Mice travel over their entire territory daily, investigating each change or new object that may be placed there.
Mice have poor vision, hence their activity patterns rely heavily on smell, taste, touch, and hearing.
Mice use the long sensitive whiskers near the nose and hairs on the body as tactile sensors. The whiskers and hairs enable the mouse to travel in the dark, adjacent to walls in burrows.
Mice also have an excellent sense of balance, enabling them to walk along telephone wires, ropes and similar thin objects.
Mice are excellent jumpers, capable of leaping at least 12 inches vertically.
Mice can jump against a flat vertical surface using it as a spring board to gain additional height.
They can run up almost any vertical surface; wood, brick, weathered sheet metal, cables, etc.
They can easily travel for some distance hanging upside down.
Although they are good swimmers, mice tend to take to water only if left with no other alternative.
Mice are basically nocturnal in nature.
Breeding Habits
House mice breed throughout the year and can become pregnant within 48 hours of producing a litter.
There are usually about 6 mice to a litter and females may produce as many as ten litters (about 50 young) per year.
It takes 18 to 21 days for gestation, and 35 days for a mouse to mature. Most mice live anywhere from 15 to 18 months.
Nesting Habits
They make their nests out of the same types of soft materials as rats, and as many as 3 females may use the same nest. They commonly nest in insulation in attics, also in stoves and under refrigerators. Mice do not travel far from their nest, about 12 to 20 feet.
Feeding Habits
Mice normally feed 15 to 20 times per day and will eat pretty much anything a human will eat.
Food preference is cereal or seed, but also gnaw through insulation or wires, sheet rock, storage boxes, etc.
Mice are nibblers. They do small amounts of damage to many food items in "home range", rather than doing extensive damage to any one item.
While mice are nibblers and feed many times in many places, they have two main feeding periods, at dusk and just before dawn.
They have to consume about 10% to 15% of their body weight every 24 hours and require extremely small amounts of water.
Disease and Sanitation Factors
Mice droppings sometimes are confused with droppings from the larger species of roaches, such as the American roach.
Mice droppings are smooth with pointed ends, and are 1/8th to 1/4 inch long.
In six months, one pair of mice can eat about 4 pounds of food and during that period produce some 18,000 fecal droppings.
Deer mice are a primary vector of hantaviral infections which cause hemorrhagic fevers.
Mice may infect food with their droppings transmitting such organisms as salmonella and the microscopic eggs of tapeworms.
Mice transmit disease in a number of ways including biting, infecting human food with their droppings or urine, indirectly via the dog or cat and bloodsucking insects.
Prevention and Control
Good sanitation is essential for effective long term control. Mice can enter any opening larger than 1/4 inch, making it virtually impossible to completely mouse proof a building.
The control of mice can be widely varied, depending on the individual situation. It may range from physically altering the conditions allowing the infestation, such as covering holes, filling cracks, etc. to baiting or trapping.
Your Burge Pest Control technician will determine the best means of control for your home or business.
RATS
Physical Characteristics
Rats will live for 6 to 12 months and are sexually mature at 2-3 months.
Female rats produce an average of 4-7 litters per year and 8-12 young per litter.
For self defense, rats are nocturnal and become active after a premises has become quiet, or about one 1/2 hour after dusk. When left alone they will roam around day or night.
The roof rat is also a house rat and may live in trees, shrubs and in vines on the outside walls of houses.
The Norway rat is the most common rat and occurs practically everywhere.
Because of individual variations, rats often can't be separated by color.
Rats are color blind and have poor vision, but highly developed senses of smell, taste, hearing and touch.
Feeding Habits
Rats are omnivorous but do have preferences. They prefer seeds, fresh vegetables or fruits. Norway rats prefer food high in fat content.
Rats will eat just about anything including clothing, leather, bone, lead, and plastic pipes, cement and wood.
Rats will eat their own injured or weak.
Rats prefer nesting areas out of sight and reach of enemies and nests can be made up of any kinds of materials but they prefer bits of paper, rags, burlap, straw, and wood chips.
Roof rats are agile climbers and can shinny the outside of 3 inch diameter pipes or any size pipe within three inches of a wall.
Rats are capable of climbing inside of vertical pipes that are 1 1/2 to 4 inches in diameter.
Norway rats can swim as far as 1/2 mile in open water, dive through water plumbing traps and travel in sewer lines, even against strong water currents.
Roof rats are capable swimmers, but only swim if necessary.
Rats have excellent balance and can easily scale brick or other rough walls, as well as travel along power lines and ropes.
Rats are excellent jumpers and are capable of jumping vertically 36 inches and horizontally 48 inches; they can drop from a height of 50 feet without serious injury.
Since rats can fit through openings that are as small as 1/2 inch in diameter it is very difficult to rat proof a building.
Norway rats can burrow to a depth of 4 feet.
Disease and Damage Factors
The roof rat was the common house rat in Europe during medieval times when outbreaks of the Plague, known as the Black Death, killed over 25,000,000 people.
They are known to be vectors of the following diseases:
• Murine Typhus Fever
• Weil's Disease
• Food Poisoning
• Hantaviral Infections
• Rat Bite Fever
• Trichinosis
The presence of rodents reduces the rental value of apartments and stores.
The noises they make as they climb, gnaw, and fight between the walls and floors of buildings often keep inhabitants from sleeping.
Rats can damage food and property estimated at one billion dollars per year.
Rats can damage electrical wiring, causing short circuits and fires.
Prevention and Control
The control of rodents varies depending on the individual situation. Covering holes, filling cracks, baiting or trapping may be necessary. Your Burge Technician is trained to determine the best means of control for your home or business.
