What Changes Once the Treatment Is Finished
A finished treatment leaves you with a house that has no mice in it and, if the proofing has been done, no obvious way for new ones to get in. What it cannot do is stop the world outside. Mice still live in gardens, hedges, sheds and neighbouring buildings, and in autumn they still go looking for warmth.
So prevention is not about doing something dramatic. It is about keeping the house uninteresting to a passing mouse and noticing quickly if one tries its luck. If they do come back despite all this, why mice keep coming back goes through how to work out the reason.
The Kitchen Habits That Do the Most
Food is the main reason a mouse stays rather than moves on. A handful of habits takes away most of it:
- Dry food, cereals and pet food in hard containers with tight lids, never left in open bags.
- Pet bowls picked up overnight, and bird seed stored indoors in a sealed tin rather than in a sack in the garage.
- Crumbs cleared from under the toaster, behind the kettle and round the hob every evening.
- The kitchen bin emptied before bed and kept lidded.
- Once a season, the cooker and washing machine pulled out and the floor behind them cleaned.
The whole-house list of things that draw mice in, from compost to clutter, is in what attracts mice.
A Walk Round the Outside, Twice a Year
Early autumn and late spring are the times to do it. Walk slowly round the house with a torch and look low down at the walls, then up at the roof line. You are checking that last year's repairs are still sound and that nothing new has opened.
- Airbrick covers still in place and undamaged, with no gaps round the edges.
- Sealed pipe and cable entries still intact, with no fresh gnawing or crumbling filler.
- Door brushes and threshold strips on the back door and garage door still meeting the floor.
- No new holes where a builder, plumber or broadband installer has been through a wall since the last check.
- Climbing plants and shrubs kept back from the walls, and nothing stacked against the house.
Any repair that has failed should be redone the same way it was done in the first place; how to mouse-proof your home covers which materials to use.
New work means new gaps. The commonest way a sealed house gets mice again is a tradesperson drilling through a wall and leaving the gap round the new pipe or cable. Ask them to seal it before they leave, and check it yourself afterwards.
Garages, Sheds and the Garden
Near the river and open fields, as in much of the countryside round Cookham, wood mice from the garden are part of the picture as well as house mice. They move into sheds and garages first. Keep stored feed, seed and dog food in metal bins, keep garden furniture cushions somewhere sealed, and avoid leaving a compost heap right against the house or garage wall.
Catching the Next One Early
A single mouse caught quickly is a small event. Left for a few weeks, it can become several, because they breed quickly and young mice are breeding themselves within weeks. So keep an eye on the places they showed up last time: the back of the cupboard under the sink, the kickboard, the corner of the garage.
If you see fresh droppings again, ring rather than wait. Where it turns into a new treatment, the price is a fixed £260, confirmed before anything is booked, and what is involved is explained before booking.