The first sign that most people notice when they have rodents in their house is by the droppings the rodents leave behind in the kitchen and other areas where they foraging for food or a place to nest. If you have rodents, you will need to determine if they are mice or rats because you will have to use different methods to bait or trap the rodents to get them out of your house. Here four ways you can tell if you have mice or rats in your home.
Size
The simplest way to tell a mouse from a rat is by looking at them. This is not easy to do while you are walking around as both will hide as soon as they hear you coming. Instead, place a security-type camera in the area where you have been finding the droppings. Mice are small bodied and usually won’t grow more than seven inches from head to tail. Rats, on the other hands, have much larger bodies and can grow about 18 inches long from head to tail.
Droppings
The droppings the rodents leave behind are important indicators on which species of rodent has invaded your home. Mice leave behind small droppings with pointy ends. The droppings look like little grains of black rice. Rat droppings are much bigger and are typically about the size of kidney beans.
Holes in the Walls
Mice generally enter the home by squeezing through openings around pipes and vents. Rats will eat through walls to get into your home. If see start to see holes about the size of a tennis ball along the base of the walls, you can safely assume you have rats in your house.
Sounds at Night
Mice and rats are both active at night, but rats make more sounds. You can often hear rats as they chew through the drywall or wood to make an opening or sharpen their teeth. Mice are typically quiet unless they get into something like a bag of potato chips.
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