Have you found that rats and mice have begun to take up residence in your home? They cause all kinds of noise, chew up your furniture and insulation, and even spread diseases. You want to get them out of your home as soon as possible. How can you do that yourself? Here is a great guide and below are three different ways you can remove mice and rats, easily.

1. Use Humane Traps

If you know where mice and rats are coming in and out from, then you can start leaving traps out for them. These will catch the rodent and then close behind them, trapping them inside. It’s important that you check these traps regularly, so you can see whether anything has made their way in.

When setting up humane traps, ensure that you’re using the right bait in order to entice the rodents in. Mice and rats usually prefer things like chocolate, peanut butter, bacon, oatmeal, dried fruit, and hazelnut spread.

Also, ensure you’re placing the traps in the right place. Usually, mice and rats like to stay close to the walls, so keep your traps near baseboards in places you know they have been traveling. You can tell where they’ve been by any greasy marks you see against baseboards, or droppings left behind by your furry visitors.

Once you’ve trapped the animal, you’ll need to take them far away from your home, so they won’t be able to get back. Pick an area that will be habitable to the mouse or rat, and release them.

2. Seal Up Your Home

Another good way of getting rodents out of your home is to seal up all the entry points. Usually, they find their way in through some of the smallest cracks and gaps as they’re able to squeeze through. That means even if you think that crack is too small, that could be where they’re coming in from.

The best thing to do here is to ask a wildlife control expert to come and check out your home. They will do an inspection of the house, and look for any entry points that you may not have spotted. Furthermore, you can hire a humane rodent control company like Wildlife X Team New Hampshire to exclude the animals.

Once you have found the entry points, you can start looking for ways to seal those spots up. The most common way is to place steel mesh in the hole, and then patch it up with something like quick-drying cement. Even if the mice or rats were able to get through the cement, they won’t be able to chew through the mesh. Seal up all holes in this way, and you’ll find most rodents will leave right away. After all, they can’t get in.

Be aware that you’ll need to do an inspection of your home before you do this, looking for nests. If you have a nest of mice or rat babies, you don’t want to seal the mother out away from them. But if you are concerned that you may miss one or you’re not confident that you know what to look for, consider hiring Aptive Exterminator to do the job for you.

3. Keep Things Clean

Finally, a good way to keep mice and rats out of your home is by keeping the house clean. They will most likely be making their way in because there’s a good source of food and water for them here. That can be even just some missed crumbs in the kitchen when you sweep the floor, so you’ll need to be careful about cleaning.

Also, ensure any food containers are well sealed up. An open bag of pet food or anything else is very tempting to rodents. Garbage cans are another good example of this. If your cans are not sealed, then they can easily get in and start eating leftover food.

Keep a regular cleaning schedule, and stick to it. If there’s no available food to the pests, they aren’t going to want to stick around. Don’t forget water sources, too. Address any leaks as quickly as possible, as these are another big draw to rodents.

With these three tips, you’ll be able to stop mice and rats from coming into your home. Trap any rodents and remove them from the home, seal up their entrances, and remove their sources of food and water. If you can do that, then you should be able to handle your pest problem. As a bonus, these all help you remove them humanely, too.