Did you find a mouse in the house? Are you sure it was a mouse, and not a rat? If you are not sure if it was a rat or a mouse, then it was probably a mouse. Mice are much smaller and much more common than rats. Rats are always near water, so coastal areas will see more rats than the average population. Mice are truly everywhere, and they are most common in the winter months.
If you have a mice infestation, then you should know that a house cat can't get rid of the mice himself. This is one of the common myths about mice. Mice reproduce very quickly, and a house cat won't be able to keep up with a rapidly expanding mice population. Your four legged friend may alert you that you have a problem, but you need more than your feline to get rid of them forever.
Mice infestations don't start in the kitchen. If you are finding droppings in the kitchen cabinets, this means you already have a bad infestation. You don't have to find a mouse in the house to know you have a bad infestation. You don't want to look for live mice. I was personally in the pest control industry for two years, and I only saw live mice on three occasions. Mice poop all the time, so you want to look for their droppings. Mice dropping are about the size of a grain of rice.
If you are trying to figure out if you have them, there are three places to look. If you have a garage, look along the walls in the garage first. You may find droppings along the wall. Mice usually travel along ledges and walls. For this reason, you should check all along the walls in the garage. They are very common in the garage because the garage door is not sealed well. The rubber that runs along the bottom of a garage door starts to curl up after a few years, and this makes it easy to get a mouse in the house.
Once they get in the garage, they could go anywhere in the house. You don't want to put holes in your walls, so head up to your attic. See if there is any activity in the attic area. If you have a pull down stair that goes up into the attic, you will often find droppings falling out of the door as you pull the door down from the ceiling. Check the door first, and then check along the rafters and other areas of the attic. Check inside storage boxes and other areas too. There are many areas where they may be hiding. Squirrel droppings and bat droppings are also common in attics, but mice droppings are the most common pests in the attic. A mouse in the house is often hanging out in the attic.
Mice are also very common in crawl spaces. Look for droppings on the vapor barrier and other areas. Sometimes you can find mice nests in the insulation in the crawl space. You may not have a mouse in the house, but they are very common in the crawl space.
The best way to exterminate mice is through the use of bait boxes and snap traps. You can also purchase throw bags with mouse bait. Place these along the walls in the crawl space and the garage. In stand-up attics, I like to place the snap traps along the edge of the floor. Make sure you do not place bait out in the open where other pets and animals can get to it. The bait needs to be in a protected box or bag so that pets and children can't get to it. If you want to get rid of a mouse in the house, you should use bait first.
