If you suspect you have mice in your Anaheim home, you may be nervous about hiring an exterminator. You don't know if they'll use lethal or non-lethal traps, whether they'll use bait that will leave hundreds of dead mice in your walls, or what their policies are about retreating if necessary. That's okay; we'll tell you what you should know before hiring professionals to deal with your mouse infestation.
In this handy guide, you'll learn what mice look like, why it's so dangerous to have mice in your home, how exterminators get rid of mice, and the most effective way to get mice out of your home. Sneak peek time: That last one? It's calling in a professional Anaheim pest control company like A-1 Bonded Termite to help you eradicate the problem.
What Do Mice Look Like?
Mouse identification is important, so your pest control company knows what it's dealing with. There are two primary kinds of mice that invade homes in the Anaheim area: deer mice and house mice.
Deer mice are so named because their coat's appearance is similar to that of deer. Their backs are brown with gray and black hairs mixed in, and they have white chests and bellies. Their tails are bicolored, half brown and half white. They're about 5 to 8 inches long from their nose to the tip of their tail.
House mice are about 5 ½ to 7 ¾ inches long including their tails. Their hair can be anywhere from light brown to dark gray. Their ears are large and round, as are their black, beady eyes. Their bodies are round, and their faces are triangular.
If you see a mouse in your home, whether it's a deer mouse or a house mouse, it's a fair bet there are at least a dozen more you can't see. Mice breed quickly – a female house mouse can give birth to litters of six pups every three weeks, up to 35 babies per year. Those babies can start reproducing once they're six to eight weeks old, so you can see how an infestation can grow quickly. You need a mouse exterminator to help you get rid of the entire family of mice that's taken up residence in your walls, attic, basement, or crawl space.
It's Very Dangerous To Have Mice In Your Home
A mouse infestation is dangerous for several reasons: the diseases they can carry, the diseases the ticks they may have can carry, and their constant need to gnaw.
First, we'll look at the diseases mice bring into your home:
From mice:
- Adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
- Hantavirus
- Leptospirosis
- Lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCM)
- Tularemia
From the ticks they can carry:
- Anaplasmosis
- B. miyamotoi disease
- Babesiosis
- Bourbon virus
- Ehrlichiosis
- Heartland virus
- Lyme disease
- Powassan virus
- Rocky Mountain spotted fever
- Salmonella
- Southern tick-associated rash illness (STARI)
The other danger mice bring with them is their gnawing habit. If they don't constantly chew on things, their incisors can grow up to four inches per year. Mice will gnaw on your furniture, floors, walls, baseboards, doors, door jambs, and cabinets. Unfortunately, they also chew on your pipes, cables, and electrical wires. This can lead to severe damage and serious fire hazards.
As you can see, it's critical that you know how to get rid of mice if they've invaded your Anaheim home. You can do this by calling a pest control company like A-1 Bonded Termite.
How Exterminators Get Rid Of Mice
Even if you know how to get rid of a mouse infestation, they're still a difficult pest for professional exterminators to eliminate. At A-1 Bonded Termite, we rely on exclusion and trapping.
The first step is to seal your house so no other mice can get in, and the ones in your home can't get out. We'll carefully examine the exterior of your home and seal every crack and crevice we find with silicone caulk or ¼ inch hardware cloth so mice can't chew through to get inside. It's important to find every potential entryway – mice can squeeze through holes the size of a dime or cracks the size of a pencil, thanks to their collapsible rib cages.
Once that's done, we'll set traps at holes in walls or where we find greasy rub marks on baseboards that indicate mice walk along that wall a lot. We check the traps often, so you don't have to deal with trapped mice. We remove the mice from your property, so they won't be back to pester you again.
The Most Effective Way To Get Rid Of Mice In Your Home
The most effective Anaheim rodent control method is never to get mice in the first place. The second-most effective way is to partner with A-1 Bonded Termite to eradicate these disgusting creatures from your home. We've seen it all in our 46 years of experience, so don't hesitate to contact us today for your free inspection and to learn more about our residential and commercial pest control services in Anaheim.