LESLIE: Next up is Kelly in Oklahoma who’s got some unwanted visitors at home. You’ve got mice, huh?
KELLY: Yes, I do. (chuckling)
LESLIE: Like a lot of them?
KELLY: Not a lot, I don’t think; but we can hear them chewing in the wall.
TOM: (laughing) That’s not good.
LESLIE: Do you see evidence of them in the house? Like droppings? Or are they pretty much staying in the walls?
KELLY: No, they’re … we actually have a mobile home – a double-wide mobile home.
TOM: Okay.
KELLY: And it’s bricked in underneath. And we totally sealed up everything inside the house and we can’t … they can’t possibly get in the house. But they’re …
LESLIE: And now they can’t get out.
KELLY: No, they’re not inside the … in the house. But they’re like under the house.
TOM: Okay. Well, what you need to do first is to make your house as unattractive to mice as possible. You’d be surprised how many different sources of food there is in a house; I mean everything from pet food, any kind of goods that they can chew through. They’re pretty industrious. So make sure you’re not making it incredibly welcome. Even though you don’t see them inside …
LESLIE: And they can fit through just about any space.
TOM: Oh, yeah. They need like the space like the size of your finger to squeeze through. So just make sure you’re not doing that. Secondly – I think, probably, the easiest and most effective way for you to get rid of these guys is to get under the house – you don’t physically have to get in there; you just have to open enough of that space to be able to get in some bait. And bait works very well. If they hit the bait one time, they will die. So you don’t have to get them over and over and over again; the bait’s very effective. And I think …
KELLY: And we’re kind of worried about if we give them poison under there that they’ll die under there and we’ll keep smelling them.
TOM: Well, the chances are they’re going to go outside and look for water or go out to their nest somewhere. I mean that’s a possibility but I wouldn’t not do it because of that. You know, you really can’t use traps in this situation because you can’t access the space. But if you get a big enough hole to throw some bait packets down there, throw four or five of them in the crawl space area around and the mice will do the rest. (inaudible) …
LESLIE: Yeah, and at night, if you have pet food in the house, don’t leave their dish out full of the food. Pick it up off the floor and throw it away or add it back to their dish. And, really, think about sealing up any of your leftovers; any loose chips. Make sure you just close up everything and any sort of plastic storage. Because they can get into just about anything.
TOM: And anything that’s stored around the house – even garbage cans that are closed or firewood or any kind of storage that creates a mess.
LESLIE: Oh, yeah. Are you storing your firewood close to the house walls? Do you have … do you have firewood?
KELLY: No, we don’t have firewood.
LESLIE: Okay, because if you keep firewood close to the walls of your house, they can get right in through there as well.
TOM: Really, any kind of storage whatsoever. You basically need to keep it clean and spacious so that they don’t have a place to nest. But I would open up the crawl space, get some bait packets in there, and I think they’re going to go away. Okay, Kelly?
KELLY: Okay, thank you.
TOM: Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
Leave a Reply