Do-it-yourself mice removal in Kitchener can be frustrating and disappointing. Mice often avoid traps, especially those set by homeowners who don’t know what they are doing. Professional pest control is much more effective at removal. Here are some reasons why.

1. Mice Are Smart and Rely Heavily on Their Senses

Mice are more intelligent than most people give them credit for. On the one hand, they are opportunistic feeders that eat almost anything available because they never know when they will find another meal. On the other hand, they are prey animals that have to be able to run away quickly from predators for their survival.

Mice have highly evolved senses that help them avoid their predators. For example, they don’t have sharp visual acuity, but they have the ability to detect motion from almost every angle, including above and behind them. Because they don’t have sharp vision, they navigate using the touch of their sensitive whiskers. As long as their whiskers touch the wall, they can keep their bearings. If a trap is in the middle of the room, they don’t like to venture out that far to investigate it.

Mice have a keen sense of smell that helps them to both find food and detect potential predators, including humans. If you set the trap with your bare hands, the mice may be able to detect your scent and get scared away. The smell of dead mice also scares them, so if you have successfully used the same trap before, the mice may be able to smell their unfortunate brethren and decide the reward of food isn’t worth the risk.

2. They Do Not Always Like the Bait

While mice are opportunistic feeders, they do have preferences when it comes to food. If you don’t use one of their favourites as bait when you set your trap, they may not show much interest in it if there are other options available.

For centuries, it has been widely believed that mice love cheese more than any other sort of food, so most people use this to bait their traps. However, laboratory testing shows that there are many other types of food that mice prefer to cheese, including seeds, nuts, berries, and even meat. Mice will eat cheese if there is nothing else available but they’d much rather rummage around in your pantry for things like cereal or pet food, which they can get to easily if stored in the paper bags, plastic sacks, or cardboard boxes that they originally came in because they have sharp front teeth and an inborn gnawing compulsion.

3. Mice Are Always on High Alert

Have you ever had a meal that was so delicious that you stopped paying attention to everything else that was going on around you? Well, mice are not like that. Even when they are enjoying a good meal, they are always alert to their surroundings. Otherwise, they would be vulnerable to predators while they were eating. This means that they are attuned to the sounds and vibrations that a trap may make when it is about to spring. Nature has given mice lightning-fast reflexes so they can react in the split second before the trap deploys to get away.

All this means that, even if you set a trap along a wall where mice are most likely to be, avoid leaving your smell on it, bait it with something that mice like, and restrict access to all other foods that might be easier for mice to get, you may succeed in luring a mouse to the trap, but it may still be able to escape at the last minute.

Truly Nolen technicians are trained to understand mouse behaviour, and we use this to your advantage and the rodents’ disadvantage in removing them from your home. Our process also includes exclusion so mice can’t get back in. Find out about all our pest control services in Kitchener.