Getting mice out of Port Elizabeth homes and offices

One mouse in the kitchen almost never stays one mouse. House mice breed quickly, live close to their food and can get through a gap about the width of a pencil. The way to get rid of them for good is to trap and bait the ones already inside and then close the small openings they used to get in. Leave out the second part, and new mice simply follow the old ones' trail.

How to know it's mice

• Droppings about the size of a grain of rice, often in drawers, along shelves and behind appliances
• Gnawed corners on cereal boxes, bread bags and pet food packets
• Shredded paper, fabric or insulation gathered into a small nest
• Light scratching inside walls or cupboards, often in the early evening
• A musty smell in a closed cupboard or storeroom
• Footprints in dust on top of kitchen units or in the garage

Mice are much quieter than rats in the roof, and you'll more often find them at eye level in the kitchen than above the ceiling. If the droppings are noticeably bigger than a grain of rice, you're probably looking at rats; see our page on rat problems in Port Elizabeth.

Where mice live in PE buildings

In homes, mice settle behind and under kitchen units, inside the stove and dishwasher housings, in the space under built-in cupboards and in garages full of stored boxes. They love the warm motor compartment of a fridge.

In offices and shops, they follow the food: staff kitchens, desk drawers with snacks, storerooms with stock in cardboard. Ceiling voids and cable trays let them move around a building out of sight, and they'll happily chew through cabling.

Warehouses and factories in the Bay's industrial areas see mice arrive with deliveries and pallets, and settle into stacked stock where nobody looks for weeks.

Why mice come in, especially in the cooler months

Port Elizabeth's winters are mild, but cooler, wet and windy nights still push mice from gardens, open veld and vacant plots into buildings looking for warmth and food. Once inside, there's no reason for them to leave. Our article on rats and mice moving indoors in winter explains the pattern in more detail.

How we get rid of mice

1. Inspection. We follow the droppings to find where mice are nesting and feeding, and look for every gap they could be using: around pipes under the sink, where cables enter the wall, behind the stove, under external doors and through air bricks.
2. Trapping and baiting. Mice are curious and range only a short distance, so traps and lockable bait stations need to be placed close together, right where they're active. Inside the home we lean towards traps and secured stations; outside, lockable tamper-resistant stations guard the perimeter.
3. Tracking powder. In wall voids and other inaccessible spaces, tracking powder can reach mice that are hard to target otherwise.
4. Proofing advice. We show you each gap, and what to use to close it. Steel wool packed into a gap and sealed over stops mice where foam alone won't, because they chew straight through foam.
5. Follow-up. We return to check activity and move traps if needed.

Keeping children and pets safe

Families often worry more about the treatment than the mice. Indoors, we place traps and bait stations inside cupboards, behind appliances and in other spots where little hands and noses don't go, and the stations we use are lockable and tamper-resistant. We'll tell you where every trap and station is so nobody gets a surprise. If you have a cat, it may catch a few mice, but cats rarely clear an established population on their own, and they can't get into the voids where mice nest.

Clean-up after mice

Once activity stops, clear out the nesting material and droppings. Wear gloves, dampen droppings with a disinfectant before wiping rather than sweeping them dry, and throw away any food packets that were chewed. Then wash the shelves and drawers. It also helps us at the follow-up, because fresh droppings on a clean surface show straight away if anything is still active.

What people get wrong

Setting one trap in the middle of the kitchen floor. Mice run along walls and edges, rarely across open space, and they don't travel far from the nest. Several traps set flush against the wall, along the path where the droppings are, work far better than one trap in the open. The other mistake is baiting traps with a big lump of cheese. A tiny smear of something sticky, like peanut butter, is harder to steal.

A tip for PE homes

Check the gap where the kitchen sink pipes go through the cupboard back and into the wall. In many older homes around the Bay there's a hole far bigger than the pipe, leading straight into the wall cavity or under the floor. It's one of the most common mouse entry points we find, and it takes minutes to seal.

What does mouse control cost?

For most homes, a mouse problem is a smaller job than rats: one or two visits with traps, stations and proofing advice. It gets bigger if mice have spread through the roof and walls of a large house, or into an office block or warehouse. Businesses with ongoing risk usually do best on a monitoring contract. We'll quote once we've had a look. If it's a single mouse that came in through an open door, we'll tell you a couple of traps may be all you need.

For more about mouse habits and why they're hard to shift, read the mouse control guide. You can also see our page on mice in Newton Park homes and shops, or pest control across Port Elizabeth for other pests.

Call 087 012 5550, or WhatsApp us a picture of the droppings and we'll let you know whether it's mice or rats.