Your House, Their Nest

Let's see what winter has brought us.

That will be the attitude of many second-home owners in the next few weeks as they open their houses for the summer. Some will encounter evidence that their houses did not sit empty last winter.

There might be oddly precise circular holes in walls or food containers. Or scampering noises in a wall or ceiling. And the tell-tale sign – quarter-inch-long droppings – that means you have mice. All they needed for entry was a 5p-size hole somewhere, or perhaps a small gap left by a too-short weather strip at the bottom of a door.

They probably arrived when the weather got cold, and have been nesting and reproducing in comfort all winter. Now the task is to hunt them down and get rid of them.

Check the bottoms of upholstered furniture to see if they've tunneled in to build nests or to remove material for nests elsewhere. Go through every room, every nook, every closet and cupboard. Mice usually stay close to their nests and do most of their foraging within a 30-to-35-foot radius.

Once you've found where they are active, you have to get rid of them. A trip to almost any DIY store will introduce you to a range of traps and poisons. There are battery-powered traps that electrocute them and the classic spring-activated wire traps and similar clamplike plastic traps. Poisons are another possibility, but the mice might end up dead and reeking inside a wall, and you have to be careful that pets and small children won't have access to the poison.

When the mice are gone, you need to make the house more mouse-resistant:

1. Remove tall grasses and low shrubs from around the house.
2. Mice have an aversion to mint, so that's a good planting both for pest control and summertime cocktails.
3. Keep sheds and garages free of clutter that might create a nesting area.

The idea is to discourage mice from taking up residence within striking distance of your house.

Then go around the perimeter of your house and look for problems, especially holes within two feet of the ground. Fill openings in the foundation wall with concrete. Small holes can also be filled with steel wool, which mice detest.

Next, check for holes inside your basement or crawl space, especially gaps where pipes go up into the house. Push steel wool tightly into those spaces. Then go room to room, putting more steel wool where radiator pipes and water pipes go through floors or walls.

But what if those droppings you first saw are larger, say three-fourths of an inch? Then you probably have rats. Many anti-mouse measures are also effective against rats, but most people are probably more comfortable hiring a pest control professional to clear them out. And what you think is a mouse or rat infestation might be something else.

"Sure, we have mice and rats," said Pete Jameson, who owns Dynamic Pest Control. "Loads of them." But the real problems for second-home owners are grey squirrels.

In March and early April, pregnant squirrels are doing everything they can to find good nesting spots, and that often means breaking into houses. "They look for any kind of weakness in a house: gable vents, soffit vents, any kind of loose trim," Mr. Jameson said. "Then squirrels give birth in March and early April, and the beginning of May. So by June, the young ones are beginning to scamper around."

That's when homeowners know they have trouble: the sounds of animals scratching or scampering around at night, often in the attic.

Squirrels are captured in traps when possible. They can get into walls and ceilings, and the only way to get them out is to cut holes through the wallboard and reach into dark spaces.

Once the initial expense of pest removal has been completed, there will be additional expense in making repairs to discourage another invasion. Once that's done, summer can start. Just hope the hammock hasn’t been chewed up.

Article provided by Dynamic Pest Control