Category Archives: Mice

Anything to do with mice

Animal in the Wall, Mice

Mouse in Wall

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You know you have a mouse in the wall or something else running around inside your home when your dog spends the entire day staring at your wall and sniffing at the baseboards.  Either that, or your dog is just crazy.  But, I have a great dog, and I trust her.

At first, I didn’t notice anything odd.  Life is busy around here.  With three kids, a husband who works over 60 hours a week, and a part-time job, I have to admit I don’t take a lot of time paying attention to how my dog spends her days.  I was hurrying to get breakfast ready the other morning when my youngest said, “Mom, Daisy’s staring at the wall again.”

I was in such a hurry, and there were so many other things going on at the time that I just responded, “Hmmm, mmmm” as I rushed over to the stove to flip the frying eggs.  Unfortunately, I accidentally tipped over the juice container just then, too.  So, it wasn’t until after the eggs were on plates in front of everyone and the juice was cleaned up that my youngest piped up again.

“See, Mom?  Why is Daisy staring at the wall?”

I had no idea what she was talking about and turned to see what my German shepherd was doing.  True enough, she was pacing in front of the wall that separates the kitchen and living room, sniffing at the baseboards and whining every now and then.  Everyone stopped eating breakfast and chatting just to watch this strange behavior.  That’s right when my husband came down the stairs.  We must have been a sight.  His entire family was sitting silently, staring at the dog, who was in turn staring at the wall.  He stood there on the steps before bursting out laughing.

“What’s going on around here?” he laughed.  “We have a ghost or something?”

We all snapped out of it and breakfast resumed, although the talk was about what could possibly cause Daisy to act that way.  My children each told me they had seen Daisy doing this every now and then over the last few days, and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it until someone actually said something to me.

Finally, we all agreed we must have a mouse in the wall.  But, the morning was ticking on and everyone needed to get to school or work, so we finished up and I sent everyone out the door.  I turned to look at Daisy in my kitchen and sighed.  I had about an hour before I needed to be at work, and I knew I had to spend that time making sure we didn’t have a mouse infestation and doing something about the mouse in the wall.

Reluctantly, I opened up the pantry, and started pulling everything out, inspecting it as I did so.  I spotted a couple of tiny mouse droppings, that looked a little bit like grains of dark rice, on the floor, but our food seemed fine.  I mostly keep everything in jars, cans and plastic containers, so there wasn’t much that a mouse could get into.  One cereal box had a small hole chewed in the bottom and I tossed it, thankful that we’d been eating eggs for breakfast this week instead of cereal.  Fortunately, no mouse jumped out at me while I worked.

That job done, I called a rodent removal service to come out and inspect our property and get rid of the mouse in our wall.  I thought having a dog would protect my family from intruders, but apparently my Daisy protects us from mice, as well.  Good dog!

Mice

Rodent Removal Service

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how to get rid of mice

“Sweetheart, you’re just going to have to trust me.  I’m getting rodent removal service out here today, and I have washed and cleaned your dance clothes already.”

“No, Mom!!  I can’t wear my costume ever, ever, ever!!  A mouse went pee-pee in it and you can’t wash that out, Mom.”

Mom spoke with more patience than she felt, but she could easily see where this conversation with her six-year-old dancer was headed.  “Emmy, we don’t have another costume for you.  Trust me, I’m the Mommy.  I have washed and bleached your costume, and it’s clean enough for you to wear today.  Please put it on now, or we’re going to be late.”

“I just can’t wear it, Mom!!  I don’t want to go to practice if I can’t wear my costume.  It’s not the same.”

“But, you CAN wear your costume, honey.  It’s clean now.”

“But, what if another mouse already peed in it after you washed it?”

“It’s been in the dryer ever since I washed it last night, so you’re safe.”

