How to Get Rid of Mice Fast {and Permanently}

You might think that mice will go away on their own, but usually, if you see a mouse then they have already created a nest in your home.  After a single sign of a mouse infestation, you’ll need to quickly start figuring out how to get rid of mice.

It is certainly possible to eradicate mice without having to call an expensive professional.  You can do your own mouse removal with the advice below.

Dangers of Mice in the House – Are Mice Dangerous?

A mouse infestation isn’t the same type of danger as, say, a poisonous spider or a large predator.  A mouse generally wants to live in harmony with a homeowner so has no desire to cause any harm.  You are providing them with a warm place to live and continuously bringing food and nesting materials into the house.

It is dangerous to co-exist with mice in your house though.  They aren’t exactly the cleanest animals and can carry harmful and sometimes life-threatening diseases with them.  These are some of the possible dangers of having mice in your house:

• Possibility of spreading diseases (including hantavirus) and parasites via bodily excretions, saliva, or blood
• Transporters of mice, ticks, and fleas
• Tampering with food which can lead to diseases like salmonella
• Risk of electrical fires if mice gnaw on electrical wiring

Signs of Mice Infestation

There are some easy to notice signs that you may have mice in your house that may require further inspection.  If you have any of the following, then you could possibly have a mouse, rat, or other rodent hiding in your home:

• Droppings – usually found close to a wall, in cabinets/drawers, near nests and breeding sites
• Nests – unless it is an old nest, this generally means there is a mouse family
• Scampering sounds – especially at night, you may have the small feet of mice running in your walls, attic, ceiling, or around a room
• Pets Acting Strangely – cats and dogs usually smell and hear mice in the home before you notice and may start acting erratically
• Gnaw Marks – Mice use their teeth to create openings to access food and bait material. They also gnaw on things like cables, carpeting, papers, and wooden furniture to keep their continuously growing teeth short
• Burrow Holes – Mice will usually seek out an existing opening, but will sometimes create their own (like in cartoons). Check baseboards, room corners, and foundations for a small hole at least a 1/2 inch high
• Food Trails – Mice are scavengers and will collect food from around your home. If you see pieces of food where they shouldn’t be, it could have been taken by a mouse
• Strong Odors – Mice have poor eyesight and actually use the smell of urine to leave them a trail back to their nest, which has a strong smell. There is also going to be mouse feces all-around your house adding to the smell
• A Single Mouse – If you see a single mouse in your house, there is a good chance that there are others hiding in a nest somewhere in your house

Further Reading

• What do mouse droppings look like?

Inspecting Your House for Mice

If you have come across any of the signs of mice in your home above, you may want to inspect the house a bit further before taking real action to get rid of mice in your house.  You’ll want to find the “rodent zone” which is the high traffic mouse areas between the nest and food sources.  This can either be done by a professional or you can do it yourself.

Tools needed – flashlight, facemask, goggles, gloves

Optional – UV flashlight black light to show urine

Common Mouse Types

House Mouse – Mus musculus

The name says it all.  These are the mice that usually find their way into your house.  A house mouse is active year-round and will nest their entire lives in a house if they can.

Appearance:

• Color: Dusty Gray / Brownish
• Size: 2.5 to 4 inches / 65 to 95mm with a tail usually about as long as the body
• Description: Small head and feet with large eyes and moderately large ears with a long naked, almost hairless tail

Habits and Characteristics:

• Diet: insects, leaves, seeds, cereals, nuts, fruit, wood, roots
• Litter size: 5-7 pups per litter on average
• Breeding Season: Indoors – all year / Outdoors: spring and fall
• Nocturnal
• Lifespan: 1-3 years in the wild; up to 5 years in captivity

Deer Mouse – Peromyscus Maniculatus

Deer mice are usually found outdoors but may enter a home in the winter for shelter.  They are known to often carry Hantavirus and Lyme disease

Appearance:

• Color: Color can vary from reddish-brown to grey, but will always have a white underside and white feet. Easily distinguished by its bi-colored tail
• Size: 4 to 8 inches / 120 – 220 mm
• Description: Small head and body, slightly larger than a house mouse, with large black eyes and large sparsely furred ears

Habits and Characteristics:

• Diet: Primarily insects, seeds, nuts, berries, and flowers
• Litter size: 4-6 pups per litter on average
• Native to North America
• Breeding Season: Indoors – all year / Outdoors: spring and fall
• Nocturnal
• Lifespan: Under 1 year in the wild, up to 8 years in captivity

White-Footed Mouse – Peromyscus leucopus

The white-footed mouse is a close relative to the deer mouse.

