1042 Reviews
Have you heard the song Silent Night? Let's ponder it for a moment as we consider what it means to have a mouse in our house this Christmas.
"Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright."
Silent night. Mice are a timid creature. Often, you won't even know they are living in your home. They are mostly nocturnal and will usually be chewing and foraging while you are deep asleep. If your infestation is in the attic or behind a pantry wall, you may never know you have mice. But more often, just as you're about to drift off to sleep, you'll hear them. It might be a faint scratching at first. But before long, you'll hear the thumping, bumping, scrambling, and chewing. When mice move around in wall voids they have no idea you can hear them, and they aren't at all timid. If mice choose your home to overwinter in, it could be anything but a Silent Night for you.
Holy night. Or more accurately, holey night. Mice are rodents, and rodents have to chew to wear down their incisors. That means while you're all snug in your bed with visions of sugar plums dancing in your head those mice will be having a holey night. They will chew through sheet rock, plywood, plaster, and food containers. They will also chew on wiring that runs down through your wall voids. This can make for a terrible home repair headache.
All is calm. When things become quiet and calm, mice go out into the open spaces. This is when they find food and crumbs that have been left out. It is also when they contaminate counters with bacteria and leave pathogens on your dishes and silverware. The CDC has directly linked rodents to several human-spread diseases like hantavirus, pulmonary syndrome, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, lassa fever, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, and others. This is not an animal you want crawling around your home when "all is calm."
All is bright. This one is for you. The bright idea is to contact a pest control company and have those rodents removed. Traps do not protect your family from mice. You might catch a few, but the entry points will still exist and you won't know if you got them all. Many times homeowners just get the noisy ones and think their infestation is gone. It is only after they continue to find droppings in the backs of their cabinets that they realize they're still infested. Get professional assistance, and make your season bright.