Put your mothballs and steel wool away. They don't deter mice, no matter what you've read on the Internet. Here I lay out what you really need to do to keep mice out of your house and how to get rid of them if they're already in there.
I speak from experience.
They've always arrived without invitation roaming around as if they pay the mortgage, eating stuff I leave on the counter, going to the bathroom behind the stove. I've spent a lot of time researching how to get rid of my family members but neither poison, bait or traps work. They keep showing up.
Mice? Now, those I know how to get rid of.
I also know how to get rid of flies outside using this simple bottle trap and the best fly bait.
If you have mice in your house you're not gross, or dirty or living in a hovel - you just aren't as smart as a mouse.
The BEST way to deal with mice is to not allow them in in the first place. They start looking for a cozy indoor home when nighttime temperatures start to dip in the fall so you need to get your house prepared by late summer.
Table of Contents
How to Keep Mice Out Of Your House
The best thing you can do to get rid of mice is to not let them in your house in the first place. Duh.
Let me say you're probably never going to make your house 100% mouse proof, but you can at least make it a challenge for them to get in.
For instance I found a big crack under the parging of my house beside a window. It was big enough that a pig could squeeze in, let alone a mouse.
To keep mice out you need to go around the house looking for holes and cracks. And then ... you need to FILL THEM PROPERLY.
Mice can chew through concrete if they want to so steel wool is like a palate cleanser to them. It won't even faze them.
Find Mouse Entry Points
Mice can enter your home through a hole smaller than a dime.
Rats can enter your home through a hole the size of a quarter.
- Check the foundation for cracks.
- Rodents are greasy and when they squeeze into holes over and over they leave a dark mark around the hole or crack. Watch for that.
- Mouse poop around the windows and doors.
- Check for spaces around pipes and wires that enter your home.
- Stove and air conditioning vents both off the side of the house and the roof are often entry points for rodents.
- If you hear running around in your attic, chances are the nice are coming from somewhere on the roof. Check it.
- Look for gnaw marks. Both mice and rats will chew through wood to gain access to your house. Because they're complete a$$heads.
- Urine stains. Mice pee ALL the time and leave a trail. These pee stains can be seen with a black light. Buy a strong blacklight (UV) flashlight, turn the lights off and get ready to be horrified. Finding where the pee leads to can help you find where mice are coming in.
To Fill Foundation Cracks
How small of a hole can a mouse get through? If you can stick a pencil into it, a mouse can get into it too.
Here's what you need to do.
- Push a piece of metal (rod or crumpled wire) into smaller holes and then fill them with expandable spray foam like Great Stuff.
- Fill larger cracks with ¼" hardware cloth and then use the spray foam.
Handy Tip: Use gloves that are slightly more resilient than latex gloves.
3. After filling the crack with hardware cloth and spray foam, cut the excess foam off with a sharp knife when it's dried.
4. Do the same around pipes and cables.
Keep your yard clean. Remove any garbage, leaves or clutter especially around your foundation. Just doing this - making your yard less habitable for mice - will go a long way to keeping them out of your home.
How to Get Rid of Mice
(once you have them)
- Poison
- Traps
- A Cat
- Poison is effective but it's also a slow, painful death for the animal. Plus there's a danger if you use open poison and have kids or pets in your house. Kids won't eat broccoli but they'll sure as shit eat mouse poison if you leave it out. I personally once drank an entire bottle of motor oil when I was a a kid. Yup.
What if your pet eats a poisoned mouse? The chances are low but know that your pet could become poisoned after eating a poisoned mouse. Mice can only eat a few grams of poison a day. Even if your pet ate the entire poisoned mouse it still wouldn't be enough to poison even the smallest dog. Around 56 grams of poison would need to be consumed by a very small dog to poison it.
**secondary poisoning like this is more common if you have barn cats that have to actually hunt for their food and might eat several mice in a day. House cats prefer to get their food in a bowl.**
- Traps are your best choice for eliminating mice that are in your house. You just have to decide which type of trap to use.
- Getting a cat REALLY will help your mouse problem. It will scare them from coming into your house, plus cats are natural mousers. A lot of dogs are as well.
Types of Mouse Traps
- ELECTRONIC MOUSE TRAPS
**Best Choice**
These Viktor electronic mouse traps are my favourite. They electrocute the mouse instantly and there is a 0% chance that it will only be maimed or hurt. Of all the kill traps, these are the most humane. - CLASSIC SNAP TRAP
**Best Choice**
If you don't want to put out the money for an electronic mouse trap, your next best bet is the classic, wood snap trap. They work better than anything else but they're also the most difficult to set and use. Don't worry about it though, I'm going to show you how to properly set a mouse trap.
