The yards around our homes provide us with a place to relax, play, garden, and entertain family and friends. But they can also attract the wildlife that lives amongst us, including mice. Having mice in the yard is a common issue. Understandably, the costly damage and health risks associated with them make them unwelcome.
Whether you’re seeing signs of mice — such as droppings near your birdfeeder or around your foundation, gnawed plants, or shallow tunneling or mouse holes in the yard — or are actually seeing mice scamper about, it could be a sign that you have an indoor infestation. Your next best step is to call a wildlife control company, such as Critter Control. How to get rid of mice in the yard may seem impossible, but not for Critter Control. Mice are easily handled with early detection, and Critter Control’s expert reputation is second to none.
What Attracts Mice to Your Yard?
Looking for the food, water, and shelter they’ve come to associate with humans, mice are unafraid of living amongst us. Here are some of the more common things in the yard that attract mice:
- Food such as birdseed, pet food, trash, compost, fallen fruit, and plantings
- Water sources from puddles, leaky hoses, pet bowls, and sprinklers
- Shelter in our firewood stacks, tall grass, sheds, under decks, leaf piles, and overgrown shrubs
The good news is that all of this can be managed in a way that discourages their access, making it a less attractive yard for them to call home.
Damage & Health Risks From Mice
Even though mice are beneficial to our ecosystem, catching a mouse in the yard — or many mice — can be disconcerting, as they can cause costly damage and health risks. Mice are prolific breeders, and within short order, a few mice can become an army of mice, leading to issues you’ll want to address quickly:
- Garden and Landscape Damage: Mice will eat vegetables, fruit trees, and decorative plantings, especially new shoots, bulbs, and roots. They will even eat tree bark if food is scarce.
- Property Damage: Mice have continuously growing incisors. Gnawing is the only way to wear them down. In your yard, this can lead to chewed storage containers, hoses, wood sheds, and outdoor wiring. Mice will also nest in lawn equipment and your car engine.
- Predator Attraction: Many other wildlife love a meal of mice, including snakes, raccoons, foxes, and owls. If you have a pet, some animals, such as coyotes, may go after it.
- Parasites: Mice carry and will spread parasites, such as fleas, ticks, and mites, throughout your yard. Children and pets, in particular, are susceptible.
- Diseases: Mice can transmit diseases through their droppings and urine, causing illnesses such as hantavirus and salmonella.
How to Keep Mice Away From Your Yard
Though a few irritating mice in the backyard may seem harmless, a yard infestation will quickly lead to finding mice in the house and outbuildings. Mice will nest near food and water sources. If they’ve found both or either in your yard, the spaces inside your home make ideal spots of nests. Removing the elements in your yard that are attracting them is one way to help prevent a growing population and their eventual move indoors.
Critter Control offers a long-term solution for getting rid of mice in the backyard.
Critter Control’s Step-by-Step Mice Removal
Mice are one of the most widespread and adaptable mammals on the planet. They have traits such as rapid reproduction, speed, flexible bodies, a broad diet, and excellent senses of smell and hearing that allow them to survive almost anywhere.
Critter Control has mastered the art and science of humanely eliminating mice from unwanted places such as your home. With over 40 years of experience, we’re committed to your safety, your home, and your family.
Thorough Inspections
Your Critter Control inspection includes a thorough search of both inside and outside your home for mice and their nests. Your technician will locate potential entry points to your home and identify attractants within and outside your home. Lastly, they will provide you with a report and a plan outlining how they will conduct safe, humane mouse extermination and implement environmental modifications to protect your yard and home from future invasions.
Safe and Effective Trapping
The size and location of your mouse issues will dictate the trap your Critter Control technician will choose, how many traps to place, and which bait will work best. When you hire a professional Critter Control technician, you can rest assured that every mouse will be caught.
Prevention and Exclusion
Professional prevention and exclusion is the only way to protect yourself and your family from future infestations. Critter control can:
- Place caps on your chimney and wire mesh over vents
- Seal gaps in windows, doors, soffits, and around where wires and pipes enter your home
- Fix foundation cracks
- Conduct habitat modifications in your yard that include trimming branches and shrubs, moving firewood far from the house, and adding bait stations in sheds and under porches
Mice are persistent pests. Their search for food, water, and shelter never ends. That’s why you need a partner like Critter Control to help control the population of outdoor mice so they can never become indoor mice. Call Critter Control today and schedule your free inspection. We are wildlife control professionals offering dependable, expert services you can trust.
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