“How can you be sure a mouse didn’t get in the dryer?”
Mom felt the patience slipping away.  She had to admit to herself, she would probably have felt the same way at that age.  They had found the mouse in amongst the clean clothes yesterday when it jumped out at her as she pulled items out to fold.  She considered herself the kind of woman who wasn’t afraid of anything, much less mice, snakes, rats or spiders.  But, when a mouse jumped right out of the clean clothes hamper and over her hand before it streaked across the floor and disappeared under a counter, she couldn’t help but let out a screech and knock over the entire hamper of clean laundry.  Heart still beating, she’d used a broom handle to “stir” the clothes to make sure the laundry held no more nasty surprises, and washed and bleached the entire load immediately.  Unfortunately, when she’d explained to her daughter why she was re-washing her dance clothes, her daughter apparently vowed she would never wear them again.

She was expecting the rodent removal service to arrive any moment, and since she had to take her daughter to dance practice, her oldest son was going to wait for them and show them where the mouse had disappeared.  She hoped the rodent removal service would quickly get rid of the mice and effectively block up their holes, making sure mice didn’t get back in the house.  Of course, if her daughter kept this up, she might not ever have to take her to dance practice again.

It was another twenty minutes before she could convince her daughter of the sanitary condition of the clothes.  She had to explain how bleach works, how the washer works and the effectiveness of laundry detergent before her daughter dubiously gave in and changed into the costume.  She just hoped the rodent removal service was effective enough she would never, ever have to have this conversation with her daughter again.

Mice

Pest Removal

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As a teenage girl, I loved my job at a cute clothing store in the mall, except for inventory and pest removal day.  Sure, most of my paycheck ended up going towards clothes that we sold in the store, but that was completely worth it to me!  I got a great employee discount, and my money would have been spent on clothes, anyway.

The very worst part of the job was inventory.  Every few months, we had to go in extremely early on a Saturday morning so we could check off every item the store owned, clear out shelves to prepare them for the next line of clothes to arrive, and clean out the storage room.  It was a long day, boring, and full of hard work.  And the storage room was awful.

The room was windowless, lit with bluish fluorescent lights, and packed with boxes, unused hangers, clothing racks and dusty shelves.  We called it the dungeon.  Over the previous months, we used it as a dumping ground for whatever we didn’t want to take care of during our normal shifts, and inventory day was payback.  We sorted, we cleaned, and we were always on the lookout for spiders, bugs, or worse, mice or rats.  Pest Removal just wasn’t included on the job description when we’d applied as sales associates.  But, there we were, mouse traps, rat poison, and fly swatters close by as we sorted, folded, and discarded everything that had been tossed into the dungeon.  Once the place was cleaned up, we’d set out the rat poison near suspected rat holes and place a couple of mouse traps in the corners of the room, just to be on the safe side.

Of course, we always had to give the new girls a bad time.  In the days leading up to inventory, we’d tell them horror stories of a mouse that ran over someone’s foot, or the biggest spider we’d ever seen.  Inventory Day, we’d rig it up so plastic rats would be pulled across the floor with a string, or throw a toy spider into someone’s hair.  Didn’t I mention that it was a long and boring day?  We had to break it up somehow!

One Inventory Day, we all arrived, as usual, in our sweats and hair pulled back into ponytails, ready to get dusty, filthy and be bored to tears counting and sorting.  We got our initial assignments from the store manager, and headed off to our respective jobs for the morning.  I was unfortunate enough to get stuck in the storage room right away, bypassing the lesser evil of clearing off shelves in the front.  I got ready to break down the empty boxes so I could stack them up and take them out to the dumpster, and grabbed a box from off the top of the pile.  I pulled it towards me and pulled out the box cutter, just as I became aware of the awful rustling noise coming from inside the box.  Startled, I dropped it on the floor, causing a couple of the flaps to fall up and out, giving me a great view of the box’s interior.  To my disgust, it was filled with wriggling little pink bodies of mouse babies amongst shredded material and cardboard that served as their nest.  My screams brought every girl into the back room, most of whom ran right back out as they realized what they were seeing.  To this day, I can’t open an empty box without shuddering.  Pest removal is something best left to the professionals, not a teenage girl working at a clothing shop.

Mice

Mouse Problems

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Mouse on a table
A mouse, with mouse pellets, on a kitchen table.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

I tried to tell my roommate that I thought we had mouse problems, but typical of her, she never listens to me.

