How to Prevent Rodent Infestations in Your Memphis Home

Home is supposed to be where you feel safe, cozy, and in control.

But it can feel like an invasion when uninvited guests show up, scurrying across your kitchen floor or chewing through a bag of flour in your pantry.

We’re talking about rodents, which can be more than just a nuisance in Memphis and North Mississippi. They can be downright destructive, posing risks to your home, health, and peace of mind.

With the Memphis area’s warm climate, mice and rats are always seeking their next hangout, and your home could be the perfect spot.

This is why taking a proactive approach to rodent prevention is so important, including:

• Finding Signs of Rodent Infestations
• Using Exclusion Tactics
• Keeping Things Clean
• Placing Traps in Areas Mice Are Commonly Found
• Hiring Pest Control Services

As a homeowner, you have plenty on your plate. You don’t need to worry about these small invaders entering your clean space and leaving messes, gnawing on wires, and even spreading diseases.

Let’s talk about signs of rodent infestation, rodent infestation cleanup and prevention to ensure you make your home as unappealing to mice, rats and other pests as possible.

Surefire Signs of a Rodent Infestation

First, let’s talk about what you’re looking for regarding signs of a rodent infestation.

Mice are usually light brown or gray with white bellies, ranging in size from 2.5 to 4 inches long. They have large, round ears, and their tails grow to the same length or even longer than their bodies. Rats, on the other hand, are larger, heavier, and longer than mice.

Keep watch for these signs of a mouse in your house.

Mice Love A Messy House

During fall and winter, mice seek warmth and shelter. They want a shielded place to nest and grow their families. They also look for easy food and water.

Your garage, attic, shed, and home can provide them with everything they need. If you look around your house and notice more crumbs than you’d like on your floors and food regularly left open, this could be a sign of a mouse infestation because you are asking them to stop by.

To combat this, since mice love cereals, grains, pet food, and birdseed, you want to store these attractive foods in hard plastic, metal, or glass containers with airtight lids. You should also clean crumbs and spills left from cooking and regularly sweep and mop floors and countertops to keep those temptations at bay.

Mouse Droppings

The droppings they leave behind are a very clear sign of a rodent infestation. Yes, we’re talking about poop, and mice do quite a bit of this.

Each mouse can drop up to 75 small, smooth black pellets daily with pointed ends. Since they don’t clean up after themselves, you can usually spot mouse droppings where mice frequently live, including kitchen cabinets, pantries, attics, crawl spaces, and near air vents or wall holes.

Rat droppings look a little different. They are shiny black and are ½ to ¾ of an inch long.

Gnaw Marks

Rodents gnaw to better access areas and keep their teeth the right length. Their teeth leave distinct marks. While gnaw marks alone may only mean rodents were active in an area at some point, they are usually found in the same area as droppings.

Mouse Sightings

While mice are usually most active between dawn and dusk, you can spot evidence of their movement at any time. But if you don’t see an actual mouse, you might see holes or debris they leave behind as they gnaw through dark corners in your kitchen cabinets or pantry areas.

Messes You Didn’t Make

Another sign of a rodent infestation might be random, strange, small piles of messes you don’t remember making yourself. For instance, you might find little pet food or birdseed caches behind appliances. You might even find random pieces of paper, cotton balls, and twine in hidden places.

These signs show you that mice are sneaking food or crumbs and attempting to gather materials for building nests.

Strange Noises

While “quiet as a mouse” is certainly a thing, making mice tough to spot, mice can also be quite noisy when they are moving in numbers and super active. Mice also gnaw a lot to file down their continuously growing teeth.

You might hear them gnawing wood, walls, or even electrical wires. You might also hear weird noises in your walls or see them scurrying along floors in the dark.

Rodent Infestation Prevention Strategies That Work

Want to protect your Memphis or North Mississippi home from a mouse infestation this winter? We’re with you. No one wants rodents running around their home, causing trouble, spreading disease, making a mess, and disrupting your calm and relaxing environment.

Here are some things you can do now to prevent rodent infestations, ensure your home stays secure, and help you keep rodents out.

Use Exclusion Tactics

Rodents love shelter, water, and food – things your house has in abundance, unfortunately.

But you shouldn’t have to change your lifestyle because it attracts mice. These necessities will always draw in these critters.

The solution? Begin your quest for rodent prevention with exclusion tactics.

A mouse can squeeze through any hole that is ¼ inch or bigger. So you want to seal or repair any holes or cracks that give mice easy entry into your home, garage, or shed.

When you call a pest professional like Lawn & Pest Solutions to inspect your home for mice, we look for these entry points inside and outside. If we find holes up to a few inches in diameter, we like to seal them with caulk and copper mesh.

This deters mice because they don’t like chewing on copper mesh. This can help prevent rodents from coming in even when you forget to clean up after crumbs.

Keep Things Clean

Exclusion can keep mice from seeking warmth and shelter in your home. However, food is also a huge attraction for rodents in Memphis and North Mississippi.

Rodents can be drawn to cereals, grains, pet food, and birdseed. To prevent rodent infestations, store these foods in tough plastic, metal, or glass containers with airtight lids so mice can’t smell or reach them.

But rodents don’t need big bags of food to be lured into your home. Any crumbs or spills you drop on the floor during cooking can be enough to entice them. Clean your floors and countertops regularly to reduce these rodent temptations.

Place Traps in Areas Mice Are Commonly Found

Set traps to prevent rodents. Snap traps can be placed in garage corners, enclosed attic spaces, and behind appliances—all places you might notice mouse activity. Place traps at right angles to walls, with bait nearest the wall.

You can also use glue traps in similar locations to trap mice.

Rodents bring filth and disease into your home and multiply, so now isn’t the time to worry about stopping them.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that rats and mice transmit pathogens that cause diseases that affect humans and, in some cases, household pets. These include hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, leptospirosis, rat-bite fever, sylvatic typhus, tularemia, Lassa fever, plague, salmonellosis, rickettsial infections, and tick-related diseases. But setting these traps properly as a rodent infestation prevention method is crucial to stopping rodents.

Hire Pest Control Services

If you’re worried about placing snap traps or glue traps yourself or aren’t sure if your mouse entryways are sealed properly, hiring a pest control professional in Memphis and North Mississippi can ensure the job is done effectively and quickly to help you prevent rodents.

In addition to these tactics, pest control services can scout for mice and remove nests or messes if they find any. They can also set up bait stations, which must be placed properly to work well.

Pest control pros use pet—and tamper-proof bait stations to ensure they are safe for use in your home. They also place them properly and check them regularly to ensure they are intact.

Pest control experts can also recommend the right tactics for controlling rodents and keeping them out of your house.

Keep Mice Away With Lawn & Pest Solutions in Memphis and North Mississippi

Mice can be pretty sneaky. They move along walls, avoiding open spaces. They are active at night, so you may not see or hear them, but they leave evidence of their comings and goings you might spot.

If you’re worried about rodent infestation prevention or rodent control, you’re not alone. No one wants the hassle of mice or rats taking over their homes when the weather cools.

Let Lawn & Pest Solutions help. We can assist you in preparing your home for a mouse-free winter so you can rest assured those critters won’t get in and ruin your peaceful home environment.

Ready to prevent rodents from entering your Memphis and North Mississippi home? Request a free quote today. We’ll review our options together so you can make the best choice for you. Then you can sit back and enjoy your home – rodent-free!