When Trying to Eliminate Mice from Your House Look for These Unexpected Sources of Food

If you have found mouse droppings in your house this winter, you undoubtedly have the uninvited rodents living amongst you. They may be in the basement, the attic, in cabinets or in your walls. Your first and correct instinct (before calling a professional exterminator) would be to clean up any food particles in your kitchen and to pack any boxes of dried rice, cereal, noodles, bread, cookies and other mouse delectables tightly in glass or thick plastic sealed containers. Also, be sure to clean up cooking oil and butter spatters: mice love oils. Once having done that, however, you might be mystified as to why the mice are still around. What could still be attracting them?

There are many items in our house that we might not think of as food, but which to a mouse, are a gourmet treat. But first, it is important to note that mice tend to steal and store food. Once many years ago I pulled a book out of a bookshelf and found behind it a pile of perfectly preserved dry dog foot pellets. There had been no sight of mouse activity around the shelf. But what was especially surprising was that the dog food was of a type a brand I hadn't bought for over a year! Mice seem to know what kinds of foods "keep well."

Along with dry dog and cat food, mice, if hungry, mice will also store and eat many of the following items that we might not even think about as food. Thus if you have any of these around your home-even if in a cabinet or pantry, it would be best to securely seal them away. Here is a short list of items to consider:

Candles: for some reason, mice seem to prefer those with colored wax; some soaps; tea leaves; wine bottle corks (some mice in our house went crazy over the traces of wine in a cork that had fallen under the refrigerator. They whittled away all the dried wine leaving a mess of shredded cork). Other mouse choices include dried decorative door wreaths which are made with dried fruits, pasta, vegetable matter, seeds and nuts and woven wheat sheaths (regardless of whether or not these decorations are varnished or painted); popcorn and cranberries from Christmas tree decorations; dried Indian corn from Halloween or Thanksgiving decorations; corn husk dolls; pasta bead jewelry; necklaces, bracelets and purses made of sewn seeds; items made of paper mache and anything made with wheat paste; items made with Play dough-particularly the homemade variety; bird seed of all kinds; berries and leaves in potpourri; commercial seeds in packets for fruits, vegetables and flowers; craft supplies that include any nut or seed oils (such as olive, peanut or linseed); children's craft items made with glued seeds.

While the list above covers what mice will eat for nutrition, it doesn't account for what else they will steal or gnaw on to either create a soft warm nest, widen their passages, or get to an area where they smell food. However, if you eliminate the lure of what a mouse likes to eat, you have won half the battle in keeping them out of your domain.