How to Get Rid of Mice in Your House

One of the most frequently asked questions people ask about rodents is how to get rid of mice in your house. This whole site is dedicated to the various methods for eliminating a rodent problem, but sometimes it's important to go back to the basics. Understanding why mice are in your house is the key to understanding how to get rid of them. Mice don't come to our home just for the fun of it. Their sole purpose in life is not to make you miserable even though it may seem that way.

The only thing a mouse has on its mind is survival. Just as we humans have our own basic needs such as food, water, and shelter, mice have these same needs... more food and shelter than water - mice can get their fill of water based almost entirely from the food they eat in their regular diets. So understanding that a mice is simply out there to survive, you can recognize that the reason they are in your house because they need (and have found) food and shelter.

This begs the question - how to get rid of mice. The answer is pretty straightforward - remove the food source and eliminate their shelter. Then prevent mice from coming back in the future by sealing up any access points. So let's break it down because this is the whole point.

Remove the food source. Mice do not stray far from their nests. If you have mice in your house, then there is likely a nest nearby... it's probably in your house, garage, attic, basement, or maybe just outside near your foundation. Wherever it may be - it's close. Remove the food source by storing food in sealable plastic containers. This removes any scents in the air and makes it pretty much impossible for a mouse to get in. Mice can easily chew threw cardboard and other paper based storage containers. They will not only chew this to get into food, but they will proceed to shred the paper to build their nests... and this leads us to the next important thing to consider.

Eliminate their shelter. This one is a bit more nebulous as there are a lot of mouse friendly places in a home, but you don't have to make it easy for them! If you took away their food, you're in great shape. They can't stay around forever if they don't have anything to eat. While you may be doing your part, if you're living in a multi-dwelling building (i.e. apartment complex, or other) then our neighbor's might not be doing theirs. What to do? Eliminate the access points to your home. Mice can get through openings the size of a 1/4" in diameter - that's the size of your pinkie finger! Clog up all holes that may provide entry into your home. If you're looking for a quick and temporary fix, try steel wool. It works great because mice cannot gnaw through the metal... they can try, but they will fail. For a more permanent fix, use caulk or some other type of sealant depending on the situation. Now that you've got the food and shelter out of the picture, what's next?

Lay out traps to catch them. There are a variety of traps from the simple snap trap to a mouse trap on steroids, the Victor M260 Multi-Kill Mouse Trap. You may even wish to use one of the ultrasonic mouse deterrents. The information on these different extermination techniques are all available, it's just a matter of formulating a strategy that you are comfortable with and then executing it. If you don't like the idea of seeing or handling dead mice, you're not going to want to use a snap trap that will snap its neck. You should consider a live catch trap or one of the electronic shock traps that have an easy disposal container in which you don't even have to view the mice when tossing it out with the trash.

If you're looking for more info on getting rid of mice in your house, I'd strongly recommend browsing some of the resources available on this site.

Best of Luck!

Dead Mice Smell / Dead Rat Smell

I've discussed the topic of getting rid of dead mouse smell in a previous post, but I thought I'd hit on it again today because a lot of people seem to have a problem with the dead mice smell lately. A lot of people are asking the question "How long does the dead mouse smell last?" That is not an easy question to answer because as with just about everything in life, it all depends. What sort of things does it depend on? For one, what sort of environment did the mouse die in? Is it dry or humid? Is it warm or cold? The dead mice odor comes from the fact that the mouse is decaying after its death. Once the mouse is completely decomposed, it will no longer emanate an odor as all that will be left are dried up bones. If it's a hot humid environment, you can expect that the mouse odor will be very strong and pervasive. If it's a cooler dry environment, it will take some time for the mouse to decompose... it may not decompose at all.

Your best bet for getting rid of the dead rodent smell is to, simply enough, get rid of the dead mouse. You need to physically locate the animal and remove it, or wait it out. A lot of times, your only option is to wait it out because the mouse died in the walls of your house. If that's the case, you can start by pounding down the walls to get it out, but that is not your most economical option. You could just move out of the house for a few weeks (or months?) while you wait for the smell to subside, but that's not the most practical option. Your best bet is to purchase an odor eliminator that neutralizes the smell in the air. Make sure it's an odor eliminator and not just some perfume that covers it up. The last thing you want is some cheap perfume mixed with the stench of a decaying carcass. One of the most positively reviewed odor eliminators is available on Amazon: Fresh Wave Continuous Release Odor Neutralizing Gel. This is a gel where you basically leave the lid open and it evaporates into the air neutralizing the foul odor. This is actually some pretty powerful stuff that can be used on other things besides dead rodent smells, so it's a good all around product to have in your arsenal. It's good for the wet musty smells in the basement, or things like that too. You can check out the Amazon Reviews.

Some people may be wondering if they should handle a dead rat smell any differently... the answer is no. The same principles apply for any dead rodent, whether it's a dead rat or mouse. The only difference for a dead rat is that the smell may last longer as the body is generally much larger. Unfortunately if you are unable to locate the dead rat (or mouse), you're not going to know the difference anyways... All you're going to know is that dead rats, dead mice, and dead rodents in general all smell really bad!

So a quick recap of what you should do to get rid of mice smell. First, locate the source and remove it if possible. This will stop the smell from continuing to emanate from the source once it's gone. Second purchase an odor eliminator to remove all traces of the stench. It's not enough to just get rid of the dead mouse because the stench may have been absorbed into the different materials in your home. The odor eliminator will ensure that the stench fully dissipates from the air. If you follow these simple steps, you can knock out that odor in no time.

