Wednesday 2 March 2011

How To Deal with the dreaded house pest


mice. there I said it.
One of the worst kinds of pests to get (after all they did cause the black plague) in your home, once you have one the fun never stops (for them anyway) they just keep multiplying, which means for you it's just trouble and a half.
I live near woods, I have a huge garden that I plant every year, I have a compost pile,and I have a wood pile, I have many reasons to have pests, and yet each year I manage to maintain a mouse free home and I'll share how with you now.

When I first moved here, every year in the spring we would dig the yard and we would get mice, now mice are freaking clever they can chew through just about anything, and breathing in or ingesting their droppings or urine is detrimental to your health, the deer mouse dropping, urine and saliva carry the Hantavirus, according to the CDC. Take a wild guess which kind of mouse lives in my neck of the woods? Yep deer mice, normally they don't enter domiciles but destroy or disturb their homes and they go looking for the most "safe" locale. HPS is a very deadly disease and doesn't really spare it's victims much, you can find out about the progress of the disease here on the CDC website.

I once stayed over at a girlfriend's house and she had several kinds of mice, due to her neighbor, who was filthy at keeping house (and she was a stay at home mom O_o, what are you doing with your time??), she moved as fast as possible because her son's room seemed to be the place they loved to come up from. Since the many different mice and rats can cause all kinds of different problems she decided not to take the risk to her child's health and beat a hasty retreat, last I heard the homeowner was fined because other neighbors got rodents too.

There are many people who would suggest you use humane methods as mice are part of the cosmic wheel and created by the Goddess, if that's how you feel be all you can be with that. Use live traps if you can, relocate them when possible, and all that jazz.

I however was tired of discovering something else in my garage and home that the mice had gotten to and went about this like it was war.
1) I cleaned EVERYTHING i literally mean everything, I sorted, tossed, donated, re-boxed, and purged the whole house (this admittedly took me a while but I made the house into zones and banged it out in three weeks)
2) I found and eliminated ways that they could get in, I had the fireplace serviced, and the family room redone, to make sure any hole that where there were patched up, I got rid of carpets on the floor and the old heating system got yanked out (since we weren't using it they were nesting there).
3) I declutterd the furniture, Do you really need all those baskets? No I don't, Why do I ask this? Because natural wood is part of their diet
4) I cried when I discovered that they had climbed up my china cabinet and were eating the expensive mahogany wood, then I set traps, and polished all the wood furniture with beeswax and spearmint. (MIX WELL, otherwise the e.o can strip the wood).
5) I made carpet cleaner for the upstairs carpets with spearmint essential oil. I sprinkled the carpets and left it there for a week then vacuumed it and sprinkled it again (they hate the smell)
6) all the doors, and door jams were treated to a nice spearmint cleansing as well
7) i moved the woodpile further from the house, and made sure to lift them of the ground as well as create a better storage place for them.
8) I moved the compost pile away from the house, and got an actual bin which made it harder for them to climb in
9) I cleared most of the plants away from the house, by placing many in pots, moving away things I found out they liked to eat, and anything that could create a warm nesting place esp, during winter and fall.
10) I fixed cracks in foundation of the patio (no place for them to hide) .. Ok I didn't fix them myself but I paid someone to do so :P
11) I had the garage doors insulated and fixed, I made sure any cracks were also fixed. I cleaned and swept the garage and organized everything in there, using plastic storage bins instead of cardboard boxes which they loved to eat.
12) I got rid of the garbage bins which had been stored near the garage I moved them further back and got better garbage bins (the originals came with the house and the lids sucked big time)
13) I NEVER left a dish in the sink, and I routinely put away all dishes and pots at the end of the night, along with that make sure all cupboard doors are closed
14) I use plastic or glass containers to store food in my pantry. Never the container it came in, which helped to eliminate their food sources.
15) NEVER EVER leave food out overnight especially if they have been known to be in your kitchen
16) You can also use the potato spuds that you purchase in the store, (the flakes), drop them in the spots you know the rodents come out from, they will eat it and take it back with them to share, they will die there, so keep an eye out for the smell, this may lead you to the main nest.

Check in any place that isn't being used often, as they love those spaces.
Side note: (we all in live in farm area, so this is pretty common and we talk about it alot)


  • one of my friends used cat pee on certain rags and stuffed them in places that the pests would be known to frequent (that stinks really bad, I hated the pests but I wasn't punishing myself also, so I didn't do that one, but I need to share even if it doesn't work for me) 
  • she also had a pet python, that she would let loose at night, to say she never had to feed it for two weeks should be enough about how effective this was (although to be fair, one of the rodents got it's own on the snake before it got eaten, too funny). 
  • Birds are also effective, you can encourage birds of prey into your garden to help with pest control, the best of these are owls, and eagles are known to hunt mice and rats. Just don't leave the bird food in a place the mice can get to it.
Magickal:


I had been reading and kind of obsessing over the Rat King Raphael (from Anita Blake series), I had been wondering what it would be like to be a were-rat, and being Rafe's girlfriend, once the rodents began to really make their way upstairs from the garage and basement I nipped that in the bud.   (ok to be fair I wasn't really thinking about being a member of the were-rat, but about being Rafe's girlfriend, he's been described as really smoking hot,  @_@ so Don't.Judge.Me.)

I also worked magically with several of the Fae, and asked them to pull their rides out of my home. My sister has a really special talent for working with the Fae and as a favor to me, created a home of natural elements as an offering to the Fae (a little further from the house) so they wouldn't 'store' their pets in the house.

A magical pet can be a great hindrance to pests as well, simply ask the Gods to aide in your pets' ability to catch and chase away the rodents and boom you have a magical pet.

Images courtesy of Bing.com/images, no copyright infringement intended. Information from CDC, and own home personal experience.

However you get rid of them best of luck to you.
Happy Hunting

4 comments:

  1. My wife hate such kind of pests, our neighborhood doesn't have much rats but whenever we see them we don't waste a single minute to call up local pest control company.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, they aren't the easiest things to get rid of and having many different ways to get rid of them is best. Good luck

      Delete
  2. Really appreciate for sharing this information with us, the things you did are necessary if you want to keep these pests away from your place, i will keep these points in mind.

    ReplyDelete

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