Mice are known to cause illness in a home by spreading disease, harmful bacteria and parasites. This is a creature you should never have crawling on your food prep areas or wiggling in your pantry at night. But, before you run to the internet to figure out how to rid your home of these pests, you should know that not everything on the internet is true. I know. Gasp! The internet has good intentions, but sometimes it lets us down. Here are a few of the misconceptions you might derive from the "all-knowing" internet and how to correctly look at these ideas.
"Cheese is the best thing to catch mice." The internet has watched a lot of cartoons. It grew up on mouse after mouse risking life and limb for a piece of cheese, and it naturally believes that this is the best way to catch a mouse. The truth is, mice have a sweet tooth and prefer something with a little sugar in it. You're going to get a lot more success with some peanut butter, or rice, squished down on that mouse trap latch.
"All I need is a cat. They eat their weight in mice every day." Once again, the internet has seen too much television for its own good. Though it is true that some cats are great mouse hunters, many are not. You could buy 5 cats and not have a mouser in the bunch. What is worse, even the most dedicated mouse hunter doesn't have the ability to go where those mice can go, like in your wall voids and into your pantry. If you have the door to the pantry closed, that cat isn't going to do a lot for you.
"Throw down something those mice don't like the smell of and they'll leave." Umm, no, internet, you can stuff dryer sheets into every orifice of your house and sprinkle peppermint and tabasco sauce till the cows come home, but you won't get rid of any mice with these. Sure. They don't like these smells. But if your house has a food source they can get into, they are going to find ways around those smells.
"Use a bucket full of antifreeze." This is actually a brilliant idea. Thanks, internet! When done right, a bucket of antifreeze will kill mice. But here's the problem: Even if you make a good trap that won't kill your pets or harm your children, after you've done the unsavory task of emptying out a nasty bucket of dead, wet mice, you'll probably still have mice in your home.
If you want to keep mice out of your home, you need to seal your exterior walls and have a professional guide you in modern pest management techniques that actually work. You can't always trust the internet. But you can trust Thomas Pest Services. Our educated and certified staff has been solving pest problems in New York state for decades. Give us an opportunity to help you solve yours.