Ever wonder where those squeaks and scratches during night time come from? It might be a sign that a house mouse is in your home. These small rodents can quickly infest your area if you don’t act on their invasion immediately.
How to Spot Signs of Rodent Infestation
Mouse Markings
The humid and dirty environment that mice live in causes their hair to be wrapped with oil. This becomes grease marks when they run around looking for food through the usual passageways that they take. They move by squeezing through holes and staying near walls which makes their hairs rub on these surfaces leaving visible stains.
A house that has a lot of mice living inside may have a lot of urine pillars. These are marks made from urine, grease, dirt, and other materials found in their hairs. Such materials get caught on their hair because they live close to each other and on top of their waste. But before you conclude a heavy infestation, you must look at other signs because a grease mark that gets rubbed constantly by the same mouse may create a urine pillar as well.
Unfamiliar Sounds
A house mouse is a very careful creature and by that i mean it checks its area diligently. They do this through the use of their senses except their eyes because it is weak when compared to others.
All throughout the night, mice explore and stay active. Their activity involves scratching surfaces like wood and cement to investigate the area and while they’re searching for leftovers. If you hear scratching sounds late at night, then it is safe to assume that a mouse is causing that.
Flexibility and agility allows a mouse to move around and in between cracks on walls. When they get to these areas they continue to move and make sounds which explains why you hear irritating sounds coming from the inside of your wall or ceiling.
Nesting
MiceSeeing a single mouse moving around your house may be a sign of infestation, because they generally live as families with a nesting area. The quickness of the house mouse allows them to move around and collect materials to build their nests in your home. Mice can build their nests anywhere, but usually these animals prefer a place that is quiet and strategically placed where they can collect food.
Water isn’t too much of an issue for these creatures because the liquid inside the food they eat is usually enough for them to survive the day. If they do feel thirsty, mice only consume as much as 3 milliliters of water and they’re good for that day. The hollow parts of walls, ceilings, floors are the most common nesting spots. Some mice are bolder where they build their nests under the refrigerator, stove tops, and even the cupboard.
If you find their nests, you can see that the materials they use to build it usually mimics their natural habitat as if they were living in the wild. Tree products are usually the materials they bring in, such as paper, cloth, and cardboard.
Once they have built their nest and the conditions are just right for them to thrive, their population can shoot up quickly without you noticing. One litter can have as many as eight mouse pups, which adds to 10 mice per litter on average. It can grow out of proportion if the owner doesn’t make the necessary moves to stop it.
Mouse Tracks
A house mouse when active can leave footprints, and when you trace these tracks you may be led to their nest, or to one of their routes. To make it visible, you can try and shine some light on a spot that you think mice have been travelling through and if you see little footprints then that is it. Mouse tracks don’t get wiped off easily. In fact, they may stay there for a couple of months which means it would be difficult to know if they’re fresh tracks or not. If you want to know exactly how fresh some of the tracks you found are, applying talcum powder on the spot might help. Spread it over the route you suspect mice are taking and observe if it reveals new tracks the next day.
Awful Smell
Along with the aforementioned signs above, if you get awful smells that are coming from urine and feces, then you clearly have a bad mice infestation. Traces of their strong smell are left as they move around your house, particularly near their nesting areas. The stronger the odor the nearer you are to either their nest, or where they move around.
Get That Mouse Out Of Your House
Mice infestations can easily get out of hand if ignored and pose high health risks for the humans and pets living inside the house. Urgency is crucial. To ensure full recovery of the house from the infestation, it is best to coordinate with a professional pest control firm for a massive house sanitation. This can be inconvenient, but is also the surest way to prevent another round of mice infestation.
