Wildlife // Living in Harmony With Wildlife
Living in Harmony With House Mice
Mice and rats are complex, unique individuals with the capacity to experience a wide range of emotions. As highly intelligent as our canine friends, they're natural students who excel at learning and understanding concepts.
Mice and rats are often forced into human environments when their natural habitats are lost to development. We owe it to these gentle, social animals to do all that we can to peacefully coexist with them.
About Mice and Rats
Much like us, mice and rats are highly social creatures. They become attached to each other, love their families, and enjoy playing, wrestling, and sleeping curled up together. Despite the stereotypes of being "dirty" or "diseased," mice and rats are fastidiously clean animals who groom themselves several times a day and are less likely than dogs or cats to catch and transmit parasites and viruses. These nocturnal animals are found throughout North America and are extraordinarily successful in adapting to human environments. Rats can slip into buildings through quarter-size holes, and mice can squeeze into dime-size holes.
Did You Know?
- Rats are very playful, love to be tickled, and make chirping noises that sound like laughter.
- Mice and rats are so smart that they can recognize their names and respond when called.
- Female mice with litters will vigorously defend their nests and young.
- Rats naturally have a pleasant perfume-like scent.
- Rats have excellent memories, and once rats learn a navigation route, they never forget it.
Solving Conflicts Compassionately
'Rodent-Proof' Your Home: Keeping rodents from entering your house is the most important step in an integrated rodent-management program—live-trapping rodents will become an endless cycle if you do not rodent-proof the area of concern. You can usually figure out where the animals are entering by carefully observing their behavior—for example, whether the animals always scatter to the same spot when you enter a room where you've seen them before. Eliminating the animals' food source is also crucial. Here are a few basic tips:
- Seal holes larger than 0.25 inches in diameter, cracks in the walls and floors, and spaces around doors, windows, and plumbing.
- Keep counter surfaces, floors, and cabinets free of crumbs or food droppings.
- Never feed companion animals outside, and if you feed birds, always use a seed-catching tray under your bird feeders.
- Keep bushes, plants, and piles of wood at least 1.5 feet from the house to allow a clearing between them and the building—these all make perfect nesting areas for mice and rats.
- Deter rodents from places that can't be mouse- or rat-proofed (such as vehicle engines) with a mixture of salad oil, garlic, horseradish, and cayenne pepper. Let this sit for four days, then strain it into a spray bottle and spray it on the desired area. Moth balls and peppermint oil-soaked cotton balls also work well.
Live-Trapping Rats and Mice: After rodent-proofing the building, any animals who remain in a building or structure should be live-trapped and released outside. Poisons, sticky glue traps, and snap traps cause rodents and other animals intense suffering and agonizing deaths. Many hardware stores and humane societies carry live mousetraps—PETA also sells live traps for mice—but you can also make an effective, humane mouse trap with a few items around your home:
- Place dry oatmeal and peanut butter in a small plastic wastebasket in an area that is frequented by rodents. Provide the mice with a stack of bricks or books to climb up on, and they will jump in but won't be able to climb back out.
- Check the trap often. The mice will be hungry, thirsty, and frightened, and may die if left in the trap too long.
- Put on heavy gloves, take the garbage can outside, and release mice at least 100 feet from the building, in a park, wooded area, or meadow.
- Clean the garbage can and/or live trap and the areas that rodents have been frequenting with a mild bleach solution.
To live-trap rats, purchase a couple of Havahart Chipmunk Traps #0745 from Tomahawk Live-Trap company (www.livetrap.com) and bait them with Trapper's Choice Loganberry Paste, which can be ordered from U-Spray at 1-800-877-7290.
To capture rats, spread a dab of peanut butter on a 0.5-inch-by-1-inch wooden block, and place a dab of the Loganberry Paste on top of the peanut butter. Then place the baited block in the back of the trap and set the traps against walls in areas frequented by the rats, i.e., places where you've seen droppings in the past. The traps must be checked frequently—at least three times a day!
When a rat is captured, a towel should be placed over the trap to keep the animal calm. Then the captured rat should be transported and released at a designated release site or in a wooded area close by. (In urban areas, rats can also be euthanized by barbiturate injection by a veterinarian or a qualified animal-shelter technician.) After you've released the animals, reset the traps and continue to keep them baited. If the baited traps are set for two weeks without being touched and there are no more signs of rats (i.e., droppings), that's a pretty good indication that the rats have been removed successfully.
Mice and rats deserve our compassion and respect, and we must use humane methods to solve problems with rodent "roommates." For more information, please visit HelpingAnimals.com.
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