Wildlife division · Mice & rats
Mice and rats.
Droppings along the walls, quick scratching inside them, a musky smell that won't clear. We seal the building envelope first — otherwise you're just feeding a queue — then control the population that's already inside, and monitor until it's actually done.
1–3 hours on site · Photos and a written estimate · Any fee confirmed up front
Signs you have rodents
- Droppings along wall bases, behind the stove, in cupboards, in the pantry or in drawer corners
- Fast, light scratching inside walls or above the ceiling — quicker and lighter than a squirrel, mostly at night
- A persistent musky, ammonia-ish smell that cleaning doesn't shift
- Gnaw marks on food packaging, cardboard, or the corners of wooden trim
- Dark greasy rub marks along baseboards and pipe runs, where the same route gets used nightly
- Shredded paper, insulation or fabric collected into a nest in a drawer, a cavity or the back of a closet
- A pet that has suddenly become fixated on one particular spot on a wall
Why bait alone never finishes the job
If the gaps are still open, you don't have a rodent problem. You have a rodent route.
Here's the thing about rodents that makes them different from a squirrel or a raccoon: you are not dealing with an individual animal that got in. You're dealing with a population that has a way in.
Which is why bait-only programmes turn into a standing monthly charge. Bait reduces the number of rodents currently inside. It does nothing whatsoever about the eighth-inch gap at the sill plate, so the space you just cleared gets refilled from outside — and you're on the hook for a quarterly visit forever, because the visit is treating the symptom.
Our order of operations is the opposite: seal the building envelope first, then deal with what's trapped inside. That's more work up front and it's why we're not the cheapest first invoice — but it has an end date, which a bait subscription doesn't.
How small a gap are we talking about?
A house mouse can get through a gap about the width of a pencil — roughly a quarter of an inch. A young rat needs about half an inch. Neither of them needs to chew anything to use a gap that already exists, and both are perfectly capable of enlarging one that's slightly too small.
Where they're getting in
- The gap where the sill plate sits on the foundation — the most common one, and invisible from inside
- Utility penetrations: water lines, gas lines, electrical conduit, AC lineset
- Dryer vents and bathroom exhaust terminations with failed or missing flaps
- Garage door corners, where the seal never quite meets the slab
- Crawlspace vents and access doors
- Gaps behind soffit returns and around the roofline, for the ones coming in from above
How we handle it
1. Inspection, inside and out
One to three hours, depending on the size of the house and property. We work the interior for evidence and runs, and the exterior for every gap that's large enough to matter — crawlspace, foundation, sill plate, utility penetrations, vents, roofline. You get photographs of what we found and a written estimate.
2. Seal the envelope
Every viable entry point closed in material rodents can't chew through — steel mesh, hardware cloth, sheet metal, mortar where mortar is right. Expanding foam on its own is not rodent exclusion; mice go through it like cake. This is the step that turns the job into a finite one.
3. Control what's inside, then verify
With the doors shut, the population indoors is a known, closed quantity rather than a rotating cast. We control it and then monitor to confirm the activity has actually stopped, rather than declaring victory on the day the invoice goes out. Our exclusion work carries a 1-year warranty unless we've discussed otherwise.
Ongoing service
The rodent program
Rodents are the one animal on this list that rarely resolves in a single visit. A squirrel leaves and the hole gets closed; a mouse population is a number that has to be brought down and then held down while the building is sealed. So rodent work runs as a program rather than a call-out.
What it involves
After the inspection we set out what your building actually needs — the specifics differ a lot between a farmhouse with a fieldstone foundation and a ten-year-old build with one bad utility penetration. From there it is an initial setup followed by monthly service, usually a minimum of three months:
- Bait stations placed outside, tamper-resistant and positioned where the pressure is
- Traps inside where the interior population warrants it
- Exclusion work alongside both, so the building stops recruiting new arrivals
- Stations refilled and traps reset each month until the activity stops
Three months is a minimum rather than a fixed term. The point of the monthly visit is the reading it gives us: when the stations stop being touched and the traps stay empty, the problem is done and so is the program. The exclusion is what makes that ending stick — without it the stations would just be a permanent feeding station for the next lot.
Rodent questions we get asked
Why seal first instead of just baiting?
Because baiting an open building is a subscription, not a solution. Reduce the population without closing the gaps and the space refills from outside within weeks. Sealing the envelope first is what gives the job an end date.
How small a gap can a mouse use?
About a quarter of an inch — roughly the width of a pencil. A young rat needs about half an inch. Neither has to chew anything to use a gap that's already there, which is why the inspection looks at sill plates, pipe penetrations and vent terminations rather than just the obvious holes.
Do you use poison?
It isn't our opening move, and it's never a substitute for sealing. Where interior control is needed we'll talk you through what we're using and where, and anything placed is documented. Poison in an unsealed house just produces dead rodents in wall cavities and a queue of replacements.
How long until it's actually over?
The sealing work is usually done in a visit or two once we've quoted it. Confirming the interior activity has stopped takes a few weeks of monitoring after that — we'd rather verify it than take your word or ours for it.
I only ever see them in the kitchen. Isn't that where the problem is?
That's where the food is, not where the entry is. The way in is almost always at the foundation, a crawlspace vent or a utility penetration, often on the opposite side of the house. Treating the kitchen alone is why the problem comes back.
Related
Let's find the way in, not just the droppings.
The inspection covers the whole envelope — foundation to roofline.
1–3 hours on site · Photos and a written estimate · Any fee confirmed up front