Even homeowners who give the topic careful thought believe that fall and winter are the seasons to watch out for mice moving in. The common idea is that getting a nice, warm place to wait out the cold is a rodent’s main motivation. Unfortunately, that is only half the story.
New Neighborhoods
Rodents – rats and mice – are just as likely to be looking for a cooler place to spend the summer, and they’ve got some added advantages in their search. First of all, like the rest of us, rodents move around more when the weather gets warm. As they do their exploring, they are just as likely to become your new neighbors, and the foliage that emerges in the spring and flourishes in the summer gives rodents more cover, so they feel safer exploring.
New Rooms
Their search for a cooler place to spend the summer includes changing their favorite room in your house. Mice that nested quietly in the attic during the winter – and never were noticed – can decide that the basement is a better place to spend the summer and beat that high attic heat.
How Mice See Curb Appeal
What attracts rodents to a home is more evident in the summertime – drafts and scents. Any place that cool air can escape your home, tiny and unnoticeable to us humans, is magnetic to a mouse. Add the aromas of daily life, smells that we don’t even notice, and a mouse can find your home very attractive indeed.
As a result, energy saving is not the only reason to caulk and weather-strip your windowsills and door frames, even in the summer. And yet, the things that go unnoticed – such as the entry points of utility lines, a dryer vent, or maybe a crack in the crawl space or foundation – can become the beckoning signal for a mouse looking for a summer home. Precautions are only a partial solution.
Why Rodents Make Bad Roommates
If the sheer thought of living near a mouse is not enough to make you go, “Ewwww,” then consider these characteristics. Rodents are omnivorous. They eat anything. They have their favorites, sure, such as grains and seeds and nuts and salty snacks. But even fastidious housekeepers learn that mice will eat a wide variety of easy-to-find things. And after they eat, of course, they leave mementos of their meals behind.
As if eating anything were not a big enough problem, mice chew constantly, just for drill. That’s why tooth marks appear on doorways, baseboards, and other inedible items. You see, their teeth never stop growing, and so mice are teething all their lives, to keep their teeth right-sized. Oh, and another thing mice do constantly is have babies. Year-round reproduction is just another reason not to let mice become roommates.
Why Expert Help is Called For
Just as the fact that mice never take a day off, not even in summer, might come as a surprise, there are dozens more reasons to get the reassurance that an inspection from a professional can give. We are always more than happy to help, even in the good old summertime. Just call us at any of the numbers below.
- Greater Richmond area: 757-520-5381
- Greater Newport News area: 757-418-6035
- Greater Williamsburg area: 757-280-2997
