Have an attached garage? It may be how the mice are getting into your house.
Make sure that garage door seals correctly. If it doesn’t you might need the Xcluder Rodent-Proof Garage Door Seal.
Tim Horgan, Service Manager at Debug Pest Control
An attached garage is an often overlooked portal for mice looking to get into your house for the winter. Every time you open the garage door to leave for work, come home from work, or do any kind of car maintenance or chore in your garage–you’re creating an opportunity for mice to enter your home.
And once mice are in your garage, it’s only a matter of time before they get into your much warmer house.
How do I know if I have mice in my garage?
If there are mice in your house, they are probably the common house mouse variety. They’re very small and come in a wide range of colors from white, gray, brown, and black. They have a pointed snout, small eyes, and round ears.
If the mouse you are seeing has a white underbelly, bigger eyes, and a short tail, you may have a deer mouse in your house. If you aren’t sure, a professional pest control technician can easily identify the mouse you have in your garage.
Maybe you haven’t seen a mouse and instead you’ve seen their droppings and grease trails in your garage. Maybe you’ve seen their bite marks on your bags of bird seed. If you are seeing signs like this, chances are the mice have moved in, you just haven’t seen them yet.
How are they getting in?
As we mentioned earlier, your garage door is a major point of entry. But, they can get in even if you don’t open your garage door all winter. Your garage is safer and warmer than outside and mice are going to do everything they can to gain entry to your garage.
Mice only need ¼ inch opening to enter your garage; that’s really, really small.
Are there easy ways to keep mice out of my garage?
One of the easiest things you can do is to declutter your garage as much as possible. Don’t give mice anywhere they can easily hide and avoid detection. The more stuff you have in your garage, the harder it is to detect the mice. You want to spot the mice early–when there are only one or a few mice in the garage. The more clutter you have, the higher the chances of your not seeing the mice until you’re infested.
Do yourself a favor. Skip the spray foam. Mice will chew right through that.
Tim Horgan, Service Manager at Debug Pest Control
Another easy, affordable preventative tip is to put your bird seed and pet food in sealed plastic containers. Bird seed and pet food are an easy food source for mice. They can easily chew through the plastic and paper bags that your bird seed and pet food come in, so it’s important to take the food out of those bags and pour them into sealed plastic containers.
Some folks think they can go to the big box home repair stores and buy the spray foam. The spray foam is great for drafts, but does nothing to stop mice, who easily chew through the foam. Not only do those general spray foams not work, they often cause added damage to your home by trapping moisture and causing wood to rot.
Caulk and steel wool are some easy and affordable DIY rodent control tools to help keep your garage free of mice. Go around the perimeter of your garage and apply fresh caulk along the foundation, around your windows, and in any cracks in your soffit or siding. Steel wool pushed into these openings makes it hard for rodents and mice to chew through any opening.
Getting rid of mice that are already living in your garage
If there are mice already living in your garage–or if you’ve tried to get rid of them yourself, but they’ve persisted–it’s time to call in the professionals. Professional pest control can help you trap the mice living in your garage and also install professional exclusion devices like garage door sweeps.
At Debug, we believe in the old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you want to eliminate mice from your home, call us and we’ll come out and identify how the mice are entering your garage. We’ll work with you to identify their access points and then close those spaces up. We’ll install professional exclusion tools and we’ll monitor the situation to make sure it’s working.
