Household Vermin - How to deal with mice and rats getting into the home?

My skin is still crawling guys! I have had the unfortunate experience of having a rat run across the floor of my kitchen and it took five years off of my lifespan. I know it's an irrational response but I tell you, I screamed when it happened. Little goober managed to spook me pretty good.

I'm used to the occasional mouse, usually when the winter is settingin, getting into the house but this was a RAT.

How do you deal with the reality of vermin getting into the house? How do you approach the issue? Are there permaculture solutions out there to consider?

My approach currently involves trying to understand how we got to the point of a rat entering the house. Traps, to me, deal with having intruders in the house but I would like to simply prevent intruders from entering.

I'm lucky enough that where the rat scurried seems to make sense of being the entrance into the house. Mysterious plaster crumbs had accumulated in the area and I did not realize that a hole had been created. I have temporarily blocked this hole and, fingers crossed, there has be no rat sightings nor rat sign found.

I believe I need to take the time this weekend looking for potential entrances and flag them for repair.

I'm a little disappointed that my dogs have been of zero help with this sudden intrusion. You'd think these pampered pooches would at least try to defend their home. We are going to have to have a talk about their role in this household!

Always a concern in areas that have lots of Nature's critters running around.   Keeping food sources in check is #1 control.     Putting dry goods in glass is much more effective than plastic tubs.  The critters you are concerned with can chew right through plastic.

Keeping doors closed and sealing up around them with galvanized tin is a proven effective maneuver as well.   6" tall galvanized tin.   Aluminum is no good.

Bait blocks in the cellar and attic and under the counters, also in closets.  Best to keep this stuff away from your' pets but it is effective.   The critters eat the stuff and then go outside seeking water.  They will die.  

Sticky trap paper and old fashioned "large size" mouse traps!   mmm.... peanut butter.   lol...

Don't be surprised if you look up at your' soffit and fascia of the house and see a hole or two.  These gangsters will crawl up the downspout and find a spot to enter into the attic.

Personally, my best defense is a Dog.   Surprise!  no cats... one of my hound dogs is so completely devoted to home security that she will "end" anything not invited into the home.    Cats are a great idea too, I just don't keep any as pets.

Just in case you missed it...     Removing any food source is #1.

I only deal with deer mice, not rats thankfully. Still, deer mice can carry hantavirus and they make an unholy, rancid mess.

When there's a bad year (population explosion) I take the fight to them outside the buildings. Removing cover, setting traps. Outside it's easy to deal with the carcasses. Inside, I have to do a complex wet cleanup.

A neighbour swears by the Victor "Super Pest Chaser," the one with three speakers. It keeps the squirrels out of his shed, where they mess up his truck camper and other equipmeht.

I like to use live traps.

I have not had that problem in many years though I used a product called "Tin Cat" and believe it is still on the market.

Basically a Tin Box with an entrance and no exit.

Traps baited with peanut butter.  Sorry, but the entrances of said rodents may never be found.  We've been looking forever with no luck.  The holes we have found were blocked with crumpled fly mesh.  The only thing left could be that they are entering through the roof, no obvious entrances to be found, but they do like to climb.  We resorted to baits when the blighters ate the wiring in the car (three times).  Baits wired into left over square tubing,caged over to discourage birds, and placed against the walls outside. The rats and mice don't like crossing open spaces for some reason.  Water sources removed, hiding places disturbed.  Fingers crossed.
Cats as useless as your dogs - ours used to bring in mice as "presents".

Many people are anti sticky traps for good reason. I have used them. The problem  is how long does the rodent suffer being stuck to the trap before a human discovers it.   When I have used them, I made rounds multiple times a day.

My most effective solution is a mix of baking soda and Jiffy Cornbread Mix.  More baking soda than Jiffy.  Be sure to change it out every couple of months. It looses its effectiveness over time.  I really am not confident if this is more human than sticky traps. But, at one point we (my Master Mouser and me) were catching 17+ mice a week. And every cupboard had mouse droppings. That has dropped to us catching less than one a month.

We had a sudden big infestation years ago in which rats were coming in through holes they dug under the foundation, chewed into flashing around the chimney, chewed through vent screens, and (the biggest source) chewed holes through the sewer pipes and were using the plumbing system as a highway.

So now, twice a year, I inspect every inch of the house, attic, crawlspace, foundation, plumbing, etc and plug up holes with 1/4" hardware cloth (adding another layer that overlaps to make the holes smaller if I see mice evidence), set electronic traps in attics and crawlspaces (they beep, so I can hear them), set tube snap traps in places I can check easily (they are more effective than regular snap traps), and fill tunnels under the foundation with concrete. We had a backflow valve installed in the plumbing and covered the flap with a thick layer of Flexseal (which they don't like to chew on for some reason). I put gravel all around the foundation of the building, so I can see holes easily if the gravel is disturbed (previously they were hiding holes in the middle of plants near the house and then tunneling under the foundation, they're smart, so no more plants next to the house).

