Unless you plan to have rats and mice as pets, you know you have to get rid of it before causing further damage or nuisance to your home. Rodents can gnaw on your books, documents, and your home’s drywall. Plus, their feces and urine cause a threat to your family’s health.
Rats and mice also populate at a tremendous speed and build their nest to accommodate their growing colony. To avoid possible infestation, the first step is to detect their presence. Here’s everything you need to know about rats and mice – and how to detect them.
House Mice: Appearance and Behaviour
There are a lot of rat species that commonly find shelter in sewers, homes, farms, and roofs. In this article, we’ll be discussing the house rat. Here are some of their most notable characteristics…
- Size: 2 to 3 and three fourth inches
- Tail length: 3 to 4 inches
- Weight: 15 to 30 grams
- Color: light brown to gray
- Head: house mouse comes with relatively small feet and head. Their large eyes and ears also provide a distinctive feature from other rats.
How they behave
- Since mice are nocturnal, they are mostly active at night.
- Mice can fit in tiny holes, making cracks on walls their entryway.
- House mice rarely climb as they prefer to burrow on the ground.
- These mice can very much nibble and feed on what they find, whether it’s soap, glue, or documents. Also, any available human food is a treat for them.
- House mice can also thrive without water on their diet.
The lifestyle of the common mouse
- A mouse can give birth to 4 to 16 young per litter. In a year, the female can reproduce up to 7 to 8 liters.
- Their gestation period can last up to 3 weeks.
- A mouse can live from 8 to 12 weeks.
How to Detect The Presence of Rats and Mice in Your Home
Mice and rats mostly do their activities at night. So, you’ll rarely have sightings of them running around during the day. However, here are tell-tale signs for you to identify that there are house mice in your home.
- Food scraps or wrappers
- Mice droppings
- Dead or live mouse
- Gnawed holes in papers, books, newspapers, or insulation materials
- Runways (dust or dirt that have been swept clean)
Now that you have understood what a mouse looks like, how they behave, and what signs of rodent presence are, you can take the next step. While there are many mouse extermination products out there in the market, why not save yourself the time and effort by hiring a professional team of mouse exterminators instead? Call Picton Pest today and we’ll make sure to get rid of your mouse problem for good!