- PLASTIC SNAP TRAPS
There are a few different new fangled plastic snap traps on the market. They're easier to set but I have found them less effective.
- LIVE TRAPS
Live traps like this are little Hotel Californias. The mouse goes in but it can't get out. They work, but require more commitment from you. Check traps often and road trip any you catch at least a mile from your house. GLUE TRAPS
**Worst Choice**
Avoid these at all costs. They're gross, sticky, messy and completely inhumane. These pads covered in ultra sticky glue trap render the mouse immobile until it either dies of thirst and starvation or until they struggle to get away, breaking their little feet or legs off. They're awful inventions.
So now you know that if you have mice you're going to need to either put down a contained bait station, or set a mouse trap.
What Bait to Use
Electronic traps work well with a bit of peanut butter smeared onto the back of it. Around the size of a pea is all you need.
Snap traps can take a multitude of baits. In order of effectiveness:
- A peanut wedged in the bait holder so the mouse has to work to get it out.
- A dried kernel of corn wedged into the bait holder. Put a dab of peanut butter on it too.
- Peanut Butter
- Jam
- Deli meat
- Soft stinky cheese - blue cheese for instance
How to Set a Mouse Trap
- Wear latex gloves when handling mouse traps and food to keep human scent off of them.
- Slightly bend the hook on the bait holder that holds the pin so it just barely holds the pin in place without setting off the trap. Be CAREFUL and keep your fingers out of the way. Doing this to your trap will give it a hair trigger to better catch mice. And fingers.
- Bait the trap with a *small* amount of bait. No food bigger than pea sized. The best bait is half of a peanut or a kernel of corn wedged under the teeth of the bait holder. Peanut butter can be your 3rd choice but the others are better because the mouse can't just lick it off and run away. With corn or a peanut they have to work on pulling it out which is more likely to set off the trap.
- Mice run along backs of cupboards and walls because it's dark and they feel safe there. Place the trap with the baited end against a wall so the mouse can only get at it from the left or right as it runs along the wall. This helps make sure the mouse is killed instantly because it's coming at the trap from the ideal direction.
- Put out a LOT of traps. Not just one or two. Put them everywhere you see mouse poop but away from where pets and kids can get at them.
Video of Setting a Mouse Trap
Are Mice Dangerous?
Yep.
Mice like chewing on things: wood, wires, food, cushions, heirloom vegetable seeds lovingly gathered and carefully stored in paper envelopes for future generations to come. Also noses. I have no actual proof but if presented with a nose I'm sure a mouse would chew on that as well.
- When mice chew on wood, drywall and electrical wires in your house. That means you'll either have an expensive repair in your future, or worse, a fire inside your walls.
- Mice mark their territory by peeing and pooping all over your house. Which is gross. But also a danger in terms of the viruses and diseases they carry.
- Mice have parasites on them because of their filthy habit of being mice. Ticks, fleas, and other parasites all come into your home with the mice.
If you do get a tick here's how to properly identify and remove it. Since we're talking about pests and all.
Final Tip on Mouse Control.
O.K., so 30% of all homes have mice in them. Some of them even have rats. I'm guessing you want to get rid of them.
Don't rely on only one method for controlling mice. Use everything you've got. Your whole arsenal. And don't let your guard down.
Mice are super suspicious but not of the opposite sex. Ever. They are constantly having mouse sex and making babies. Like, non-stop. So as long as there are mice in this world, there's going to be a chance that one or worse, TWO will get into your house and claim it as their love pad. By using two or three of these methods you'll have a good shot at keeping the population in your house down.
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Teresa
The victor electric traps are the BEST!!! Every fall they start to move indoors. I put them out at the first mouse “sign“ (which means poop and other gross stuff) and pretty much catch mice every night. When I stop finding mice in the traps I know that I’ve gotten them all. They are easy and the most humane. Worth every penny!
Elizabeth
The only tip that I have to add, is to put your mouse traps out early in the season. As soon as the temps start getting cold (some August evenings can be cool), we put the traps around our house. If we wait too long to put out the traps then, the mice have a chance to come in, get settled, and make babies. We use both the Victor wood and plastic quick-set mouse traps.
and just in case you were wondering - basset hounds make lousy mousers!
Arlene Stopps
Hahaha! My daughter has Basset...and he won’t even go down the basement stairs!
Useless...but, he’s adorable!
