Making Your Houston Home A Mouse-Free Zone
The process of creating a mice-free zone is simple. Executing the plan is the hard part. Why? Because the process is difficult, time-intensive, and complicated. Today we're taking a look at the 4 things required to control mice and why Houston rodent problems are best left to the professionals.
1. Keeping Mice Away
The fewer mice you have scampering around in your yard, the more success you'll have at keeping mice out of your home. Houston is filled with mice, and those mice go from yard to yard looking for food, water, and harborage. When you make your yard unwelcoming, you can reduce mice activity around your home.
Keep exterior trash in sealed containers.
Move bird feeders away from your exterior. Mice are highly drawn to seeds as a source of food.
Protect gardens, berry bushes, fruit trees, and other food sources.
Reduce bugs as a food source.
Change conditions that create puddles near your home and remove containers that hold rainwater.
Remove yard clutter that offers hiding places.
2. Keeping Mice Out
No matter how much you try to remove mouse attractants, you will still have a few mice exploring your exterior. When they do, it is vital that they don't find any holes. A mouse can fit through a hole the size of a dime and it has teeth that are capable of making small holes into larger holes. Ongoing inspections of your exterior and the routine sealing of entry points is required to keep Houston mice out.
3. Mouse Elimination
When mice get into your home—and they will—you need to take measures to eliminate them. The best way to get mice out is to trap them and remove them. This requires getting the right traps, selecting the right bait, placing the traps in the correct locations, laying down the correct number of traps, and maintaining the traps until the problem is resolved.
4. What Happens When Mouse Control Fails?
Mice are quiet, timid critters. If your control efforts fail, you may not know it. This can leave you at risk of ongoing issues that mice cause such as the spread of harmful bacteria, damage to your belongings, damage to your home, secondary damage caused by rainwater getting in through mouse holes, mold and fungi, feces and urine contamination, respiratory illness from ventilation duct contamination, ticks and other parasites, and more.
Rodent Prevention Tips That Don’t Work In Houston
A lot of people try to deal with pest problems on their own, especially rodent problems. While we understand where this impulse comes from, it can actually wind up costing you more money and not result in you avoiding the damage and disease that pests introduce to your property. That’s why you should call the professionals instead of trying to do these things on your own.
Some of the downfalls of DIY rodent control include:
- Traps: Store-bought traps may help you catch or kill a couple of rodents, but they won’t address the ones hiding in your walls.
- Baits: People try baits instead, which rodents will carry back to their nests and hopefully share with the others of a population. The problem is some baits are ineffective, and you still need to locate the specific areas where they will be most effective.
- Cats: Believe it or not, lots of people assume that just because they’ve got a cat (or some other household pet) that rodents will never be a problem. But even if a cat kills a random mouse or two, they still won’t be able to fit in the tight nesting spaces that rodents utilize to hide from predators.
Instead of trying DIY rodent control, contact Modern Pest Control today.
Professional Mouse Control In Houston
If you do all of the above suggestions, you may keep mice out of your Houston home but it is going to take a lot of work and it may still leave you with a mouse infestation. The easier and more effective solution is to have ongoing rodent monitoring and control around the exterior of your home as part of a residential pest control program. At Modern Pest Control, rodent monitoring and control is part of our service plans. So while you're protecting your home from termites or protecting your family from cockroaches, ticks, spiders, and a long list of other pest threats, you'll get vital control of mouse populations as well. Reach out to us today to learn more or to schedule service.