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Michael Wienecke

Hey, so today we’re gonna talk about the house mouse or otherwise known as the common house mouse. We have some pretty cool video today, we’re going to show you a little bit later. But I just wanted to go into detail on kind of the what to look for signs of infestation, how quickly they mate, and just their habits alone and of course, controlling them. So Travis, take it away.

Travis McGowin

So the house mouse was originally thought to have come from Asia, but it’s completely widespread, not just in the United States, now. It’s in Canada it’s in, it’s pretty much in every country, and every on every continent, around the world is just a very, very survival adapted creature, well, we’ll put it that way. You know, it can survive and really warm temperatures, it could survive and really cool temperatures. But they’re typically, you know, not really big, definitely not large in comparison to let’s say, a rat, or something of that nature. Their colors rains, typically from you know, a lightest gray, maybe even a little bit of brown on the top of their bodies, and typically a lighter, almost white underbelly on the mouse. If you’re looking at tracks, there’s four toes on the front feet, there’s five toes on the back feet, they’ve got a pointed snout, or appointed nose, and really, really tiny eyes, and air and ears that stick up with minimal hair on them too. And their tails really don’t have a lot of hair either, mostly kind of scaly. So like I said, they’re very small, which allows them to get into places that they shouldn’t get into, we always tell our customers, you know, a hole the size of a dime. But you know, according to research that we’ve done, the average size hole on the small end is about a quarter of an inch, if it’s a quarter of an inch, they can fit through it, and they can get into some very, very tight places.

Michael Wienecke

Well, and if they can fit their head through, they can start nylon and shoe and working that around and making that hole bigger. So it’s funny how you said, thought to come from Asia. I don’t think we know where they came from, honestly, because I mean, with shipping routes and all that they’ve come in trucks that come in boats, all over the place, I find that interesting that they think that it come came from Asia

Travis McGowin

well in shipping, you know, the primary, the primary way that they enter most of your commercial facilities, when you talk about warehouses, you talk about restaurants, you talk about places like that, is through shipping, you know, they may hide inside of a pallet that is, you know, trucked across, you know, from one state to another to be delivered. And then, of course, you know, coming in from the outside, open doors, or from around H back entries, or electrical or other utility entries, plumbing injuries, you know, they’re very, very good at finding, you know, a place to enter into these buildings. And like you said, like what you said, so if the hole isn’t big enough, they may decide to just know, at larger two, they can get in and I actually do have a picture. So I was called out this week to a local childcare facility. And they actually physically saw mice running through the building, which was kind of comical because the kids got to see the mice to which I do have a little video footage of that, that we’ll share here in a minute.

Michael Wienecke

The right place at the right time.

Travis McGowin

Exactly. But I do have this photo here to show you what I found in one of the closets in a multipurpose room. So check this out. So this closet backs right up to another closet that opens door to the outside of the building. It’s like a utility room where they have water heaters and outside objects for play and keeping just different outside toys for the kids. And the door doesn’t always shut all the way very well. So you have to really really force it close. I think sometimes it gets flipped open. But it appears that those mice came through that closet and then with there being no baseboards in that other outside outdoor closet. It’s like they just came right up underneath the sheet rock or right through where some of the plumbing went through the wall and then just chewed open the hole wider so they could get through and you mean you see these vinyl baseboards that they’ve stuck up on the wall? I mean, they’re really no match for a rodent?

Michael Wienecke

Not at all. That’s a that’s like a few seconds for them to get through. And that’s for that’d be in mice you know that. Typically when you see that you’d say that’s a rat hole right out right off the bat but that that’s they did some work to get into that.

Travis McGowin

They did you know in rodents always constantly have to know and chew on things. Their teeth are constantly growing. They have to keep them filed down to a manageable level. But there were we’ve called so far a total of three mice throughout the building. There’s very comical. I arrived that morning after they saw the mouse run through the bill. Holding the video footage that we’re going to show was just not long before I got there, it was taken not long before I got there. And we actually ended up hitting up one of the mice in a storage closet and kind of blocking it off in there. And I put traps in there. And then that evening, I went back and we’d actually caught the mouse. But yet the what’s the big problem, though? So obviously, nobody wants to read it. And you know, they’re there. A lot of people, some people think they’re cute, some people think they’re ugly, a lot of people just don’t want to see them. But what’s the bigger picture? Why do we not want rodents inside of our facilities and our houses and our commercial buildings and those places.

Michael Wienecke

So I mean, the biggest thing is going to be just disease. You know, they’re filthy, the biggest problem they cause they get into your food. They, you know, I’ve seen them wreak havoc in someone’s, you know, worst case scenario, a wrapping paper closet where somebody was doing all their Christmas wrapping paper, and they just shredded it. I mean, it was just so it’s covered in poop, pee, paper, baby rodents, just all that remnants of all that. So and then of course, like said with the food, they’re going to spread salmonella. That’s one of the biggest the biggest issues with with those rodents. So

Travis McGowin

yeah, among among other things, salmonella is probably the the main and primary culprit that is spread by rodents. They usually defecate or pee on everything that they they touch. And then the rodents are very territorial, too. So they go out and patrol their territory, leaving, you know, urine to mark that territory along the way, every single day. And so it just builds up. And I mean, you’re talking about one single rodent can cause a mess. But I mean, most of the time, there’s more than one. So you’re talking about an exponential miss. And it can just cycle out of control quicker than people realize.

Michael Wienecke

Well, it it’s amazing how quickly they can turn from, you know, babies to being able to have babies, I mean, you’re talking about, I mean being weaned off, what, 19 days, 21 days, and then average about 30 to 35 days, they’re ready to start making babies and then they’re gonna have eight, eight litres per year, around 40 to 50 Babies per year.

Travis McGowin

Yeah, the average litter size of a house mouse is about six, six offspring give or take. So on average, ideally, in nice conditions, these mice can have 4850 plus babies per year. Now, in a cooler climate, their breeding may be a little more seasonal, and they may kind of take time off from that until it warms up again. So there might be some slower months. But in an average climate, you know, much like ours, I would say that we’re probably having to deal with inbreeding year round.

Michael Wienecke

Well, not only that, you know, especially here in Alabama, you know, they they’re their commensal rodents, so they may live in the attic, or the crawlspace. And typically, we don’t get that phone call until they have that that major problem, you know, it’s not one or two rodents that they just didn’t see. It’s now five 612. You know, we’ve seen 48 before.

Travis McGowin

So a lot of times, attics are just kind of the perfect place. They’re dark, they’re usually undisturbed. If they’ve got especially blow in insulation, these rodents can kind of burrow out in this insulation, and make their homes inside of that, because it’s just nice, warm and comfortable material for them. The good thing about rodents, though, is a lot of times, I mean, and they may travel a little further for food, but a lot of times their territory is not more than you know, kind of 20 foot in every direction from around where their bedding is. So, you know as a homeowner, if you’ve got some signs of mice, you know, some telltale signs to look for the obvious things. You know, rodent poop, shredded, like you said in that closet with wrapping paper, shredded bedding material, that sort of thing. So if you haven’t caught a mouse with your own efforts by putting traps out and whatnot, if you haven’t caught a mouse within two, three days than the mice, that’s not the mouse his territory, you need to you need to start looking for another place to put a trap.

Michael Wienecke

Yeah, I mean, that’s the same with bait. So if you’re gonna put your own bait out or something like that, if they’re not