I’d noticed some tell-tale signs a few weeks ago.  I was vacuuming our tiny living room (I always do the vacuuming), and saw some tiny little black pellets up against the baseboards.  I bent down to look at them more closely and realized they must be mouse droppings.  So glad I bent down to look at them instead of picking them up!  I vacuumed them up and then scouted the kitchen for more mouse droppings.  I found a few under the sink, by the garbage, but didn’t find an actual mouse.

I told my roommie about it, but she just laughed it off, saying I was making a bigger deal of it than it really was.  It was probably just one single mouse that had come in to investigate the apartment but was long gone.  She even suggested I’d made the whole thing up just to try to get her to help clean up.  I shrugged it off.

But, I soon began to realize our mouse problem was bigger than that.  I kept an eye out for a mouse or some sign that we had one or more in the apartment, just to be on the safe side.  When I found my cereal box had been chewed through, I tossed it out and put all my stuff in plastic containers.  My roommate and her boyfriend made fun of me, calling me obsessive-compulsive.  I cleaned my room thoroughly, not wanting anything to jump out at me from under a pile of clothes or anything.  Of course, my roommate’s a lot less clean than I am, and I tried not to think of all the many places a mouse could be hiding in her room.

I had a bunch of friends over one night so we could all watch the game.  My roommate and her boyfriend were being overly-cuddly on one couch, right in front of everyone, and talking loudly about how stupid I was to be afraid of one little mouse that wasn’t even in our apartment anymore.  The rest of us tried to ignore them as best we could, and just enjoyed the game and ate the chicken wings I’d made for all of us.  She bragged about all the “real” junk food they had, and pulled out a big bag of cheese-dusted snacks, which they kept all to themselves.

They sat there and loudly ate the entire bag, until they reached the bottom.  Then, they got quiet.  There was a little chewed hole at the bottom of the bag, and a couple of tiny little mouse pellets that were now all dusted with fake cheese.

I think, finally, she believed we had a mouse problem, and it was time to do something about it.

Mice

How To Get Rid Of Mice

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Mouse squeaking
Mouse squeaking.
(Artwork by Sharon Davis. Contact us for her contact info.)

My unintentional solution to how to get rid of mice would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so gross.

I’m not the kind of person to go squealing away or jumping up in chairs when I see something like a mouse, spider or snake.  But, when I noticed mouse droppings in my pantry, and little chew marks in some cardboard boxes, there was a serious “yuck factor.”  I couldn’t bear the thought of some little wild critter, infested with all kinds of parasites, peeing or pooping all over my counters, pantry and food.  Mice can spread all kinds of diseases, like salmonellosis,  Lyme disease, rickettsialpox, and many others.

I donned gloves and a mask and attacked the pantry, searching through everything for any traces of mouse activity.  Cans were okay, as long as I washed them before I opened them.  Any boxes or bags that had chew marks were thrown away.  After a lot of work and sorting, I had a couple of garbage bags full of food that was either contaminated or possibly contaminated, and it made me angry to have to throw out that much food.  I knew how I’d get rid of the mice.  I washed my hands and made a phone call to a professional wildlife removal company.  Let them chase down and get rid of every mouse.  I have enough work on my hands with all this cleaning.

I put on a new pair of gloves and a mask and worked to sanitize the shelves and floor.  Hey, I needed to clean out the pantry anyway, I thought to myself, trying to find the silver lining.  The kitchen countertops were full of the food I figured was okay.  I’d even found an old bottle of honey with just a little bit of honey in the bottom.  I’d put it upside-down in a juice glass to let the honey out.

As I finished sanitizing the pantry, I figured I would sweeten some tea with the honey and wait for the wildlife removal expert to arrive.  I turned to reach for the honey and that’s when I saw it.  One of the mice was bold enough to come out in the kitchen while I was working, attracted by the food set out on the counter.  Its tail got stuck in the honey that had leaked out into the juice glass, and it couldn’t run away.  It was the craziest thing!  Of course, its little paws couldn’t get enough purchase on the granite countertop for it to pull itself free, so there it sat.  Its tail looped up into glass, its nose quivering with the scent of all that food, every now and then trying to run, but with no luck.

As I said, it would have been hilarious, but I had just spent a long time cleaning up after it and throwing my food out.  My sense of humor was a little frayed, but I did appreciate the irony.  So did the guy who came out to get rid of the mice from my house.

