How to Rid Your Home of Mice

As with most pests, keeping mice out of your home in the first place is the best way to avoid infestation.

Things You'll Need

• Sheet Metal
• Work Gloves
• Metal Screens
• Metal Trash Containers
• Mouse Poisons
• Mousetraps
• Plastic Trash Containers
• Steel Wool
• Garbage Bags
• Cement
• Screen Wire
• Garbage bags

Instructions

Protecting Your Home

1. Keep your lawn mowed. Mice do not like to travel through short grass.

2. Remove wood piles, trash and debris from your home's perimeter. Elevate wood piles 18 inches above ground level. To protect yourself when cleaning out wood piles, trash or debris, be sure to wear protective clothing: long-sleeved shirts, long pants, gloves and boots.

3. Check all vents and repair damaged screening with 16- to 20-gauge 1/4-inch hardware cloth. Check the crawl-space doors to ensure that they fit tightly. Check where pipes enter the building. In wooden walls, place sheet-metal collars around those entrances. In stucco, stone or brick walls, use cement fill.

4. Fill cracks and crevices around the foundation and eaves with caulk or foam. Steel wool can be used, although it rusts.

5. Remove food sources by placing all food items, including pet food and bird seed, in tightly sealed containers. Clean up fallen bird seed. Keep trash in containers with tight-fitting lids.

6. Avoid vacuuming or sweeping mouse droppings, due to the dangers of hantavirus, a deadly virus spread to humans through contact with rodents and rodent urine and droppings. Droppings should be misted with a strong household disinfectant (chlorine bleach) and wiped up with paper towels.

Trapping and Baiting

1. Place traps or poison pellets near holes and in places where you've seen mice. The trigger should be as near to the hole as possible.

2. Use fruit, candy or peanut butter as bait if your trap requires bait.

3. Check traps daily.

4. Put on thick gloves and remove the carcass from the trap once a mouse has been caught.

5. Wrap the carcass in newspaper or a plastic bag and place it in an outside garbage can.

Tips & Warnings

• Mice can carry diseases. Some of them - such as hantavirus - are potentially fatal.