Using the Victor M260 Multi-Kill Mouse Trap to Get Rid of Mice

Today I want to tell you about a new mousetrap that a couple users have purchased and used to effectively get rid of their mice problem. It is the Victor M260 Multi-Kill Electronic Mouse Trap. This electronic mouse trap has a 100% kill rate for a quick and humane mice extermination. The trap is capable of killing up to 10 mice per deployment and will effectively kill 150 mice per set of batteries. One of the nice features of this trap is that it's reusable. You buy it this year, but you'll be using it for years to come. You can consider it an investment in ensuring a mouse free home.

The trap is designed with two points of entry, which is designed to provide diversity in attracting mice into the trap. It is built with a tunneled staircase design that is lab tested to effectively draw a mouse into the trap once they catch the scent of the bait. Bait is placed at the end of a pathway that has three electrically charged plates, which will deliver a fatal shock to the mouse. Generally the mouse will never make it to the bait, which means you will not have to re-bait the trap every time a mouse enters it. When a mouse gets zapped, it will be dropped into a holding chamber for disposal at a later time. The Victor M260 Multi-Kill Electronic Mouse Trap has an indicator light that will notify you when a mouse is in the chamber for disposal and also whether or not the chamber is full.

You can purchase the Victor multi-kill electronic mousetrap on Amazon, but it is not the cheapest option for killing mice. The nice thing is that it is a one time investment. If you only have a couple nice running around, you may be better off trying some of the other mouse deterrents that I have described on this website in previous articles, such as peppermint oil and mice. This is a heavy-duty trap for medium to large sized mouse infestations. This is an especially good mouse trap to use if you live in the country and have frequent mouse problems. For the occasional one or two, there are cheaper more cost-effective ways of capturing and killing mice.

If you check out the reviews on Amazon, you’ll notice that people are polarized... People either love it or hate it. This can be the case with a lot of electronic pest control devices. I would venture to say that most of the people that have not had success with electronic traps have used it ineffectively. If I had to venture a guess, I can tell you what these people did wrong.

1. Be sure to bait the trap with bait that works effectively. Use peanut butter as that seems to work best. Since the design of the trap prevents the mouse from ever getting to the bait because it is shocked in the hallway before it gets to the reward, feel free to use a liberal amount of peanut butter in order to ensure that the scent emanates freely and attracts the mice.

2. Trap placement plays a key role in the effective extermination of mice. Don't place the trap in the middle of the room. You want to place it along the commonly traveled routes that mice use to get around your house. If you don't know how mice are getting around your home or garage, try sprinkling baby powder along suspected pathways overnight. The next morning when you wake up, check the baby powder for mouse tracks. If you don't see any, then mice are probably not coming into that area of your home. If you do see mouse tracks, then you know that mice are using this as their own personal highway, which makes an excellent place for the Victor multi-kill trap to be set. Your best bet is to try placing the trap along the side of the wall where mice are traveling. If the mice are in your kitchen, you’re not going to catch the mice by setting the trap in the garage. You may have to move it around to catch all of your mice.

3. Something I like to call bait competition… If you’re setting the trap up in the kitchen with peanut butter, you have to make sure you’ve eliminated all other food sources in the kitchen. Why would a mouse go into the trap when you left a bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups sitting on the kitchen counter? All of your food must be sealed tightly in air tight plastic container so as not to emanate a scent that will attract mice away from your traps. It’s common sense, but a lot of people think that they can throw a few traps out there and the mice are going to magically migrate towards them. Put yourself in the mouse’s shoes (or paws)... if you were a mouse and saw some dark black scary hallway, would you go crawling there or would you go eat the seemingly unlimited supply of Reese’s peanut butter cups sitting on the counter. That’s what I thought.

4. Have I mentioned trap placement? I thought I should reiterate this point because it is so important. The reason why people feel that standard snap traps are more effective at getting rid of mice, is because usually when people deploy the snap traps they deploy a bunch of them because they are relatively cheap. They don't set one trap and expect to catch 10 mice overnight. They'll set 10 traps and hope to catch two or three mice. The reason they catch these two or three mice is usually because of dumb luck... It just so happens that they sent so many traps that a few of them are in the right place. If you can determine where the mice are at before you set the trap, the odds of actually catching a mouse increases dramatically. This is why the multi-kill trap is extremely effective in those instances where you're dealing with a medium to large sized mouse infestation. There are so many mice to kill, when you set this trap in the middle of a lot, you're bound to catch a lot.

People may be wondering what I mean by medium to large sized mouse infestations... I would say if you have 5 mice, you are on the verge of crossing into that threshold. The danger is that mice reproduce so quickly that a few mice if not handled quickly can turn into a whole lot of mice in very short order. The last thing you want to happen is for babies because then you’re going to need not one multi kill trap, but two or three because they will just be all over the place.

So if you feel like the Victor Multi-Kill Electronic Mouse Trap is for you, the cheapest I found it is on Amazon; you can have it shipped and delivered in a couple days. The trap works if you use it right. Follow my recommendations, and you’ll be sure to be living mouse free in no time. If you do go out and buy this trap, I'd be interested in hearing your feedback in the comments section below. What worked for you?

Thanks and good luck!