Appearance:

• Color: White belly and white feet with a pale to rich reddish-brown body
• Size: 4 to 8 inches / 105 to 205 mm

Habits and Characteristics:

• Diet: Primarily insects, seeds, nuts, berries, wood, and bark
• Litter size: about 5 pups per litter on average
• Native to Nearctic region and are found throughout most of the eastern United States
• Breeding Season: Indoors – all year / Outdoors: March-October
• Nocturnal
• Lifespan: Under 1 year in the wild, up to 8 years in captivity

Source – https://animaldiversity.org

Mouse vs Rat in the House

There are many different species for both rats and mice, but the most common types of mice to enter your home are the house mouse and common rat intruders are the Norway rat and the roof rat.  Despite the name, Norway rats can be found all over the world.  They are the “sewer rats” found all over New York City.

Full-grown rats are larger than mice.  They are usually up to 5 times the size of a common house mouse.  They do not get as large as the rumored monster-sized sewer rats you may have heard about in Manhattan.  There is a physiological limit up about 2 pounds for them, which is still a giant rodent, but nothing near the embellished stories you may have heard.

Rats are similar to mice in their nesting, eating, and lifestyles.  The main difference is just the sheer size of them.  A nest of rats in your house will cause much more destruction and feed on more of your food than a nest of mice.

Rats also carry the same biological threats as mice, possibly worse though.  Rats also cover your home and food in their urine and feces that can carry parasites, bacteria, and viruses.  Rats are also well known throughout history as being responsible for bringing the Bubonic Plague to humans which killed millions.

Source – https://animaldiversity.org

Preventing Mouse Infestations

The first line of defense when dealing with mice is going to be preventing them from ever entering your home and preventing them from creating nests.  This will involve mainly keeping your home clean, closing any entry points, keep away food, and setting traps.  You won’t have to ever figure out how to get rid of mice if you never get them in the first place!

Sanitation

Good sanitation doesn’t completely keep mice away, but poor sanitation definitely invites mice into a home.  This doesn’t mean that your home needs to be immaculate and spotless.  You’ll want to make sure that all food is sealed and covered.  Crumbs should always be swept up.

You also need to make sure there aren’t any great hiding places set up for the mice.  A pile of clothes in your closet that never get touched or a pile of rags in your garage makes a great place for mice to decide to build a nest.

Shut Your Doors

Don’t make it so easy for a mouse to enter your house that you’re actually holding a door open for them. Make sure that you’re always closing doors behind you when you enter and leave your house.  Also make sure that your garage doors don’t stay open when they don’t need to be.

Seal Entry Points

Mice won’t always decide to use your front door to enter your house.  They are sneaky little creatures that can fit through tiny holes and will look all over to find an entry point into your house, apartment, or car.

To mouse-proof, your building all gaps, cracks, holes, and other openings should be sealed one way or another.  Inspect the exterior of your house for any possible holes that a mouse might enter.  The best sealant is a copper mesh that you can stuff into places like holes between bricks and gaps around piping.

Natural Mouse Repellents

We’ve covered keeping your home clean to avoid inviting mice in and also closing all entry points to disinvite these rodents completely.  The only other step to preventing a mouse infestation is to use rodent deterrents that make mice think twice before coming anywhere near your home.

Most mouse deterrents use smell or a sound to either scare away mice or are so unpleasant that they decide to move along instead.  Some of the best mouse repellents include used kitty litter, peppermint essential oil, Fresh Cab, and mothballs.

Read More – Natural Mouse Repellents

Introduce Natural Predators

This is perhaps the best way to get rid of mice, and you might even get a loving pet out of it.  There are two predators to mice that will scare away mice or kill the ones stupid enough to get too close to your home.

Barn Owls

The wise owl is also a ruthless killer of rodents.  A majority of their diet consists of small rodents like mice.  No, we aren’t telling you to get a pet owl in your house to get rid of mice.  We are recommending you invite an owl to stand guard outside of your home.  You can do this by either building your own barn owl box or you can get a premade one online.  They will watch over your yard like a hawk owl.

Cats

It’s not just a joke in cartoons that cats and mice are sworn, enemies.  Cats are some of the greatest hunters on the planet.  They are really just tiny versions of lions and tigers with the same ability to quietly stalk and hunt their prey.  A cat should keep mice out of your home by hunting the ones that made it inside and scaring away others simply from the pheromones in it’s urine.

How to Get Rid of Mice in the House – 4 Ways that Work

If it is too late to a mice infestation and they found their way into your home then it is time to act to get mice out fast.  You have to act as quickly as possible on this because you likely have more mice then you actually think.

Like we mentioned before, mice can carry diseases and parasites that can make you and your family sick.  The longer they are in your home, the more you are at risk of catching something harmful or fatal.

The gestation period is also rather short for mice.  A female can give birth after only 20 days of being pregnant.  If any of those mice in your walls or attic are females, they can get pregnant while you are waiting to get them all out.  If any of the areas already pregnant mice then you may have a litter of mice about to show up soon.

