Mice in your house? How to get rid of rodents and keep them out this winter.
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - If you give a mouse an opening, it's coming inside your home. Winter is the time of year when mice start finding their way indoors just like us, but how can you get them out and keep them out?
Rest assured that a mouse in the house is not an indictment of your home sanitation or neatness skills.
They almost look cute, but remember they are disease-carrying pests and they're a year-round problem.
Why are there mice in my home?
"It's starting to get a little bit cooler and that's when we start to see a bit more rodent pressure, at least towards buildings they're trying to get in," said Dr. Chad Gore, an entomologist with Erlich Pest Control.
Dr. Gore added that it doesn't take much of a welcome mat for mice to enter.
"Anything that's about a quarter of an inch or so is about big enough for mice," he explained. "Maybe around pipes or pipeways that are entering a structure. Those are all potential entry points."
How to keep mice out of your house
A door sweep at the bottom of a gaping door helps and for other areas, there are filler products that harden other holes.
"You don't necessarily want to use things like spray foam because they can easily chew through that," Dr. Gore said.
When it comes to repellents, Dr. Gore said that they have not found any that work well enough for a long period of time. There's no substitute for a good snap trap.
"One of the best ways for managing mice are the good, old-fashioned snap traps," he said. "Any place that you see droppings, you know that they are traveling."
So now you've caught them, that means you're done, right?
"Hopefully," Dr. Gore said. "Hopefully you are, if you see quite a lot of droppings, then chances are pretty good that you're not."
How fast mice multiply
He also added that female mice will have about 6-to-10 litters in a year so you could be talking about 50 or more mice.
That's why you have to catch the problem early before they have time to settle in. Using bait that you know they may have already been feasting on will work - especially something like peanut butter.
Lastly, it's smart to reuse the traps that have already caught them because mice will give off pheromones, and on a used trap, Dr. Gore said it will attract the next one.