There’s a mouse in the house!

Three easy steps to a humane and successful household mouse control program include:

1. Exclude – For long-term success, you need to exclude mice from getting into your house. Walk around your house and look for holes or cracks in the outside walls, especially in the foundation. Pay special attention to where pipes or wires, such as those for central air conditioning or sump-pumps, pass through the wall. Go into the basement in the daytime and turn the basement lights off. Look near the top of the basement wall for any light coming in. Plug these holes with fine steel wool to exclude mice.

2. Secure - Secure all potential mouse food in metal containers with tight fitting lids. This includes dry pet food, human foodstuffs, bird seed and grass seed. Of course, mice are small, so a very small amount of food can last them for a while.

3. Evict – With mouse entries and exits now closed and mouse food contained in mouse-proof containers, your final step is to evict the mice that you still have in your house. For this, we recommend the Victor Tin Cat humane mouse live-trap, available through Wally’s Workbench online or at the WHS Shelter.

For best results, place the live-traps against walls (mice like to stay close to walls for safety and security). Bait the live traps with peanut butter and/or seeds, nut meats, bread and dry dog or cat food. Mice can be fickle; some will readily go for peanut butter, but others can be fussier about their food choices. Also place a small jar lid full of fresh drinking water for the mouse/mice in the live trap. Once they are set, it is important that you to check these traps often, at least every 8 hours, and liberate any trapped mice outdoors.

Keep trapping until you no longer catch mice. If you suspect that you still have mice in the house but they are ignoring the traps, try changing the type of bait you are using, or stop trapping for a few days and then start up again. It can also help to change the locations of your traps from time to time.

Where should you release the mice you caught? House mice are commensal animals, meaning that they rely heavily on humans and human-made structures for survival. We recommend releasing your uninvited house guests near your home – they are familiar with the resources around your dwelling. But make no mistake, when you remove the little invaders from your home and release them, they will not suddenly become “field mice” and live from then-on in the woods and fields – they will enter another human-made structure near the release site. But, if you have done a good job of exclusion, you don't need to take the mice far away; they won't be able to get back into your house. And it’s a happy ending for everyone – mouse included.

If you have any questions about how to exclude, secure and evict mice from your house, please call our Wildlife Hotline at 414-431-6204.

Please DO NOT use glue traps or ‘sticky’-traps! These traps are very INHUMANE. They leave an animal to die of dehydration, exhaustion or starvation as it struggles for hours or even days to escape the glue. Some animals will chew off limbs in an effort to escape.

For humane reasons, please do not evict mice during severe weather such as storms or periods of bitter cold.