LESLIE: Getty, you’ve got The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
GETTY: Oh, hi. My uncle is struggling with a mouse problem.
TOM: OK.
GETTY: And he wants to get rid of them the old-fashioned way but his wife doesn’t want them to be harmed or killed or anything.
LESLIE: That’s a tough one.
GETTY: Yeah. So they’re trying to figure out a way of – I don’t know, catch them or keeping them out of the house, stuff like that.
TOM: So, what I would suggest is that, first of all, you try to mouse-proof your house as much as possible. So, by doing that, you need to seal all the gaps around the home’s exterior, like where pipes and things come through the walls.
Secondly, you want to avoid anything that creates a nesting site or areas where the mice can sort of dig into. For example, a common one might be firewood piled close to the house and that sort of thing, high grass. So you want to try to make that as un-mouse-friendly as possible.
Next, you want to look at moisture sources and food sources that are inside the house. So, for example, I’ve seen folks develop mouse problems because they have pet food – in the big, heavy pet-food bags – perhaps sitting on the garage floor where the mice decide they’re going to cut their own door into the side of that bag and help themselves. So, you want to make sure that any type of food source is off the ground, up on shelves and in rodent-proof containers, metal containers.
GETTY: OK.
TOM: You could also put in – now, see, she doesn’t want to kill them. So pretty much any other way to get rid of these things is going to remove – is going to kill them. I mean you could use bait stations where they’ll – does she just not want to kill them or she doesn’t want them to die in the house? Because it’s a fine point, you know. If you use a bait station, they usually take the bait and go outside while that stuff goes to work.
GETTY: Right.
TOM: I can understand her perhaps not wanting to use mousetraps, because that can get kind of messy and gross. But I would suggest you try to make your home as rodent-resistant as possible. But I do think that if you really want a permanent solution, you’re going to end up having to use some rodenticides, as well.
GETTY: OK. I think that’d be a fair idea. She’s wanting to catch them all and take them down the road somewhere.
LESLIE: Oh, geez.
TOM: You’re not going to catch them. They’re pretty fast.
TOM: Yeah. Alright. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
GETTY: Thank you.
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