Elizabeth
Adorable yes but, I sometimes wonder if our two don't just stay up and party with the mousies :)
Tony Poole
Great article! A number of years ago my wife & I had a flock of chickens. I am sure you know that chickens draw rats. So we put out rat poison under the coop. That seemed to take care of the rat problem but a short while later my wife found a live baby rat (or it could have been a mouse) in one of the feed buckets. She dumped it into the cage where our 12 year old daughter kept her 6' ball python, Sinclair. Of course the rat was a tasty snack for Sinclair but 2 or 3 days later the snake died. To make matters worse, it rotted from the inside out so when I went to clean up the carcass, it literally disintegrated in my hands. The aroma of rotted snake guts is something I will never forget. I still gag thinking of how gross it was. Eating a poisoned mouse might not kill a cat but it certainly did the job on our daughter's pet snake.
Jen
WOAH
Eileen
Poison is a slow and painful death for the animal. You may not want it in your house, but do you need to torture it before killing? Poison also gets passed on through the food chain from birds and animals eating the poisoned ones, or even the poisoned animal dying and decaying. It's another horrifying way humans are messing with the environment. Everyone thinks: my one little poison station...but it adds up to millions and millions of them. Use traps.
Kat
YES. Please, please, please no poison (for mice OR moles, as someone was asking about - moles don't even damage gardens and only cause aesthetic disruption to lawns, plus they aerate the soil and keep pests in check...people are insane). Even relocation isn't a humane choice (look up The Humane Gardener for more info). Quick-kill traps are the best choice!
Kat Boynton
I am in the middle of an ongoing battle of mice in the shed. I too have resorted to the old fashioned wood Victor traps. Tried many others but those horrid wooden things seem to work the best. Although I have not tried the electric ones.
I never wear the rubber gloves and won't fall for that one and here is why. Yes they can smell human scent. But they are not shy about getting into your cupboards or eating all the food on the counter tops that has human scent all over it, so why would human scent bother them on a trap. Just does not add up and I hate putting on and taking off rubber gloves, plus I hate the process of setting the traps, so at least if I eliminate the rubber gloves I will at least get the traps set more readily than if I had to put the gloves on.
I tried the live trap and release thing and you are correct about the commitment. After the eighth live mouse release my commitment and save the wildlife plan went out the door and I turned into a committed mouse murderer!
Never would I try the poison. It is the birds that I worry about. I feed Crows and Crows like dead mice. I do not want to hurt my Crows.
Bonnie Jane Harris
There's also a spray-foam product that's made to repel rodents, has some extra ingredient in it. I used it last year with success. Also -- my 2 cents -- you never have "a mouse". By the time you notice one, you have many fine mousies.
Kipley Herr
It is illegal in all 50 states to transport wildlife. There are some exceptions, but the reasoning is: 1. it may result in a more painful death (than snap trap) for the critter as they are in someone else's territory (incurring fights to the death), and they don't know where the food and water is.
2. It becomes someone else's problem
Karen
If you could link to that I'd appreciate it. I've scoured the Internet and there's no evidence of it being illegal in any states to relocate a mouse. ~ karen!
Kipley Herr
https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/scrap-trap-when-evicting-wildlife
This is not specific to mice. By Googling 'relocating wildlife' there is lots of info. I suspect the reasoning would apply to mice. We had a raccoon (who killed our chickens) - this started my search.
KW
I find it hard to believe this is illegal. We had skunks at our last house and we used a pest control / wildlife company that specifically provides service to trap and relocate wildlife using humane live-traps. If it was illegal to transport wildlife, this company wouldn't be allowed to remain in business.
Janet Dykstra
Wait...they can chew through concrete but not foam???
I'll come back for your answer...on my way out to buy an electronic trap now, bye!
Karen
They can chew through concrete if they have to. If they feel trapped or whatever. They CAN chew through foam, but if the mouse doesn't see the crack it generally doesn't try to get in. If it does happen to chew through the foam in an attempt to get in the house then it will be met with the hardware cloth inside the foam and not make it into the house. ~ karen!
Speckhen
Steel wool HAS worked for us, likely for the same reason - no crack visible to the mouse. Moderately fine steel wool, stuffed into the crack piece by piece by piece so it’s like the foam - no gaps whatsoever. Mice could chew through it but it’s so thick they don’t bother. My family has high chemical sensitivity so we’ve avoided the foam. 1957 split-level house so lots of weird potential gaps - but we put in the steel wool 5 years ago and haven’t had a problem since.
whitequeen96
I LOVE the electric trap. I had rats get into my house one winter and they were extremely destructive. Regular traps didn't work, but my neighbor gave m a little dog kibble to put in the electric trap and it caught TWO in the next 2 days! I heard "clunk", went to look and found a huge dead rat, neatly electrocuted. Just dumped him directly into a plastic bag and threw him away. Same thing happened the next day. If you've got rodents, these things are worth the money and are a god-send!
joe grech
I intend to get an electric trap as I hate poisoning them. Which type would you recommend?
