House Mice in Seattle, WA
House mice can be almost as destructive to a home as Norway or roof rats, as they will chew on and contaminate different areas of the structure. House mice are much smaller proportionally than rats, particularly in the head and feet, and will continually excrete their waste as they move about. The house mouse has a light-colored belly, but their other skin and hair color can vary from light brown all the way to black.
House mice will also reproduce rapidly, and are extremely mobile. Because of their smaller frames, house mice can fit into spaces as small as a dime. They will utilize power lines and foliage to gain access to attics and rooftops, and once within a house will use pipe chases and interior wall voids to move from area to area. House mice will eat just about anything they come across, especially inside of a residential environment.
House Mouse Habits
Rodents are problematic inside of any structure. While rodent issues will generally be more pervasive in areas where construction may be older and sanitation may not be ideal, rodents can infest any building. Recognition of a rodent problem is not necessarily a reflection on one’s tidiness or cleanliness; it is unfortunately a byproduct of living in the Pacific Northwest and requires expertise and care to manage.
Rodents are well-suited to the Puget Sound region. They have a high reproductive rate and compete well for resources with other scavengers (they have been known to attack other animals such as fish, birds, and other mammals).
Rodents can burrow long distances to obtain food and shelter from predators. Most rodents can survive a fall of up to fifty feet, making them fearless climbers and able to travel across power lines and tree branches.
Rodent Control
Rodents are not a simple pest to eradicate from a structure; they are intelligent creatures with an imperative to survive at any cost. Comprehensive rodent control should consist of four steps:
- Inspection. Thorough inspection is absolutely imperative to effective rodent control. The most important consideration in a rodent inspection is to identify all access points that rodents are using to gain access to the structure(s). Without a thorough understanding of how the rodents are entering and/or exiting the structure, effective control is nearly impossible.
- Exclusion. Once the access points have been identified, structural improvements must be made to correct the gaps or holes. These repairs can range from the simple to the complex, and should be checked regularly as they will often break down with time and/or increased rodent pressure. Exclusion should be performed by a trained professional with the most appropriate material(s) for the situation. Our service technicians bring their expertise and their knowledge of rodent behaviors, which is the ideal combination for effective rodent exclusion.
