Mouse Control in Indianapolis

House mice are the rodent we hear about most in Indianapolis. They're small and gray-brown, and their droppings look like black grains of rice. You find them in the back of a drawer, behind the stove or on the basement floor next to the water heater.

Cold weather is what sends them in. Once nights start dropping toward freezing, mice that spent the summer in yards, fence rows and fields go looking for heat, and a house leaks plenty of it. Purdue Extension notes that a female mouse can have 5 to 10 litters a year, with 5 or 6 young each time. A few mice in October can be a lot of mice by February.

Signs It's Mice

Most people find droppings before they ever see a mouse. Other clues:

• Light scratching or skittering in a wall or ceiling after the house goes quiet
• Chewed corners on cereal boxes, bags of dog food or grass seed
• Shredded paper or insulation balled up in a drawer or a box
• A stale, musky smell in a cabinet or closet
• Droppings around the furnace, water heater or laundry hookups

How They Get Into Indy Houses

A lot of Indianapolis housing is old. Doubles and bungalows in Fountain Square, Victorians and Tudor cottages in Irvington, and the bungalow blocks around Broad Ripple have stone or block foundations, old basement windows, and a century of pipe holes. Mice use all of it.

Newer houses in the donut counties have fewer cracks, but the garage is the weak spot. Bottom seals wear out, the corners don't close all the way, and there's a bag of bird seed on the floor. That's where a lot of mice start. Our garage and car page covers that.

• Gaps around gas, water and electric lines where they enter the basement
• Old basement windows and window wells full of leaves
• Worn garage door seals
• The sill plate on top of the foundation
• Dryer vents with a stuck flap

What a Mouse Visit Looks Like

The tech should walk the outside first, low along the foundation, and then check the basement or crawl space, the kitchen, the laundry and the garage. Snap traps go along the walls where the droppings are. Bait, if any, should be inside locked stations. Most companies come back once or twice to check traps and see whether mice are still getting in.

Trapping by itself is a yearly chore. Closing the gaps is what ends it. Ask about sealing entry points while the tech is there. The price depends on the house, the number of gaps and whether there's cleanup, and the company gives it to you after they've seen the place.

Related services: Entry Point Sealing, Garage and Car Rodent Control, Deer Mouse and Field Mouse Control

Covering Broad Ripple, Irvington, Fountain Square, Lawrence, Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Zionsville, Avon, Brownsburg, Plainfield, Greenwood.