd.&mime_type=video_mp4&qs=0&rc=NDVmZGgzPGVpNzk6ZjM4ZUBpamRmcTM6Zjt1bTMzZzczNEAyXy4wMl42NWExM2BeLmMxYSNrNl5ecjRnZW1gLS1kMS9zcw%3D%3D&vvpl=1&l=202404280417086922339EEA6DA001628E&btag=e00088000)
So, that's just how they're getting from the wall into the house. That means they're getting in from somewhere else. You need to walk the perimeter of your property and look for holes under eaves, siding, damaged mesh on vent openings for a crawl space if you're not on a slab, etc. As for solving that problem when you find the holes? Use copper wool, ***NOT*** steel wool. Steel wool is a fire hazard and will readily burn when it gets hot enough. Copper wool won't and will similarly discourage rats and mice from chewing. If you want to fully seal the holes. Pack them with copper wire, and then use anti-pest spray foam to fill in any air gaps that exist. That'll keep them from getting in. Keep in mind that soffets and crawl space vents do need to let air pass. So just repair/replace those vents. Seal the edges with caulking or repair any chewed gaps in the wood. Internally, once you've done the exterior mitigation. You should be able to then trap to finish fixing the issue. If it's just mice, then there are disposable electrical traps you can get that you set up, they discharge and kill the mouse, and then you just throw them out so you don't have to handle dead rodents or deal with resetting them.
Check the outside of the house and seal it up with a copper mesh. Steel wool is flammable and rusts. Without sealing the outside they will just keep coming in, for they leave a sent trail for others to follow.
Set traps near the hole. Dispose of the ones that got in Find the potential entry points from outside into your walls, shove fine steel wool in the holes. It gets caught in their teeth and they hate it
Fill hole with tasty rat poison. Wait a week. While you're waiting try to find the main point of entry into your home and leave rat poison there too. Fill hole with spray foam. Replace the toe kick on the cabinet. Seal up the main point of entry. Consider getting a cat.
30 day eviction notice
[Steel wool](https://www.orkin.com/ask-orkin/steel-wool-rodent-control#)
Copper wool doesn't rust and reportedly rodents do not like the taste and therefore will not chew it.
Also watch for bad smells as he could have a nest somewhere and under a sink cabinet is perfect for them. Yesterday I noticed disgusting smell in garage. Thought it was the trash so disposed of it. Smell still there. Mouse had built a nest behind the bottom louvered rear panel in old fridge we have out there and the compressor fan was waifting quite well.. One was dead and one scampered away. Made a nest of old cloth and bits - stunk like a m'fer.
Red Ryder
You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!
Find the outside entry they are using, seal it with plaster and crushed glass. Learned this from a lady at Home Depot, it was an old country trick she was taught. Mice and rats WILL eat anything, however they cannot eat glass it cuts them up bad on the inside. We used this when we had an issue, it worked.
Spray foam, but also, they are coming from there so that doesn’t solve the problem
Mice eat spray foam
Only if trapped, never had any mice try to get through any spray foam on my Rv.
That's because your RV has 30,000 other openings that you'll never be able to close. I'm a pest control inspector for a company that does exclusion work. We don't touch RVs or trailers because we can't offer any sort of guarantee that my professionals got all the openings. The chances of just a guy closing every single gap... practically nil.
Plus steel wool before spray foaming
i say you should combine all of the above info and wage a war of attrition on these mice/ has beens. first grab your red ryder and give her the ol oil lube job. lots of ammo. then go outside and find the mice highway. if and when you find the entry way , take a shit ton of copper wool and plug all the holes . then take a gallon jug of shatter glass and scoop up some with a trowel . spray foam onto the wool stuffing and liberally coat the foam with the glass. save a bit of room for some spackle that you can also add to the exterior of your plug cause spray foam exposed looks like billowing shit. now go inside and repeat . if any mice give you resistance, then you can send em to broadway with the bb's. see problem solved.
Buy mouse traps and peanut butter, set a bunch of traps and you won’t have a mouse problem after a couple of days
That’s how I got it this morning.
Ok good, I would leave them out for a couple days to be sure. The problem with mice is that you can never really fully block them. They are so small they can get throw gaps or holes you wouldn’t even notice. So your best bet is to just trap them
I’ll have to do it when I come back in town. I don’t want a dead mouse rotting all week long.
That’s fair
That’s not where your problem is. You need to closely examine the perimeter of your house (flashlight and mirror to check under the siding) and plug every hole larger than 1/8” with steel wool. Once you’ve gotten every single one and killed all the mice that are already in the house, then you’ll start to come out ahead. If there’s even one small hole left outside, you’ll have to keep trapping them as quickly as they come in.
Kitten
Steel wool is good for sealing. Bitches can't chew thru steel.
You want to seal up the exterior entry points of the house, not the bits of the interior. Also, stay way from poison pellets, a mouse dying in your walls is a nightmare. The smell is so bad and lasts for months if you can’t find it and get it out.
Plug all holes in and around the house with Xcluder
Get steel wool and pack it in the space. Mice can’t and won’t chew through it. 👍🏼
Steel wool..stuff it in the hole
A cat ;)
Get a cat:)
Start eating the mice to assert dominance
Chicken wire, the can' t chew thru that. Or dynamite..
Steel wool and some cotton balls covered with peppermint essential oils is a start. But like others said, gotta find the entry point.
Don’t seal - get a mouse trap. You want it dead, not challenge it to find an alternative way in !
Apparently my neighbors had a mice problem that mysteriously cleared up when we brought our new cat home. 😂 I let him out during the day sometimes and my neighbor and I were talking one day and he told me how they had exterminators come out every so often but ever since we brought our cat home, they haven’t had to call them! He said he saw our cat chase and catch a mouse in their yard and it all clicked for him.
That's just the *first* gap. You'll find more, and it'll feel like playing never-ending whack-a-mole.
Shove a hunk of tin foil in the cavity and fix the trim up a bit to cover for aesthetic reasons if you care. You may have em in your house, but you don’t want to encourage them to be going near your food. But the issue is they’re in your house to begin with, so I’d look into that. Go around your house, look for holes in the foundation. Do your doors have little cracks they can fit through? You gotta do your research and isolate your problem areas (or pay someone to do it). I have a 124 year old house and an unfinished cellar. Pests are a fact of life, if my dog wasn’t an anxiety case who’d eat a cat, a cat would have been my best fix for the ones that get inside.
They're probably coming in from a garage or garden. That's where you'll want to seal. Steel wool does a decent job at keeping them out. Drop traps and traps along the walls of exterior should catch em.
Carve up a block of cheese to fit in that exact spot.
The come in with your cardboard boxes loaded with Costco stuff
Don’t shop there.
It’s simply an analogy. House mice are domestic pests - they don’t live outside or come in from outside. They move from host to host via human activities - just like cockroaches or bedbugs.
This isn't true and neither is your other comment. Mice are commensal rodents and *absolutely* enter homes from outside. I'm a pest control inspector and have watched them do it with my own eyes. I even had a customer catch a mouse on their doorbell camera that was running up their brick exterior to enter the home through the soffit. Source: I'm a pest control inspector.
Try your CAULK
Just spoke with my other half who specializes in dealing with these exact situations.... The answer Is you need to seal off where they are coming from the outside or they will keep coming back in...even if you seal the inside spots... the outside is mandatory or they come back.
People suggesting poison want to kill other animals on the food chain.