It's a lot of work, but the massive infestation has not happened again since I made it all a routine.

We have to keep switching up our trap design and layouts because the mama rats will teach their babies to avoid the traps, so we make changes repeatedly to outsmart them. (They really are smart.)

Even if we lock up all food and keep everything clean, we learned they will try to nest in our building. If you have PEX pipes or other plastic pipes, they can chew through it to get water. They will eat our crops, animal feed, seeds, wild foods, and animal feces outside or even at the neighbors house then come back in to nest and rest.

I love animals. Had pet rodents. Even had a pet rat as a kid. But they were truly destroying my home, and it cost thousands to fix all the damage, and it was a huge health hazard.

Keep on it.

a couple, few of these can help.

Ideally, any cat brought onto a place with a view to rodent control should have been raised on a farm with a mom who was also a hunter, and left with her long enough for her to teach them how to do it effectively.  Without this, many cats simply see the rodents as toys rather than prey, and this is exacerbated by feeding them to excess.  Barn cats should get just enough food to keep them around and in good condition, and thus be encouraged to fend for themselves and make quick kills for food.

This has been the WORST year for mice and rats getting into the house ever. I'm just shocked by the traffic that I have experienced.

The all natural non-toxic baits didn't appear to work. Snap traps however have effective for the most part. I've been tearing apart baseboard heaters finding where the critters have been getting in and plugging up those holes. This house (circa 1850) has more perforations inside than a cheese grater it seems.

I'm wondering if my overgrown pumpkin vines reaching towards the house have created a covered highway for the critters to feel more comfortable searching for entrances than in prior years. Still unsure HOW they are getting in. I'm suspicious of my cellar door entryway might be a vector for being an entrance.

I've been telling my wife for years that I don't want a cat because I don't want to clean a litter box. I'm now rather close to driving down to my friend who operates a cat rescue and asking for the meanest, gnarliest, blood thirstiest tom cat that they have. Very VERY close.

Damn rats...

Cats catch smaller rodents like mice and baby rats, baby squirrels, baby bunnies, etc. Dogs like terriers were often bread to hunt larger rodents like big rats. None of the cats in our neighborhood would win a fight with our big Norway rats here.

For cats or dogs, hunting rodents can lead to infections, parasites, injuries, and diseases, some of which can spread to humans. It's usually a good idea to keep pets updated on all vaccines; use flea, tick, and parasite prevention methods; bathe them frequently; and frequently check them for bites and scratches that need disinfectants and bandaging. Another thing to be aware of is that if a dog or cat eats a rodent that has been poisoned, your pet may get poisoned also, so teaching pets to hunt isn't a good idea in our suburban neighborhood because many people use poison here.

I recently saw the some universities are using raw cottonseed oil rat foods to disrupt the endocrine system of rats, causing them to reproduce less often. Cottonseed oil is supposedly like birth control pills for rats. Places that have tried this have stated they had a reduction in rat populations. This may be useful for reducing the population of rats that are smart enough to avoid traps, poisons, hunting, etc. I haven't tried it yet, but it's an interesting concept.

Field mice are common and they will try to get indoors for warmth in early winter. Somehow I am able to tell if there is a mouse in the house from the smell and set up traps promptly. They are dumb and we usually clear them up within a day or two. Rat is rare in my area but we did have one encounter. That rat was smart and if a trap failed to catch it in the first try it never will. After weeks of failure, a friend gave us some snakeshots. I hid behind a cardboard blind, put bread in a bag tie to a dumbbell in the middle of the kitchen floor one night. The rat came out and tried to steal the bread but had to stay still chewing through the bag and I finally got it! No hole on the floor! As for entry point, I did find a gap between water heater intake pipe and the floor in the closet.
Hopefully you will get rid of the vermin asap.

Timothy, the variations in weather seem to lead to waves of pests. We've had a bad year for ants and termites (sigh) in our attic. Some years we have more mice and rats, thankfully that hasn't happened this year (yet).

Timothy Norton wrote:I'm wondering if my overgrown pumpkin vines reaching towards the house have created a covered highway for the critters to feel more comfortable searching for entrances than in prior years.

I do have mice outside in the garden, I find their poo near the rabbit hutches. There is a space along the garden wall where I often find their track, so I try to keep that part weeded and open so that our raptors and cats can get at them. Why make it easy?

One of my cats kills them and leaves mangled corpses. The other one eats them up.

But, the only rats I’ve ever had were pets.