How to Catch a Mouse
Mice are small and frisky creatures, but on the other hand, they are a big nuisance as well. They eat your food and damage your furniture, books, and other home appliances by chewing them. These tiny pests can enter even a small opening and can mangle your costly items in the home. It may look like only one and two, but their population will increase at a faster pace than you won’t even realize. A female mouse can give birth to almost six litters at a time, and that too, up to ten times a year. The critters’ droppings and urine are unpleasant and spread potentially deadly diseases. So it is better to take action at the initial stage. You can deal with these intrusive pests by using a mechanical trap or homemade human traps.
Here is how you can catch a mouse and make your house mouse-free:
Buying and baiting traps: If you want to catch a mouse, the very first thing you need to do is to purchase traps and bait them. Here is what you need to take care of while buying and baiting the traps:
- Buy some traps: Several types of mouse traps are available on the market, including glue traps, electrical traps, and traditional spring-loaded traps. Their methods of catching mice are different, but they all handle them in the same way. You can purchase different types of traps either from a hardware store or online. Buy and use multiple tracks to capture the mouse. One trap will not work better, so you should have multiple traps in your home.
- People often use mothballs or poison to get rid of rats. But you should avoid using poisons as the mice will eat them and die somewhere, in any corner of your home. In addition to that, kids and pets in your home may also eat that poison accidentally.
- Also, the glue traps are an inhumane method of trapping, as the mouse will starve to death. They may chew off their legs and die somewhere hidden.
- Choose a bait: Mice love to eat cheese, but they also eat grains, fruit, seeds, bread, and other edible items. Mice love peanut butter, the most common food that mice eat. They are also attracted to high-fat and sugary foods like bacon and chocolate. The stronger the food item smells, the more likely it will attract mice.
- Bait the trap: Do not place too much bait in the trap. If you add too much bait to a spring trap, the mouse will eat it without stepping into it. So place a pea-sized bait in the trap.
- Find a primo place where mice scamper: Finding the right location to place the trap is critical if you want to successfully eliminate the mouse from your home. Mice usually live in enclosed and dark places, such as in a box or under furniture. They often scamper near walls, so all these dark, enclosed places and walls are prime locations for mice to scurry. Anywhere you see critters dropping is a prime place to set the trap.
Setting the traps: Buying and baiting the traps is not enough to capture the mouse if you fail to set the trap in the right place. Here is what you need to do for the successful elimination of mice from your house:
- Place traps: Set the trap and go back to where you noticed mouse activity the most or found evidence of mice. Now place the trap near the wall in such a way that the trap opening should be adjacent to the wall. If you are using a standard spring trap, keep the mechanical part away from the wall. Mice usually scamper along the wall, so they can be easily captured.
- Place several traps: Cover the high traffic areas by placing multiple traps. Even if you have only one or two mice in your house, placing multiple baited traps will increase your chances of catching them quickly. Place multiple traps in every location where you notice the mice’s traffic.
- Check the trap: Once you bait and place the trap, go back and see whether it captured any mice or not. If there is a trapped mouse, get rid of it right away; otherwise, critter droppings will create an unpleasant odor that will attract more bacteria and pests. If you do not check the trap regularly, the captured mouse may die due to starvation.
- Dispose of the mouse: When removing the mouse from the trap, put on protective gloves and a mask. To avoid lingering odors in your home, dispose of disposable traps in the trash; otherwise, this odor will attract other bacteria and pests. If you want to reuse the traps, wear disposable gloves and scrub the trap thoroughly with soapy water. Dispose of the gloves that you have worn during washing the trap and set the trap again.
- Clean up the contaminated area: After disposing of the mouse, wash your hands properly and clean up the contaminated area. Pick up the mouse droppings with a paper towel, scrub and clean the surface with soapy water to avoid the harmful bacteria.
Once you make your home mouse-free by catching and disposing of all the mice, make sure that they don’t get back in again. Seal all the tiny cracks and holes to prevent them from getting in again.
Mice are a nuisance and make your home unpleasant. They chew on electric wires, furniture, books, and papers, including important documents, and can damage your home appliances. Their droppings and urine smell make your home filthy. If you use poison bits, you will end up with dead mice in every corner of your house. So catching them is better than killing them. The best way to catch the mouse is by using traps.
In this article, we have discussed how to catch a mouse by using traps in great detail. We hope this article will help you to make your home mouse-free.