A house mouse is capable of walking on a thin wire and squeezing itself through a hole the size of a dime. With this in mind, it becomes obvious why just a single mouse in your home can quickly turn into a real hazard. When you add to that the fact that mice breed incredibly fast, the only conclusion is that even a single mouse is a signal to call professionals who know how to get rid of mice for your Milwaukee home.
How You Know You Have a Mouse Infestation, and How To Get Rid of Mice
There are countless different ways a mice infestation may occur in your home or on your property. Among the most common signals of a mouse infestation are:
- Small chew marks on food packages like cardboard cereal boxes
- Hearing noises in the walls or above the ceiling at night when you are sleeping
- Seeing a mouse scurrying around your home
- Noticing mice droppings in a cupboard or on the kitchen counter
Why Even a Single Mouse Should Be Considered A Problem
Many homeowners commonly believe that having just one or two mice running around their home is not an urgent problem. However, that is wrong. Even a single mouse in a home can typically leave up to 9,000 droppings all over your home every year.
Add to that the fact that a female mouse can have up to 10 litters each year, each of which can contain up to 6 mice. As a result, you could be looking at an explosion of the mice infestation in your home to a number of 50 or 60 mice in a short period of time. In fact, by the time you see one mouse, there could be hundreds more living in your walls already. That is why it is important to act immediately.
How a Mouse Infestation Can Affect Your Health
Mice carry diseases that can spread to humans. Sometimes these conditions spread through direct contact with mice, but more often they spread indirectly. You could breathe in dry fecal matter that contains pathogens or eat food that the mice have contaminated with their urine or feces.
Here are five examples of diseases that mice can spread to humans.
1. Salmonella
Salmonella is a collective name for several species of bacteria that can cause gastrointestinal complaints. Eating food contaminated with salmonella can cause diarrhea or vomiting. Most people recover within a matter of days, but children, older adults, and people with weakened immune systems are more likely to have severe infections.
2. Rat-Bite Fever
Rat-bite fever is caused by a bacterial strain found in mice as well as rats. It can pass through a mouse’s saliva if it bites you, but that isn’t the only way that you can contract the disease. If you attempt to handle a mouse, it could scratch you. The bacteria may be present on the mouse’s claws and could get into your bloodstream, even if the scratches aren’t deep.
Rat-bite fever can cause the following symptoms, which can persist for up to three months:
- Chills
- Fever
- Headache
- Muscle pain
- Vomiting
Without treatment in the form of antibiotics, rat-bite fever can cause long-term damage.
3. Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis
If you breathe in the dust polluted with house mouse urine or droppings, you can easily contract lymphocytic choriomeningitis. It is a viral infection that has the symptoms of a number of other illnesses, including nausea, headaches, a lack of appetite, and fever. LCM can result in neurological disease if left untreated, specifically brain damage.
4. Leptospirosis
Handling mice directly or eating food contaminated by rodents could expose you to leptospirosis. This bacterial infection can cause symptoms of abdominal pain, rash, and jaundice in addition to flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, and muscle pain. Left untreated, leptospirosis can cause serious complications such as meningitis, kidney problems, liver failure, or respiratory condition. Leptospirosis infection also puts you at risk for developing Weil’s disease, which can cause organ failure or internal bleeding.
5. Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome
As with LCM, hantavirus can spread to humans via the inhalation of dust containing particles of dry mouse urine or feces. In its early stages, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome causes flu-like symptoms. As the disease progresses, it can result in renal failure and respiratory distress so severe that the patient has to go to the hospital for artificial respiration on a ventilator.
The only treatment option for HPS is to manage symptoms until the disease runs its course. No antiviral medications are effective against it, and there is no vaccine. Since its identification in 1993, HPS has been responsible for over 500 deaths.
How To Keep Mice Away
Knowing how to deter mice and keeping them away is preferable to having to remove them. Mice come to your property looking for two things: shelter and food. You can deprive them of shelter by sealing all cracks, gaps, and holes in the exterior of your home so the mice cannot get in. This is a simple solution, but it isn’t easy because some of these openings may be very small and in places that are hard to see or reach.
Mice don’t have much reason to hang around where they can’t get food. Remove any food sources from the outside of your property by harvesting garden vegetables promptly, not feeding pets outside, storing garbage in tightly sealed containers, and cleaning up any fallen nuts or fruit from trees.
Inside the house, you should store food items in special airtight containers made of materials that resist the gnawing of mice. Glass and metal are examples of such impervious containers. After every meal, wash dishes promptly and clean up spills or crumbs.
Why Traps and Poisons Don’t Work
Many people turn to traps or poison to correct a mouse problem. These methods are unnecessarily cruel because mice don’t always die immediately. Children and pets can also come to harm from contact with poison or traps.
Traps and poisons are also ineffective against mice for the following reasons:
- Traps often miss their target, and mice that have escaped a trap learn not to go near one again.
- Mice reproduce more quickly than you can trap and poison them.
- Poison and traps don’t address the underlying source of the infestation: an entry point somewhere in your home that is allowing more mice to get in.
Looking for a Milwaukee Animal Control Service That Knows How To Get Rid of Mice? Look No Further Than Skedaddle
Skedaddle Humane Wildlife Control is a company that has more than two decades of experience in humane wildlife removal. The single greatest benefit of contacting Skedaddle to help you with a mice infestation in your Milwaukee home is that not only will your home soon be mice-free, but Skedaddle will also take care of sanitation and mouse-proofing your home against any future infestations. With Skedaddle you get the full, 100% effective, and reliable treatment, so contact the company today.