Karen
Hi Joe! I've linked to the kind of traps that I use in the post. They're the Viktor traps. They aren't cheap but they last forever and it's instant death. Here's a link to the traps on Amazon.https://amzn.to/32HBEQC Most hardware stores have them as well. ~ karen!
susang
I use the rat zapper. slightly bigger (I think) than the victor and I have sent them back to be refurbished. sometimes mice go tinkle when they die and it shorts out the metal pad expensive but kind of just set it and it takes care of the problem. having a huge stone fireplace is apparently a welcome sign
SuzNKton
We have had a single rat, for four years now. We get that rat. And then get one more the following year. I can hear him in the attic. Last year he ate through part of my ceiling. Literally sends me cowering into a corner, crying for my daddy.
And mice in the garage. But they eat thru the rubber trim on the garage door. Why?!
We have never tried the latex gloves. Well, the hero hasn't. When I was having to do that kind of thing because I was the only one who could walk on two legs, i had a dedicated set of bbq tongs and just threw out the productive traps. Good times.
Mary
Thank you for the comments on the glue traps. I’ve always thought they were horrifying. Mice are yuck for sure but...still living breathing animals who will suffer.
Tine from Denmark
About 10 years ago I saw a German shepherd and her 4 puppies bleeding to death after the mother have eaten rats, that have eaten ratpoison. The puppies got the poison througt the milk.
The dogs were bleeding from the indside and the doctor couldn't do anything.
I will never forget it....
Linda Callahan
Our Shepherd ate a poisoned mouse and bled internally to death. The necropsy showed it was only a trace amount of poison in her system. It wasn't our poison but apparently a neighbor's mouse that came into our yard. Please don't use poison--it can go anywhere.
Megan
Vitamin K is an antidote to warfarin rat poison, obviously time and amount of poison will effect the outcome. Rat poison is an anticoagulant, Vitamin K helps blood clot.
Sara
What do you think of the plug-in things that emit a noise, which supposedly mice hate?
catherine
I've tried different ones and none of them worked
SuzNKton
Useless
We have tried them several times because I would prefer that the critters just ran away.
But they don't.
Karen
Animals can get used to anything. Mice, Raccoons, groundhogs ... they might be deterred in the beginning but then they just get used to it. They're not effective. ~ karen!
Sandra D
In all the years we've lived in this house (since 2003) we've only had mice in the garage and the wood shed (and I don't care), but last year we had the exterior of the place renovated and suddenly we had a mouse (yup, A mouse - ONE). My husband did use the worse method and I felt so bad imaging the struggle that caused it to fall off the shelf the trap was on. It didn't die of thirst or starvation, unless that can happen overnight. We never had a reoccurrence, but we did cover up the basement window that got broken. That was last August.
I've heard Irish Spring soap bars (cut up, I imagine) will deter them from coming into places. We'll try that at our campsite.
Auntiepatch
We use trap and relocate traps. We then take them out to the country. We do the same with rattle snakes. Living on a So. Calif. canyon, we get plenty of both. No poison in our house to worry about.
KATHLEEN HARTZELL
I’ve had to get pros in for rats, but now I have a mouse or two in the library that rents from our historic foundation, in our historic old house. You can imagine the openings that exist for these critters! When I first took over, I found gaps the size of Tonka trucks at the corners of walls where ship lap siding met...so I got my foam gap filler and got to work. But there are so many places where the library built benches and cabinets and who knows what’s covered up and housing mice!! Oh, the joys of my volunteer life!!
Heading out for the expensive electronic gizmos tomorrow after early am Rotary!!
Katelyn
This is a very timely post for me as I’ve been dealing with my first ever mouse problem these last few weeks. On the bright side my pet hating husband is maybe starting to change his mind about a cat!
Karen
Yep. Now's the time when they start moving in. I once discovered I had mice when late at night I heard something rummaging around in the garbage under my sink. ~ karen!
Mandy Kearney
That was great. I hate mices to pieces and the thought of them in my house makes me shudder. My husband and I built our own house and every little crack or hole was filled with foam. All the bottoms of the doors are protected as well. We are in a mouse plague area and so far after five years no mice thank goodness. Thank you for a great article.
Karen
You're welcome Mandy! And good job on mouse proofing. :) ~karen!
Tina
I remember this column! I promptly ordered the Viktor electronic traps, just in case, but have never needed them. Instead I have 2 terriers and 3 cats. Mice don't stand a chance!
Oh, and I refuse to have poison around. Years ago my dog got a poisoned mouse. It didn't kill him but it sure made him sick!