Hating “meeses to pieces?” — prevention is better than cure!

Recent rodent plagues have seen many of us — like the frustrated house-cat in the old cartoon, Pixie, Dixie and Mr Jinx — exclaim: “I hate those meeses to pieces!"

 Current western NSW mouse infestation has seen locals resort to mass baiting, mechanical traps, and the rather cruel and ineffective glue traps that can also ensnare native birds and animals.

 Well, the advice from pest control expert, Craig Kramer, is that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure!

 Having his central west home recently invaded by the disease-carrying vermin, he dialled back the baits and traps and looked instead to some long-term measures.

 “We have a feed and hardware store behind us, a creek in front of us, and two paddocks either side…  you can see them sometimes actually swarming-up out of the creek,” he said.

 “We had probably a couple of hundred of them I guess, we had to throw away the mattress it got that bad…at one time, the wife was sleeping on the kitchen table,” he said.

 Turning to tried-and-trusted poisons only killed mice that were almost immediately replaced by more, until he went to the root of the problem — access, food, and shelter.

 “I was baiting, bating baiting, but it just didn’t seem to make much difference,” Craig said.

 First turning to access, he methodically sealed-up every entry point, crack, or gap in the house that a mouse could enter.

 “People have no idea about the size of a hole that they can fit through. The rule is, ‘a pinkie (finger) for a mouse and a thumb for a rat’,” Craig explained.

 “If you’ve got any gaps that they can get through, go to Bunnings and buy some no-frills liquid nails, go around and fill very gap you can find… and fill-it at least an inch (2.5cm) thick,” he said.

 “And pack steel wool around pipes and other gaps so they can’t get in that way.

“But don’t use that expanding foam, they’ll eat right through it, and you end up with an unholy mess all around the place.”

 He added that mice also don’t like traversing large open spaces especially outside where they are easy prey to cats, dogs, birds, and snakes. “So trim your garden, shrubs and the like, away from your house because these allow cover for them.” 

 He said that food for sustenance and your clothes and blankets for nesting, are the next big items to look at. “You don’t have to go as far as us, putting all food and clothes in plastic tubs, but removing access to these is really important,” Craig said.

 For outdoor pets such as dogs, chickens, ducks, and cats, he advises to place feed-bowls into a pot draining-base full of water to create a moat-effect over which the mice won’t swim.

 He added that good, old-fashioned house-keeping is another key-way to discourage Mus musculus, (the common house-mouse) from making your place their new home.

 “When you see mouse droppings or urine stains on the floor, always clean them right-up, because they use these as a trial for next time they want to return; leaving these in your laundry or whatever tells them that it is safe,” he said.

 If you’re going to bait, Craig advises to use protected feed points such as a closed-ended pipe with 20mm holes drilled into them so that pets and wildlife can’t access the poison.

 “Just don’t throw it anywhere; the amount of people that have lost animals because of baits, is through the roof,” Craig said.

 He also said not to leave dead rodents around as they can be eaten by pets and wildlife and poison them: “Vets are treating plenty of pets that have been poisoned by eating baited mice,” he said.

 He advised also not to touch a dead or poisoned mouse with your hands: “You see people picking them up by the tale, do not under any circumstances pick them up by the tale, mice carry so-much bacteria, you can’t imagine, and then people go and forget to wash their hands,” Craig said.

 Using throw-away gloves or dedicated tongs or other implement will save any chance of contamination.

 Craig believes said that the onset of the cold weather will probably soon stop the current plague-level breeding cycle, but it will be another month before the current mice numbers appreciably start to drop-off.

 But mice will continue to reside and breed in any area where food, shelter and access are available, so Craig says to look to the long-term by reducing the incentives for “Mickey” to want to make your home, his home!

 “My wife said the other day, ‘you know Craig? I think this is starting to work’,” he concluded.