Below are the best ways to get rid of mice.  We recommend using these techniques and not relying on mouse deterrents.  Once they are in your home, mice are very adaptive creatures and will find a way to co-exist.

1 – Mouse Traps

Setting mousetraps on your own is actually easier than you might think.  The important thing is that you use a good mouse trap bait.  Some of the best baits for mouse traps include peanut butter, seeds, and chocolate.

There are several different types of mouse traps that you can choose from.  They all work well, but have different pros and cons like price, ease of use, clean up, and how humane they are.

Wood Snap Mouse Traps

These are the traditional mouse traps with a wooden base and a spring action that snaps on a mouse that attempts to take the bait.

Pros:

• Very Cheap
• Reusable

Cons:

• Messy cleanup
• Can snap on your fingers
• Not good with children and pets around
• Inhumane as mice can suffer
• Mice can steal bait without being caught
• Requires close contact touching or handling a dead mouse

Plastic Snap Mouse Traps

These are newer traps that use the snap mechanism, but clamp down on the mice with it’s plastic teeth instead and usually have a bait reservoir slot to make adding bait easier.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Reusable
• Easier to bait

Cons:

• Messy cleanup
• Can snap on your fingers
• Inhumane as mice can suffer
• Not good with children and pets around
• Requires close contact touching or handling a dead mouse

Sticky Glue Mouse Traps

Sticky mouse traps have a very strong adhesive, usually on a piece of cardboard or plastic, that a mouse gets stuck to when attempting to grab the bait.

Pros:

• Cheapest mouse traps
• Extremely easy to set up

Cons:

• Not good with children and pets around
• Requires close contact touching or handling a dead mouse
• Inhumane as mice die from starvation, suffocation in glue, or a heart attack from panicking

Electronic Mouse Traps

This is a newer kind of mousetrap that lures a mouse into a plastic box with bait and uses a strong electric shock to kill a mouse instantly when it is inside the trap.

Pros:

• No need to touch the dead mice
• Quick deaths that are more humane than the prior traps
• Can catch multiple mice per trap

Cons:

• Very expensive

Read More: Types of Mouse Traps

Humane Live Mouse Traps – Catch and Release

If you want to trap mice without killing them, there are a few different types of humane mouse traps that will trap a mouse inside of it where you can safely use the container to transport the mouse out of your house.

Pros:

• Humane as the mouse is alive and unharmed
• Reusable

Cons:

• Can get expensive when setting multiple traps

DIY Homemade Bucket Mouse Traps

There are some options you have to make your own mouse traps at home that are extremely efficient and can be made with materials you have around your home, so long as you have a deep bucket.  This trap can be humane if you leave it empty, or you can make it lethal by adding a few inches of water to the bucket to drown the mice.

Instructions can be found at: Humane Ways to Get Rid of Mice

Tips for setting mouse traps effectively

• Wear gloves whenever handling mousetraps and bait. Your scent will end up on the trap and bait which will scare mice away from it
• Place traps in areas of high mouse traffic where they are running, nesting, and feeding
• Place traps close to the wall – mice usually don’t venture too far away from walls
• Set a lot of traps – this significantly increases the odds of catching mice
• Set all of the traps immediately – most mice are caught the first night, after that the remaining mice are more cautious
• Set at least 2 traps close together in case a mouse trips to jump over one, they’ll land on the other
• Only use a small amount of bait on each trap so the mice cannot sneak a piece off without getting trapped
• In addition to high traffic areas, place 2 traps under the kitchen sink, behind the stove, and behind the refrigerator

Read more – Best Baits for Mouse Traps

2 – Poison (Rodenticide)

Poison is another effective option to kill mice.  The poisons that you are able to buy for mice must be approved by the EPA.  The most common types of mouse poisons are either anti-coagulants that cause internal hemorrhaging or metal phosphide poisons that react with a mouse’s stomach acid causing toxic gas.  The former takes days to kill the mouse.

Setting out mouse poisons are usually done in bait trays, baiting stations, and also in traps as a backup for a defective trap.  The poison usually has the scent and taste of bait, like peanut butter, that will lure the mouse into nibbling on it.

Poisons work, but generally is not the most recommended ways for how to get rid of mice for multiple reasons. If you have children or pets in your home, there is always a chance that they can be poisoned from this.  The mice can also end up dying in places you can’t get to causing a horrible decomposing smell in places like your walls that you can’t get to.

3 – Get a Cat

We mentioned earlier that getting a cat can be one of the best mouse deterrents available.  While the other rodent repellents really only work to keep mice from entering your home, a cat might be the only option that will actually get the mice to leave.  A cat will either scare the mice out of your house or start a war with these rodents that the cat will always win.

4 – Call an Exterminator

The easiest option to get rid of mice is to call an exterminator.  It is also going to end up being the most expensive option that there is.  If you need to get rid of mice fast and/or you don’t want to have to handle mouse traps or poison yourself, then an exterminator might be the way to go.

