11 Home Repairs You Can't Ignore, Part 3

Here's part 3 of a series on home repairs you can't ignore:

Rodent incursions

If you hear the pitter patter of little rodent feet, don't turn up the stereo to drown them out. It's not just that rodents can carry disease and make a mess nesting in the tax records you've stored in the attic. Rats, mice and other vermin love to chew through insulation and wiring, Del Guercio said, and are suspects in many house fires.

The fix: Use traps and bait products or call in an exterminator. Mice droppings can carry the deadly Hantavirus, and rodents themselves can carry everything from salmonella to the plague, so professional help might be the wisest course.

We had a mouse last year (you would have thought it was a large snake the way my wife screamed) and I caught it within a couple days. Then, we had another one this year (on the first cold day) and I got him with poison (found him dead in the basement). I then expanded the arsenal against a possible massive invasion and added several poison boxes and traps. My next step is to get a cat, though we all know how expensive that can be!

One piece of advice: don't try those "humane" traps that catch the mice and allow you to release them. Why? Because most of the time they don't work and when they do, you release the mouse and he comes right back inside.

Click here to read part 4 of this series.

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Comments

[geoff]

This is something that I can attest to. Start to work on getting rid of rodents as soon as you see any droppings. If you leave them too long in your house then they can start to breed; only increasing the problem.

Taking care of the problem often isn't as simple as putting down traps. I had several mice in my house (due to construction in the neighboring building -- we lived in a townhouse) and putting down traps didn't work terribly well.

A cat is one of the surest methods of making sure that you can take care of the problem. They're also safer than putting down poison (especially if you have animals or children that can get into anything). Just don't be surprised if you find that they'll leave you a "gift" for their hard work on your bed or in your shoes.

Another method to prevent mice from even thinking about coming into your house is by finding any possible entrance (gaps in stucco, holes from the exterior of the house to the interior, etc) and repairing them. Another, far less humane, method is to fill the gaps with steel wool. The rodents gnaw on the wool and bad things happen to them.

I'm by no means an expert, but that's been my experience and some of the suggestions that have been thrown in my general direction.

Funny thing: My wife responded to the mouse sighting in a similar manner as yours.