Diners In And Mice Out

In a city that is home to more than 100 restaurants, Cambridge offers diners plenty to please a variety of palates, including those with four legs, whiskers and skinny tails.

In an ongoing battle to keep customers in and mice out, restaurant owners and managers are on good terms with local pest control companies. Bridge and Regent streets are lined with decades-old buildings, many of which house several restaurants, providing mice with plenty of ways to get in and a full menu to choose from.

The main thing for restauranteurs to do is to make sure everything is sealed. Using the exterior walls of the building as the first line of defence, mice problems can be kept to a minimum, but many factors beyond anyone's control affect where and when mice will appear.

The most common way to keep rodents away is with routine and thorough cleanings. Keeping food tightly sealed and off the floor is not only required by the Board of Health, but necessary for thwarting hungry rodents.

As for customers who might swear off dining out after learning that rodent problems affect almost every restaurant, unfortunately it's just a reality of the industry. Every restaurant deals with foods and oils and all kinds of perishable products day in, day out – it's like a household kitchen times a thousand. When you have a facility that is producing something such as food 16 hours a day, there's a lot of problems. It's just part of doing business.

The best way to get rid of mice is to never allow one to stay for long. People have to take a proactive stance on this, and it is a continuous problem. Even if you skip one month of pest control the likelihood of your pest returning increases 10-fold. Telltale signs of mice, which primarily include droppings, are looked for at every inspection. Given the nature and size of the problem, a follow-up inspection is likely conducted within a few weeks.

The first steps to take involve rodent-proofing a structure and repairing any holes in the exterior walls. If that fails, traps are set. If that doesn't stop the mice, rodenticides, or poison, is used.

Diners should not judge a restaurant's pest problem by its cleanliness, or vice versa. Since a mouse only needs one-tenth of an ounce of food daily to survive, no matter how clean a restaurant may be, they'll still get mice. In the cleanest of restaurants, mice could most certainly find a Cheerio-sized piece of food.

Article provided by SDA Pest Control