How Do Exterminators Get Rid of Mice?

Basically, a mouse exterminator does everything we have gone over in this article.  The main difference is that they are professionals that do this on a daily basis, so they are more likely to be more thorough with their pest control.

The mice exterminator’s first job is to track down the rodents and determine what they are tracking and where they are hiding.  He/she sets up traps and/or poison, based on your preference, in the areas they professionally feel will catch mice fastest.  They will also go around your home finding any entry points to seal them up so that after the mice infestation is gone, there won’t be new mice entering later.

A good exterminator will do a follow-up visit to make sure the mouse problem is gone and some will also remove the dead animals.

What does a Mouse Exterminator Cost?

This really depends on many factors so we can’t give an exact answer.  It would be best to find a local exterminator and call for a quote or see if they can come for a free consultation.  Some factors that go into exterminator prices are the size of the home, how big the infestation is, the process they use to get rid of the mice, and also how elaborate the extermination needs to be.

With that being said you can expect to pay anywhere from $50 to $500 for an exterminator to get rid of your mouse problem.

How to Get Rid of Mice in Cars

Most of this article has been focused on getting mice out of houses and apartments, but one of the most common places that mice nest is cars.  Cars that are left for long periods of time unused are easy places for mice to decide to nest.  They can sometimes even live in the trunk or vents of a regularly used vehicle.

If you have a mouse or several mice in the interior of your car that haven’t nested yet, then you simply just need to clean up your car of any food sources and possibly set traps for them.  If you don’t want to set traps then you can use deterrents like peppermint oil or even dog fur to scare them away.

If you have a horrible smell coming from your car vent, you may have a dead mouse in there.  If this is the case, then the best option would be to bring it to a mechanic that will remove it for you.

How to Dispose of Dead Mice

The good news is you have one less mouse in your house.  The bad news is that you have to figure out how to get the dead mouse out of your house.  Mice can transmit a number of very harmful diseases so it is important that you get rid of mice in the most sanitary ways possible.

1. Put on rubber gloves
2. Spray the dead mouse and the area around it with a disinfectant
3. Grab the mouse with the bag, turning it inside out so the mouse is inside the bag
   1. If you can’t get yourself to physically touch the mouse, you can use something like plyers or tongs, but you should probably throw that out if you do
4. Inspect the area around the mouse and add any soil objects like food, nesting material, or feces into the trash bag

DO NOT force the air out of the bag in the next steps as it can spread airborne germs

1. Seal the bag
2. Place the sealed bag into another bag and seal that too
3. Throw the trash bags into the outside trash can and cover with a lid
4. Keep your gloves on and wash them with antibacterial soap
5. Remove gloves, throwing them into the trash
6. Wash your hands again with antibacterial soap

Getting Rid of Mice FAQ

What is the Best Way to Get Rid of Mice in the Kitchen?

While you are in the process of getting mice out of the house you should take actions to keep them out of your kitchen at least so that you can make sure your food is safe to eat.  The best way to keep mice out of the kitchen is to keep food sources away.  This means keeping the kitchen spotless, nothing in the sink, and keeping food in containers that mice cannot get into.

Having a cat patrol the kitchen could be the best deterrent after that.  Other great repellents to keep mice out of your kitchen would be using peppermint oil-soaked cotton balls near around the perimeter of the room or using a fresh cab.

If you are in the process of setting mouse traps in your house, make sure to put traps under your kitchen sink, refrigerator, and oven.

How Many Mice is considered an Infestation

Technically a single mouse can be considered an infestation.  By a dictionary standard, a single mouse is infesting your home, which makes it an infestation.  It is uncommon for a single mouse to be in your home though one mouse means a possible infestation of many mice.

Are Mice Scared of Humans?

Yes.  Mice don’t know that you are scared of them coming close to you, even if you’re jumping on a table to keep your distance.  They see you as a monster 1,500 times bigger than them.  For all they know, you could be a predator looking to eat them.

Do Mice Attack Humans?

Generally no.  Like I just mentioned, mice are scared of humans.  They will keep their distance if they can, but if provoked, they may bite to escape.  This is almost only going to be if you back them in a corner or if you get your hands on them, like when handling a live trap.

Where Do Mice Hide in a House?

Mice can hide anywhere that gives them good shelter, but the most common places that they will hide will be:

• Inside walls
• Attic space
• Basements/crawl spaces
• Between cabinets
• Air ducts

What Do Mouse Droppings Look Like?

We have a full article here about mouse poop

Is Hantavirus Dangerous?

The short answer is yes. Hantavirus is an incredibly dangerous contagion that can be debilitating to the person who catches it and can lead to death. It is important that you properly handle anything that mice have touched, urinated on, or defecated on in your house, car, or office.

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