Health
House mice are said to be the most common mammal in the United States, therefore it is no surprise that mice and other rodents invade an estimated 21 million homes in the United States between the months of October and February. Mice can squeeze through openings as small as a dime or approximately 1/4 of an inch. If they can squeeze their skull, which is the broadest part of their skeletal system, through an opening they are capable of invading your home.
Many homeowners assume that seeing a mouse in their house is an isolated occurrence. Mice are nocturnal animal’s, therefore spotting a mouse in your home during the day is a good indication that the population of mice in your home is great enough to have individual mice risk seeking out food during daylight hours. While it may be tempting to ignore the incident, neglecting a potential infestation can prove extremely dangerous to your well-being.
A female house mouse can produces between 5-10 litters annually. Each litter consists of 5-6 young that are able to reproduce at approximately 30 days of age. Therefore 6 mice can multiply into more than 60 mice in 3 months. Reaching sexual maturity at about four weeks of age, it’s easy to understand how a mouse population within a home can quickly grow out-of-hand. Although the babies are born blind, deaf and hairless, this starts to change after three days. Young mice are walking and eating solids within two weeks. When they are 28 to 35 days old, mice are fully mature and able to reproduce.
Mice communicate their travels by urinating and leaving droppings along the way. They contaminate food wherever they travel. Mice produce between 40 to 100 droppings per day and constantly give off micro-droplets of urine as they travel their territory everyday.
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) mice spread numerous diseases that are spread directly to humans through contact with mice feces, saliva, urine, bites or mere contact. Mice can also carry fleas, lice, ticks and mites. These parasites can hop off these rodents to create another infestation in your home. Mice have a close connection with fleas, which is why you don’t want to have them in your home. Fleas are known to carry parasites such as tapeworms. The fact that mice could spread fleas in your house makes them horrifying and bad for your health. Mice are likely to be infested with fleas which will cause a similar infestation in your house. As small as a mouse is, it can be host to several different bugs. Now we are going to discuss ticks. Ticks are tiny insects that latch onto their host by burying their head under the skin. They tap into the blood flow and live the good life courtesy of you or whoever they have latched onto. Mice can carry ticks, ticks can get onto you, and ticks can carry Lyme disease.
A few other diseases include:
Salmonella -(food poisoning). Generally, this bacterial disease is transmitted rodent feces in food. Symptoms are diarrhea, head ache, fever.
Leptospirosis - Caused by exposure to rodent urine in food or through dermal contact via small cut / abrasions in the skin.
Hantavirus – virus spread chiefly by wild rodents that cause acute respiratory illness, kidney failure and other syndromes.
Dermatitis - A common skin irritation. One of the many different causes is bites from mites that live in homes infested by mice.
Tapeworm - Can be transmitted to humans that consume food that has been contaminated with rodent feces.
Rickettsial Pox – Is characterized by a rash similar to chicken pox. This disease is transmitted to humans through the bite of a house mouse mite.
This listing is of only a few diseases that can spread to humans through the handling of rodents, contact with rodent feces, urine, or saliva, or through rodent bites. Diseases carried by rodents can also be spread to humans indirectly through ticks, mites, or fleas that have fed on an infected rodent. Worldwide, mice and rats spread over 35 diseases.
SAFETY
Mice are small mammals with long tails, large eyes, fur on their bodies, and large ears. When fully grown, they could reach about 7 inches in length including their tail. Many species of mice are common in the U.S., including the house mouse (Mus musculus), deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus), the white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus), and various species of field mouse from the Apodemus genus. The house mouse is the most common mouse in the United States.
A natural tendency mice have is to chew up everything available for nesting material, which means they often do damage to furniture, wall materials, appliances, vehicles, and houses by chewing the insulation from electrical wiring. The possibility of a house fire from this behavior is one of the biggest risks for occupants of a home. Many animals can cause serious damage to your home. However, if left, mice are one of the most destructive pests that can invade your home. Mice are warm blooded mammals that, like humans, can be found throughout the world. They have oversized front teeth for gnawing and check teeth, which are adapted for chewing. They chew on a variety of items available to them and cause great damage in and around the home.
The physical damage they can inflict on your house could not only be dangerous but also very expensive. Mice can cause structural damage to homes, apartments, offices, and virtually any type of building through gnawing, nest-building, and defecation. Since mice have ever-growing incisor teeth, they need to chew on items to stop them from growing. Once their incisors have grown to a certain length, feeding normally becomes a challenge for them. When it gets cold outside, mice start to look for warm, safe areas to get food, which usually is our home. They use small cracks, crevices, holes and garage door gaps to enter homes. One of the most common entry point for mice to enter your home is through the homes or business garage / overhead door which is the largest opening to a building. Proper rodent control and management are important health and safety reasons.
Prevention
Benjamin Franklin stated that “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” When it comes to the damage and health risks that mice can do to your home or your health we must expend that ounce of prevention.
Prevention is the best thing you can do to keep your home safe all the time. Remember, it is your health and wealth that you need to think about. Pest management companies or service providers today speak to a scientific and environmentally sensitive approach to pest management. This practice relies on prevention from a common-sense perspective and practical practices for pests that affect public health, impede operations, or damage property.
This Practice is called Integrated Pest Management (IPM). It is a process for minimizing pesticide use and risk while maximizing the control to prevent mice, rats, rodents and even snakes from getting into your home or business. One of the most common entry point for these pests to get into your home or business is through your largest opening, the garage. According to Pest World.org, “the top three places that rodents were spotted were #1 the garage at 39%, #2 the kitchen at 35% and #3 the basement at 27%.” The unanswered question is how many of those spotted in the kitchen were unseen coming in through the garage.
Pest management companies or service providers continue to use and place glue boards at the inside corners of your garage doors. I hope you have never entered your garage and seen a mouse, rat, rodent or even a snake stuck to a glue board and struggling to break free. It is a torturous death if they are not able to evade the glue boards. According to the Humane Society of the United States “glue boards might seem like a safe and easy solution to pest problems but in fact, they are one of the cruelest and most dangerous.” “Despite bans in Victoria, BC, Australia and New Zealand, most countries, including the United States, have placed no regulations on the use of glue boards.” “Through no fault of their own, rodents are vectors for certain diseases, which are transmitted through their urine and feces. Panicked animals will defecate and urinate out of stress and fear, meaning anyone handling a glue board with an animal stuck to it could potentially be exposed to disease organisms. Picking up a trap with a live animal stuck to it may also lead to the person being bitten.”
X-N-VADER eliminates the need for the use of glue boards at the garage door corners. So the next time your Pest Management company or service provider wants to put glue boards at the interior corners of your garage door, in the interest of their IPM program, insist that they instead install X-N-VADER, the garage door corner barrier that is impenetrable.
