The Problems Caused By Mice Entering the Home

By Bill Primavera

It’s not the most pleasant way to wake up, with a blood-curdling scream from my wife as she discovered that our trusty cat Mitsey had captured and killed a mouse and proudly deposited her victim on my wife’s chest.

Rather than celebrate the poor cat’s accomplishment, my wife instead restricted her activities at night from then on by remanding her to the guest bathroom. The mice in our historic colonial home probably went wild at night from then on, but at least we didn’t find any in our bed.

It was puzzling to us soon after when my wife’s relatively new car, safely housed in the garage, wouldn’t start one morning. It was absolutely shocking to learn that the reason behind it was that it had been invaded by a family of mice who had taken up residence in its motor as the winter approached and had eaten away some wiring.

That wasn’t the only time that mice had interfered with our daily lives. Some winters later we experienced burst pipes in our crawl space because mice had eaten away the insulation around them. Some years later, the entire pump and heater to our pool had to be replaced after mice had spent a winter eating their way through their mechanisms.

Most of us at some time experience problems with mice. It’s funny but almost embarrassing for us to admit it, as witnessed by a work associate of mine who shared with me the most alarming (and ultimately expensive) story of her own experience one winter with mice in her home. When I asked if I could share it with my readers, she asked me not to use her real name!

So let’s call her Amy, who lived by a lake in northern Westchester.

“I’ve been used to hearing mice under my floor when winter sets in, but this time around, I heard something completely different,” she said. “It was a loud, gnawing, crunching coming from under my kitchen sink.”

Amy said she purchased poison pellets from Home Depot, scrubbed the entire cabinet beneath her sink (“The yuckiest of kitchen jobs!” she said) put out the pellets and waited.

“But the nighttime gnawing kept on,” she said. “It was like someone was rubbing two pieces of rusted metal together.”

Next, Amy reported that something went terribly wrong with her dishwasher, wrong in terms of water pouring out from under her sink while it was in the rinse cycle. She just didn’t put two and two together. She called a plumber to fix or replace what she thought was the water line to the dishwasher. When the plumber pulled the dishwasher apart, there, in the water well at the bottom, was a hole the size of a baseball, with the rat’s signature teeth marks.

“This is war!” Amy declared.

She called JP McHale, the trusty pest management company. They came and put down the big black boxes and snap traps. A week later, there were a few dead rats in her basement.

“Their advice to me was to take down my bird feeders, which they said was attracting rodents which were then coming inside my house via the basement and coming up under my sink. And in the process, they ate through my sheetrock and pulled out a good portion of insulation in the basement.”

JP McHale next installed copper mesh and steel wool in all entry points of her house, along with a foam sealant. For Amy, the next step, unfortunately, was to buy a new dishwasher, one with a stainless-steel bottom and inner components.

Mice are one of the more common pests to be found in the home, not because we don’t keep a clean house, but simply because our homes offer warmth, food and shelter, and they have found a way to get in.

Entries are any holes on a home’s exterior such as those caused by air conditioning and electrical wiring leading to the house. Mice are good climbers. and if branches of trees overhang the roof, they provide easy access to the attic.

Once inside, mice can create a good deal of damage in a short period of time.  Their gnawing might start innocently enough with soft items like clothing and stuffed animals as they search for nesting materials, but can lead to the most dangerous kind of damage by chewing on the home’s electrical wiring, which can create a major fire hazard.

If you decide to tackle the mice problem yourself, I would implore you to use wooden snap traps, baited with peanut butter or Slim Jims, rather than rat poison. I say this because of a sad story related to me by a young, very sensitive pest control fellow I met years ago who said that snap traps are the most humane way to go for the animal.

“Poison causes the most agonizing kind of death for the mice,” he said.

If you choose to use a service, I would refer you to JP McHale, whom I used for many years, for everything from termites to bee nests in my walls, which was no fun either. If you’re being invaded by pests of any variety, JP McHale Pest Management can be reached at 800-479-2284.

Bill Primavera is a realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc. (www.PrimaveraPR.com)

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