A house with an easy way in is a port in the storm for mice, squirrels, raccoons and other rodents looking for a place to mate, nest or stash food, and some local pest control services reported summer 2016 was their busiest season in years.
“Rodents like to move in year-round, though we typically see more calls in the fall,” said Dwayne Howell, owner of General Pest Services and a 40-year veteran of the business. “But this year, we’ve had such a rodent problem. It’s been all summer long.”
Mating season will bring a new wave of action in the spring. But now, before the heavy snow arrives, is the time to take preventive action.
“We see them slow down when there’s a lot of snow; they’ve made their hoards for the winter,” said Terry Bowers of Guardian Pest Control.
Like Howell, Bowers said rodent populations were buoyant this year – the past summer was among “the worst” he’s seen in 31 years of pest control – and that means homeowners need to take a look at their attics, crawl spaces, basements and all manner of nooks and crannies where rodents seek harbor.
“I tell people they don’t have a mouse problem, they have a house problem,” Howell said. “We need to figure out where they’re getting in.”
Rodents aren’t looking for food so much as shelter, and pine needles, dead leaves, weeds and other natural debris build up around a home’s foundation, drawing pests closer to the structure in search of a nesting place. Once they’re close, they search for entry points, which can be vents, where water lines and utility connections enter walls, shoddy door seals, foundations, beneath loose roof shingles and where roof lines meet. Roof access is that much easier if homeowners don’t trim overhanging tree branches.
Mice need no more than a quarter-inch space to squeeze through, but a garage is one of the most convenient portals in. “They’re the weakest link to any house,” Bowers said. “It’s a big door.”
Welcoming people into the home for the holidays also leaves an open door for pests, literally.
“I’ve been doing this 14 years, and this time of year, people leave the door open for guests coming in, and that’s the potential for them (rodents) to run in,” said Kevin Wold, branch manager for Orkin Pest Control. “Sometimes you can find them in storage spaces, nestled into Christmas decorations.”
If homeowners don’t want to hire a professional, sometimes they can handle their own pest problems with caulking or products such as Stuf-fit, a chew-resistant copper mesh material stuffed into cracks and openings around pipes. And if placed correctly, traps can be directional tools to determine where animals are nesting.
Local companies stand by traditional snap traps because they’re cheap, reusable and more humane than sticky traps. They discourage use of poison bait because it’s made to be more attractive than a natural food source, drawing pests inside, and because a poisoned pest can become a rotting, inaccessible corpse.
“The old legend is they eat the bait and go away to die; that’s not the case,” Wold said. “When they get sick, they do the same thing we do: They go to their nest to die. Now you got a dead mouse somewhere. We get calls saying, ‘We’ve got a dead mouse, can you get rid of it?’ I don’t know where he died.”
According to pest control agencies, mice and packrats are by far the most ubiquitous local invaders, but they don’t come close to one particular destructive force in a class all its own: raccoons.
Chris Nelson, director of animal services at the La Plata County Humane Society, fields calls about errant raccoons “all the time” and rents out live traps a few times a month to lure them out of basements and attics.
Like bears, raccoons are drawn to trash, bird feeders and unattended pet food. They most often let themselves in through chimneys, roof line intersections and cat doors, and once inside, their noctural tinkering can keep homeowners awake all night: they proliferate, fight among themselves, tear up insulation and help themselves to the amenities of the house.
“I hear of raccoons coming through cat doors, you wake up at 3 a.m. and your dog is barking at it sitting on the counter, eating your cookies,” said Nelson, who once removed a raccoon from a local woman’s kitchen cabinets using a rabies pole. “They can get into anything. They’re very good at it. They can certainly hurt a pet, even a larger dog.”
Because they’re both extremely adaptable and skilled problem solvers, raccoons have invaded urban areas across the country, even rioting in Brooklyn backyards, as The New York Times reported earlier this year.
In Durango, animal control technicians say raccoons are not an overwhelming problem but certainly an endemic one in the pest control world.
“Those calls are pretty steady, though we’ve had some ‘bumper crop’ years,” Nelson said. “A few years ago it seemed like a few particular areas were having major problems, in town and in Hillcrest and Forest Lakes. It’s almost always a concentrated thing.”
When it comes to raccoons, as well as possums, skunks and other larger rodents, pest services say they relocate rather than euthanize as often as possible and just remind homeowners to remember three common sense practices to evade all invasive creatures: lock up trash, secure food and scour the house for covert entryways.
If it’s too late for that, there are tried and tested solutions.
“Come down here (to the humane society) and get a dog,” Nelson said. “Or I’ve got a room full of cats.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
