This Infestation Isn’t Very Mice
Cat hands typed this post.
The first time you noticed it, you barely gave it any thought. Those little brown pellets in a line, headed back behind the fridge or under the baseboard in the back of the pantry. And you might have thought, “oh, we have a mouse.”
Few people realize the implications of seeing mouse droppings out in the open.
If there was enough to eat where they started, they wouldn’t be exploring outward into your kitchen. So either you have one voracious little Mus musculus clearing out your food stores, or you have seen the first sign of infestation.
Mice reach sexual maturity at about 6 to 8 weeks of age and females can have up to 15 litters a year. They can become pregnant within 24 hours after giving birth and the average gestation time for mice is 19 to 21 days. Their droppings and urine contain a variety of horrifying diseases that can make you very sick or kill you and the parasites they often carry have been responsible for the deaths of countless millions of people in the last 1,000 years. The situation is quite serious.
So if you noticed some droppings in October, and there is a mating pair in your house, by December you have a full blown incest commune in your kitchen wall. And sadly there can’t be a happy ending for everyone involved in this situation.
Your options in the case of an infestation are degrees of humane-ness. And as time goes on, more and more desperate measures will be required. Probably ending in situations that nobody is going to feel good about. A glue trap is an ugly thing. Nothing deserves to die that way. But your health, your family’s health, the structural integrity of your house, the electrical wiring, the plumbing, everything is at risk with a rodent infestation.
The BEST policy is to stop it before it starts. Seal food in airtight containers. Keep food containers up off the ground. Have snap traps baited and set BEFORE you see a mouse, as we head into the fall and winter every year. Better to quickly dispatch a lone intruder in the early fall than four generations of his family the following spring.
Prevention prevention prevention. It’s the responsible thing to do.
That being said, sometimes things slip through the cracks, quite literally, and into your kitchen despite your best efforts. When that happens, by all means try to take care of it yourself. But call a professional before it becomes an infestation. Cason Wildlife MGMT will come out and treat the situation with a variety of trapping solutions to nip it in the bud before it gets to the point of doing true damage to your house and your health.