Mice

How to Get Rid of Mice

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how to get rid of mice
            My unintentional solution to how to get rid of mice would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so gross. 

            I’m not the kind of person to go squealing away or jumping up in chairs when I see something like a mouse, spider or snake.  But, when I noticed mouse droppings in my pantry, and little chew marks in some cardboard boxes, there was a serious “yuck factor.”  I couldn’t bear the thought of some little wild critter, infested with all kinds of parasites, peeing or pooping all over my counters, pantry and food.  Mice can spread all kinds of diseases, like salmonellosis,  Lyme disease, rickettsialpox, and many others.

            I donned gloves and a mask and attacked the pantry, searching through everything for any traces of mouse activity.  Cans were okay, as long as I washed them before I opened them.  Any boxes or bags that had chew marks were thrown away.  After a lot of work and sorting, I had a couple of garbage bags full of food that was either contaminated or possibly contaminated, and it made me angry to have to throw out that much food.  I knew how I’d get rid of the mice.  I washed my hands and made a phone call to a professional wildlife removal company.  Let them chase down and get rid of every mouse.  I have enough work on my hands with all this cleaning.

            I put on a new pair of gloves and a mask and worked to sanitize the shelves and floor.  Hey, I needed to clean out the pantry anyway, I thought to myself, trying to find the silver lining.  The kitchen countertops were full of the food I figured was okay.  I’d even found an old bottle of honey with just a little bit of honey in the bottom.  I’d put it upside-down in a juice glass to let the honey out. 

            As I finished sanitizing the pantry, I figured I would sweeten some tea with the honey and wait for the wildlife removal expert to arrive.  I turned to reach for the honey and that’s when I saw it.  One of the mice was bold enough to come out in the kitchen while I was working, attracted by the food set out on the counter.  Its tail got stuck in the honey that had leaked out into the juice glass, and it couldn’t run away.  It was the craziest thing!  Of course, its little paws couldn’t get enough purchase on the granite countertop for it to pull itself free, so there it sat.  Its tail looped up into glass, its nose quivering with the scent of all that food, every now and then trying to run, but with no luck. 

            As I said, it would have been hilarious, but I had just spent a long time cleaning up after it and throwing my food out.  My sense of humor was a little frayed, but I did appreciate the irony.  So did the guy who came out to get rid of the mice from my house.

Mice

Mouse Removal

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mouse removal
I’ve done a lot of mice removal in my job at pest control, and my favorite thing to do is train the new guy!  Most of our house calls end up pretty standard.  We just see the proof that mice have been there.  Tons and tons of mouse droppings.  Looks like little black grains of rice scattered all over, and the stuff can be pretty toxic if it’s not cleaned up right.  Usually, that’s all we see before we set up the traps, but every now and then, I get to see a grown man scream like a little girl.  It’s the best part of my job.

            We pulled up in front of the nice house.  It was this kid’s first day on the job.  We introduced ourselves to the homeowner, and she told us the standard story about spotting mouse droppings under the kitchen sink, right where she keeps the garbage.  She said she knew they had a mouse problem, but she called for mice removal the day she reached in to throw something away and a mouse jumped right over her hand. 

            She told us the story while laughing at herself.  She said she could handle most things like snakes and spiders, and she even likes pet mice.  But, have a wild one leap unexpectedly out of your garbage can and over your hand.  She laughed and admitted she didn’t handle that as well as she thought she would.  I think she said screaming was involved. 

            It was time to have the new kid look under the sink.  He needed to clean up the droppings and set the traps for mice removal, all while keeping an eye out for tiny holes that might be the “front door” for the mice.  He reached in to grab the garbage can and, wouldn’t ya know it, the can had two tiny little occupants that didn’t like being moved.  They jumped out at him, squeaking, and sent the kid tripping over himself backwards, screaming like a little girl.  Just another perk of the job!

            Of course, we caught those two mice for the nice lady, who’d quickly retreated to perch on a chair, cleaned up the droppings, set traps and plugged the hole we found.  I never let the kid live that one down, though!  We teased him about it for years.  I never did bother to tell him about the first time I’d had a mouse jump out at me, but no need to bring up the past, right?