Our Ongoing Rodent Problem Possibly Solved

Rodents are insidious critters that can cause a lot of structural damage, reek havoc on your food supplies and most importantly are vectors of disease.  Once in your home, they bring all their relatives too!  The most common sign of infestation is droppings but on closer inspection you will also find dried urine.  The best policy is drive them away from your home followed by blocking any obvious entry points.  However, they can and will gnaw fresh entry points if given a chance.  Baiting is highly recommend as is trapping.

We have had an ongoing rodent problem despite several visits from pest control services and our ongoing efforts.   There's a field behind us so when the field is planted, mice come in.  When the field is harvested, the mice come in.  Any time the field is disrupted, the mice come in.  New roof, mice still come in.  But we gained a bit by using carpenter's wire in the drain holes for the brick so haven't seen any new activity in the garage for over a year.  We narrowed it down to one problem wall.  Last fall, I jammed steel wool into any hole I could find along the field facing wall.  A couple of days ago, I was looking for jars so moved a few boxes and there on the problem wall was an electrical outlet with a good finger width gap top and one side as well as the cover fallen off!  The cover must have just been set on the outlet without the screw to hold it on by the previous owners and we didn't notice it.   So, to my way of thinking the mice found an entrance point on that wall then down the wires and out into the room via that gap. 

My solution was to buy a double cover, outlet and switch.  I put a bit of cardboard behind the switch portion to stop any air coming through then secured the cover to the outlet.  Next will be getting under the deck to check again for any possible entry points along the outside of that wall. 

I'm still not taking any chances.  All food is stored in glass, metal or heavy plastic.  Even non-food items like ayurvedic hair care, candles, soaps, soaping/candlemaking supplies are all stored the same way.  I actually lost about 2 lb of soy wax pellets to mice the first year we were here and they chewed through an expensive, hard to find katam (ayurvedic hair care) as well as gnawing on homemade soaps.   Mice have been known to chew through plastic.  Thank goodness we aren't dealing with rats as they can definitely chew through plastic and some have reported they can even chew through some metals.  

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