What Mice Are Looking For

What Mice Are Looking For

Are you hearing strange noises in your walls? Have you discovered little black pellets in the back of your food cabinet? Are there tiny footprints in the dust on your pantry shelves? It wouldn’t be surprising. This is the time of year when mice enter homes to escape the bitter cold of winter. But those cold temperatures aren’t the only reason mice come in. Besides warmth, here are some of the things mice look for inside your home.

Safety

When those little, furry intruders breach your exterior walls, the first thing they’re going to notice is that it is safer inside your home. Mice like confined spaces that give them protection. In nature, they’ll hide in a tree, log, rock crevice, or a hole in the ground to keep birds from swooping down and carrying them away. Your wall voids are the perfect hiding place.

Quiet

These are skittish creatures. In your home, they’re going to settle in locations that are secluded, like your attic, storage room, pantry, basement, or wall voids. When they hide in these areas, they can get into stored boxes, taint food, damage insulation and other items, and leave their urine and feces everywhere.

Something To Eat

Your home is filled with food options. Mice have teeth that allow them to get into cardboard or paper packaged foods. They nibble on remnants left on plates. They can leap as far as 2 feet into the air and gain access to your trash. They’re happy to dine on leftover pet food, and bread that is not left inside a bread box is fair game. These are only some of the many food resources your home can provide a mouse.

Dark

Mice are mostly nocturnal. And your home has the perfect places for these critters to explore at night. When they do, they’ll spread bacteria and disease in your home, and carry ticks, fleas, mites, lice, or some other parasite to every corner of your home.

Since your home has a lot of things mice look for, when mice get in, they don’t usually leave. Reach out to Russell’s Pest Control, if you’re in our Tennessee service area, for industry-leading mouse and rat control. We offer one-time service and ongoing rodent control as part of our year-round pest service for residential customers. For more information, or to establish service for your Tennessee home, drop us a line. Our QualityPro Certified team looks forward to assisting you.

Why You Should Turn To The Rodent Control Professionals

Why You Should Turn To The Rodent Control Professionals

Fall is a beautiful time year, but it is also that time of year that mice will start looking to get inside our homes. Even though mice can be a nuisance all year long and Knoxville, Tennessee does not experience the extreme cold weather that all of the northern states do, the mice in Tennessee still take notice of the changing temperatures and will seek refuge.

Most commonly, you will experience the ordinary house mouse that will find a convenient entry point into your home in the fall. Your humble abode offers everything that the house mouse needs to survive: warmth, shelter, food, water and all kinds of things to chew on. Don’t be fooled by their cuteness, these pests are dangerous to your health and can seriously damage the inside of your home.

These mice can grow up to 7 inches, including their tail, have large ears, tiny beady eyes, and gray or brown fur, with a light gray to light brown underbelly. Another type of mouse that you might encounter are the deer mice, they are slightly longer in length,  will have a  slimmer body and have a white underbelly.

At no time do you want to share your home with a single mouse or a multitude of mice. They can be extremely dangerous to live with. They are known to carry diseases like hantavirus and leptospirosis, as well as introduce other pests and parasites into your home, such as fleas, ticks, and mites. Mice urine can cause allergic reactions in some people, not to mention the smell of mice urine and feces can be atrocious. They can contaminate your food sources in your kitchen and pantry, so be sure to check for footprints, mouse droppings, or ripped and torn food packages. Mice can cause fires by chewing electrical wires and cause water damage by chewing on plumbing. They can damage insulation, drywall, photo albums, furniture, clothing, flooring and much more, nothing is safe from the insatiable gnawing of mice. Having a mouse in the house can cause a homeowner a lot of headaches and a lot of money in repairs.

You cannot control a mouse population on your own. You need a professional pest control provider to do the job for you, and preferably before any damage has been done. They will remove existing mice, and prevent any new infestations in the future. At Russell’s Pest Control, We are a full-service pest management company that offers residential and commercial pest control solutions in Knoxville and Eastern Tennessee. Give us a call today, we would be happy to answer all of your pest control questions and take care of all of your pest control needs.

How To Keep Mice Out Of Your Tennessee Home This Fall

How To Keep Mice Out Of Your Tennessee Home This Fall

Have you ever dealt with mice in your home? Have you heard the chewing, scratching, and bumping noises inside your walls while you were trying to go to sleep? Have you seen the little black droppings in the backs of your kitchen drawers and cabinets? Or worse, have you actually seen a furry little critter running along the kitchen baseboard as you entered the room? If you have, we probably don’t have to tell how frustrating it can be to have mice. You know how they chew into packages, and leave a strong smell of urine in your pantry, storage areas, and attic spaces. It is no fun to have a mouse infestation.

Are you aware that, not only are mice a nuisance, they can actually be dangerous? It’s true. When mice find their way into your home, they can track in all kinds of filth. Before crawling around in your pantry, they may have walked through sewers, dumpsters, or a number of other bacteria-laden places. And, they also deposit urine and feces everywhere they go.

A few of the diseases mice are known to spread are lassa fever, leptospirosis, plague, and rat-bite fever. Mice can also bring mites, lice, fleas or ticks into your home. And, they never stop chewing on things. Never. If they accidentally chew on the wrong thing, like a live wire, it could spark a house fire.

What can you do to keep mice out of your home?

  • Keep your grass trimmed short and remove any overgrown areas. Mice hide in tall grass and weeds. Also, remove toys, cinder blocks, leaf piles, appliances, and other lawn clutter. If you have a wood pile, or stack of construction materials, store them as far from your home as possible, and get them up off the ground.

  • Remove food and water sources from your yard. Clean up after parties, don’t leave pet food out, protect areas where fruits or vegetables may be. M

  • ake sure your trash is secure inside cans with tight fitting lids. If you have bird feeders, keep them well away from your house.

  • Trim back any vegetation that touches your home. Mice and other pests use these as bridges to your home.

  • Inspect the outside of your house and seal up any gaps or cracks you find. Pay attention to areas around pipes, wires, air conditioning units, and other objects that pass through your foundation or walls.

  • Place wire mesh inside downspouts, and cover chimney or vent openings with screening to keep mice from climbing into these things.

  • Keep your house clean of any water sources or food particles, just in case a mouse does manage to get in.

  • Call in the assistance of a professional pest control company.

Here at Russel’s Pest Control, getting rid of mice–or keeping them out in the first place–is easy as pie, since our pest control technicians have a Category 7 certification for general pest and rodent control and wood-destroying organisms. Don’t let mice run amok in your home, get fast, efficient help from Russel’s Pest Control.