If you suspect you have a mice infestation within the walls of your home, here are some signs to look for. Smelling odd odors similar to ammonia is one of the signs. In addition, seeing grease marks or mice feces, areas that have been gnawed on, or shredded items. You might even see a mouse (or two) as it darts across the floor in search of food or supplies. Because mice are nocturnal creatures, they can be hiding inside the wall voids of your home for a long time before they are recognized.
Signs of a Mice Infestation
As a species, mice aren’t harmful creatures. However, once they get into your home, they wreak havoc. Mice infestations inside a house will create major devastation to the infrastructure of a house. In addition, a mouse infestation has the potential to spread diseases.
Five signs of a mice infestation include:
- Finding mouse droppings in cabinets, drawers, or near food containers.
- Smelling an ammonia-like odor or other stale scents.
- Recognizing signs of gnawing on food packages.
- Finding holes in the floors or walls that have been chewed to create a point of entry.
- Locating their nesting materials like shredded clothing, papers, or potting soil.
How Mice Get Inside Your House?
Mice are small creatures. Therefore, they can get through extremely small gaps in a building and poorly sealed doors or window frames. In addition, air ducts. Vents on the roof and chimney pipes make excellent points of entry for a mouse.
Besides actually seeing a mouse scurry around inside your house, there are many other signs of an infestation to look for. The sooner you spot evidence of a mouse problem, the less the severity of the infestation and damage to your home.
What do Mice Feces Look Like?
The feces of mice are dark brown, small, and pellet-like, with the ends pointed. Typically, these feces are around a quarter of an inch long. You can distinguish how fresh droppings are by how dark the color is.
How to Get Rid of Mice in Walls
One of the first clues to an infestation is you might hear mice making running sounds in the ceiling. Hearing these sounds usually means you have a mouse infestation and not just a single mouse residing inside your home.
Sounds Mice Make
You can typically hear scratching sounds around as mice climb, crawl, or dig within your home’s walls. Hearing these noises also means they may be gnawing on your drywall, insulation, electrical wires, or pipes. Mice must be constantly chewing because, similar to other rodents, they have two sets of incisors that grow continuously. In order to control this growth, mice chew to ground them down.
Upon hearing a mice sound, it is imperative to take quick action. A small problem can quickly become an out-of-control infestation due to how fast these critters reproduce.
Another sign of rodents in your house is you can hear squeaking through the walls. You will often find holes in the base of the pantry, pet food, and birdseed containers. If mice live outside the walls, you might find them in crawl spaces or other quiet areas.
Using Traps to Get Rid of Mice Infestations
Many homeowners choose to use arsenic as a do-it-yourself pest control to get rid of rats, squirrels, raccoons, and other pests. However, if you’re wondering what’s the best way to kill rats outside, one method is to place strategically positioned poisonous pellets. How this works is that the pest will carry the strategically placed poisonous pellets back into the nest. Although a good way to get rid of pests, at least one will die inside the walls, creating an awful stench as it decays.
If you prefer to use traps to fight an active infestation, you want to wear gloves when handling traps and a dead mouse.
Live traps with a live mouse inside should be stored in a strong plastic bag–trap and all. You should then take the mouse to a distance of a minimum of five hundred feet away from your home. Typically this ensures the pest cannot find its way back.
When handling dead mice on snap traps, you should place them in a plastic bag and dispose of them in a covered trash bin. If it makes you squeamish to touch a dead critter, you can toss the entire trap into the trash.
You can find rodent deterrents at the local hardware store to avoid future infestations of mice in your walls.
Places in Your Home You Might Hear the Scratching Noises of Mice
Mice are nocturnal creatures; therefore, they are most active at night. Mice prefer places that are quiet, such as the attic, basement, and inside your walls. If mice feel threatened, they will remain quiet and appear gone. However, they are simply waiting for you to leave so they feel safe again.
When you hear sounds scratching in attic at night or other sounds from the wall, you might have mice in your walls. The noise you hear is the rodent chewing up insulation to build its nest.
You might also hear the sound of them running across the ceiling in the attic. Tap on the wall near the site of the noise to see if it stops. If it’s mice, the sound will stop because the tapping makes the animal feel threatened.
You will likely hear mice in your walls making noises at night as they chew holes through electrical wires, wood, and insulation. You might also hear noises in the wall as these little critters search for building materials.
Contact a Professional Pest Control Company to Get Rid of Mice
If you smell the ammonia-like odor of mouse urine, see droppings, or hear scratching sounds in the attic, you likely have a problem.
After you have come to the conclusion that there is indeed the presence of mice in your walls, don’t hesitate to seek the help of a company that offers a professional service for removing mice at an affordable exterminator cost. Call A.N.T. Pest Control today at (815) 215-7211, and let us start the process of mouse prevention and eviction today.
