Why Mouse Traps Are Not Effective

Having trouble keeping mice out of your home? If so, you’re not alone! We get phone calls from concerned home and business owners regularly who are dealing with rodents inside their properties. Mouse droppings, wall smear marks, gnaw marks and actual rodent sightings are all becoming common place throughout our service area, especially with the cold weather we are experiencing.

If you have been dealing with a rodent problem, there is a good chance that you’ve attempted to handle the problem on your own. Local hardware stores carry many different kinds of mouse and rodent traps, but are these effective? Here are a few reasons why deploying a few mouse traps may not eliminate your rodent problem.

1. Rodent traps are only effective at catching the rodents that venture into the trap. If your rodent traps catch a few foragers, then you may have taken out a small proportion of the actual rodent population present within your home. And because rodents multiply pretty quickly (gestation period is only 20 days on average for a house mouse), you could still have many more rodents in your home that haven’t ventured into a trap.
2. Rodent traps need to be set in strategic positions with specific baits to attract rodents. If you don’t have your trap set in just the right place with just the right bait, it may not catch any rodents at all.
3. If you don’t eliminate the possible entry points that are allowing rodents into your home, you could continue to have a rodent infestation. Tiny holes in the exterior of your home will allow rodents inside and if there are any available food sources (unprotected food in your kitchen or crumbs in your pantry) as well as a few good places to hide (clutter in your basement or boxes in the attic), you could continue to have a rodent problem no matter how many traps you set out.

Along with phone calls about mouse and rodent infestations, we often get inquiries from clients wondering “Are mice dangerous?” The answer is yes… and no. Mice will probably not attempt to attack you; the truth is they are probably more afraid of you than you are of them. But they are known to carry fleas and ticks and they are also known to spread many different dangerous diseases, including Leptospirosis, Hantavirus and Salmonellosis. Rodents are also capable of destroying personal belongings and structural timbers, as well as dry wall and insulation. Rodents have an intense desire to chew, because that is the only way to keep their front incisors short. Along with chewing on wall boards and insulation, they will chew on electrical wiring, which can lead to fires.

If you have rodents within your property, don’t try to handle them on your own. Contact the rodent control professionals at Action Pest Control. We offer commercial pest control and residential pest control to help gain control of rodent populations and we can offer prevention strategies to keep these pests from returning. For more information on the mouse and rodent control solutions available from Action in Evansville, Louisville and Lexington KY, please contact us today!