House mice are attracted to your home for food, safety, and shelter. When they infest your home, they will generally choose the darkest and hard-to-reach areas, such as wall cavities, crawl spaces, and air ducts. Mice can fit in spaces as small as a dime and can climb walls. So, there is no way to stop them if they go undetected.
Evidence There Is Mice in Your Home
If you see holes in your food packages that you have left on the bench overnight, it is likely that mice are present in your home. Also, if you hear sounds in the walls or under floorboards when you go to sleep, it might be a sign of an active mice infestation. Perhaps you have seen small tracks along your walls, floors, or countertops. Even if you do not see a mouse with your eyes, these signs are evidence that you have a mouse invasion in your home:
- Nests
- Droppings
- Runs
- Squeaking or gnaw sounds
- Gnaw marks
- Food tampering
How to Remove House Mice from Air Ducts
House mice are likely to hide in air ducts during their inactive hours. When mice die in the cooling and heating ducts, they can produce an odor throughout your house. If your air ducts have been invaded by house mice, you can take the following steps to help eradicate the problem:
- Turn off your cooling and heating system and allow the grilles to attain room temperature. Loosen and remove the grilles that protect your heat vents.
- Bait a snap trap on each vent with the aromas of foods.
- Place a trap in all air ducts. If you can see any droppings or mouse tracks, place your trap directly on these places.
- Reattach the vent grilles and turn on your cooling or heating system.
- Every morning, check each trap for mice. If there are any caught mice, place them in a zip-lock package and dispose of them correctly.
- Disinfect your hands and return the trap to your air duct. Repeat until the mice problem has been eliminated.
- To prevent the infestation from reoccurring, close any small holes that could be providing entryways for these rodents.
How to Remove House Mice from Walls
Suppose you notice sounds of small animals running inside your wall spaces. Set snap traps along the bottom ends of the walls. The food-baited ends of the traps should face the wall. Place the traps against positions that could act as passageways for mice, such as small holes and slivers. Do not use poison baits because the effects are not immediate. The mice might have time to get back into the wall before dying, which could cause an odor problem that could be hard to eliminate.
To prevent this problem from reoccurring, seal off any small holes or slivers that could possibly provide house mice entryways into your walls.
If you notice signs of mice infestation in your home, it is crucial to eliminate the infestation’s root cause. Seal off all the entryways and prevent the problem from getting bigger. Eliminating mice can be a challenging task. So, it is recommended that you get a pest control professional to do the job for you to ensure effective and efficient control.