Never. I keep food in air tight containers, never in the original packaging. I’m a little OCD about cleaning. Maybe we have just been lucky? Even our farmhouse on 30 acres never had mice. |
| Haven't spotted a mouse in our 30yr old Fairfax townhome since we moved here 2 yrs ago. |
Thank you--I was wondering how that worked! |
Maybe they just hide well?
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This is an easy problem to fix, OP. In the list of deal-breakers, I would not call that a deal-breaker! Too much radon in the basement, asbestos insulation, too much mold, active termites, un-fixable flooding issues because the house is at the bottom of a hill or in a flood zone, those are deal-breakers.
If everything else is great, just get mice traps, the humane ones. |
| I had a big rat snake in my house. It was probably there to eat the mice. |
| I've had mice in my house in Bethesda 2 times in 25 years and it was easy to get rid of them both times. My beach house gets them every year despite a pest control contract. I've learned to just deal with it. |
| The weather drives rodents indoors- heat, rain, cold. So you see more of them st various times of year, no matter how clean your house. |
Can mammals autogenerate? |
Interesting. We have never seen a mouse in our 20 year old house in Rockville. I thought it was a common problem in DC and its close-in suburbs. Do mice in newer houses suggest holes or cracks in the foundation? |
Rats are in cities, mice are everywhere. +1 on the black rat snake. We have a snake in our cellar who keeps the mice out. |
| Get a $500 annual contract with a good pest control company and have them seal points of entry and put out traps to address the existing problem. This should not be dictating your choice of home as it's an easily solvable problem. |
And I live in a 1970's house on 1/2 an acre, and we've had mice off and on over the years. I stopped seeing evidence of them, for the most part, a little over a year ago. Right around the time we got a cat. |
How do you make certain that the snake stays in the cellar? |
Lol. I have 2 acres and tons of mice. |