Here's how mice know how to avoid traps
When you have a mouse or mice in your home, many things can happen. They chew through wires, steal things, nest or burrow into your walls. What is the right course of action? People may set down mouse traps. But, what happens if the traps don’t work? Do the mice know to avoid traps?
While mice in your home don’t necessarily know that the wooden bed with a little block of cheese is set for them, they do have an extraordinary sense of smell. The fact is that they don’t know to avoid traps, but they do know to avoid humans.
If you have a mouse infestation in your home there are a few things to keep in mind:
Humane Traps May Work Best
If you are interested in ridding your home of mice (as in many), humane traps will allow the trapped mouse to live, while not setting off a smell of a dead mouse.
ActionPest.com explains that mice continuously dribble urine; to them, the smell is a sense of comfort. If a mouse is caught alive, it will urinate over the trap. Once the other mice smell the urine, they will gravitate toward the smell as a safe and familiarity.
Use Gloves When Putting Out the Trap
To reiterate, mice have a fantastic sense of smell. When they smell humans, they bolt or avoid the places. This avoidance is due to their keen sense of alert. Most times, unless nesting, mice are on alert. Even when they are eating, if a mouse smells a human scent on a trap or even a piece of food, they will, no doubt, avoid the human scent.
Check the Traps Often
When mice avoid traps, the smell humans or they smell another mouse that died. If the mice in your home are avoiding traps you set out, there may have been a mouse that sat for a few days before it was discarded. Make sure to check your traps often. Doing so will help keep the scent of death off the traps and otherwise not alert the mice to possible danger.
Move the Traps Around the House
Chances are, if you have one mouse in your house, you may have several especially, if you live near nature or in close quarters to your neighbors, such as in a major city. The fact of the matter is if you have an infestation of mice, and the mice begin to notice that others are not returning to the group, they may catch on and stay away from places they know their counterparts were going.
Moving the traps around the house will help keep the mice from avoiding places that traps may generally be.
Keep It to the Walls.
No one is going to put a mousetrap in the center of their living room; however, note that mice feel most comfortable along the walls. This comfort is due to the state of being alert, always. Having a wall on one side of their body is a way for mice to know that once place is safe.
Jerry was a Cartoon Mouse
While Tom and Jerry provided entertainment (and some extreme violence), Jerry was created far more clever than any mouse will ever be. As far as human intelligence goes, mice are no comparison. What they do have is a sense to stay alive. That alertness allows them to avoid traps when they have the scent of anything unfamiliar to them. Remember, urine is a comfort, and the death of one of their friends will send them in a different direction.
To Sum It Up...
Mice have a keen sense of smell. Using gloves to cover up the “human” scent when preparing and lying traps out will help catch mice better, easier, and quicker. Humane traps may work best due to the constant stream of urine mice excrete in their waking hours. Urine is a comfort to them, and by having a live mouse in the trap, and streaming urine, other mice will flock instead of avoiding. Finally, check your traps often and keep to the walls. A mouse is on constant alert, the smell of another dead mouse or a trap not set close to a wall will have that mouse avoiding any traps set up.
Resources—Pest Control Products, Action Pest
About The Author
