At the first sign of mouse droppings in your house, it is important that you take action as soon as possible. Mice can do a ton of damage to your home, especially if they start chewing on wires in the walls. On top of that, rodents are also extremely dangerous to humans (see “Why Rats Are Dangerous“).
So now that you know there is mouse somewhere in your house, you might ask yourself:
Where to place mouse traps in your house?
This is a good and important question. The placements of your traps can determine whether or not we catch the culprit. It is helpful to understand a bit of rodent psychology and this will tell us exactly where we need to place the traps.
Mice are very habitual and they always like to travel along the same paths to get from point A to point B. So step number one is that we need to identify what path they are taking.
To help identify this path, we need to look for mouse droppings. Mice continually poo throughout the day and part of the reason they poo in certain places is to mark safety. Mice also always prefer to travel along a vertical surface (i.e. they always like to travel while hugging a wall).
So if we find some mice droppings, we need to determine where is the nearest wall or vertical surface that they are traveling along. It is also advantageous to know that if you find mouse droppings in one area, it is highly likely that the mouse will be back since that area has been marked as “Safe.”
Once the traveling path has been identified, you need to ensure that the trap is placed flush up against the wall or vertical surface. This will ensure that the mouse will directly come into contact with the trap as it is traveling along it’s normal path.
Now, your next question might be:
What mouse traps work best?
I think it’s fair to say that all mouse traps technically work, but I much prefer to use one’s that are easy to set without fear of losing a finger in the process. I would highly recommend the Tomcat Press ‘N Set Mouse Trap. I’ve personally used these before with great success.
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I hope that this article has been helpful for you. If you have any questions/comments, please feel free to leave them below and I will respond as soon as possible.
Thank you!!
RKD
RKD
We have an exterminator come to our house to keep mice out and with his advice we have done the following
1) after having mice pick the snap traps cleanly and not wanting the mice to die in the walls, we have gone to sticky traps.
2) mice don’t go to the middle of rooms so we have traps on the sills of the cellar and the garage which is under the house. it is along the sills that we have caught all the mice
3) we have sealed every hole that we can find coming into the house to force the mice in one direction.
Since doing this, we have found no evidence of mice in the attic, tops of cabinets or other places in the house that they might hide.
Hi Bob! Thanks for sharing! Yeah having mice die in the walls would be the worst! That is typically more of a potential problem when using poisons versus any sort of specific trap. Great to hear that the sticky traps have been working for you. They are highly effective but I’ve heard some horror stories of mice chewing off limbs to get free from those, but it is pretty rare. And, I completely agree with point #2 and #3! Well done and thanks again for the comment!! RKD