Yes, mice don't leave your home just because winter is over. If they moved in during the colder months, they'll stay as long as they have food, water, and shelter.
It’s tempting to assume that mice are a winter problem and that they will go back outside when the weather warms up. If you've been holding onto that hope, this is probably not what you want to hear. But understanding why they stay can help you deal with the problem sooner.
Mice that entered your home in fall or winter did so because your house offered better conditions than the outdoors. Even in the spring, your home is still warmer at night, has food, provides shelter, and doesn’t expose them to predators. Basically, they have no incentive to leave.
In fact, spring can even make the problem worse for two reasons. First, mice breed year-round indoors and can have six to eight pups per litter. It doesn’t help that mice only have a gestation period of about three weeks and reach breeding age at six weeks. That means that by spring, a single pair of mice can produce dozens of offspring.
Spring activity can also make signs of mice more visible. As you open windows, spend more time in the garage, and start to clean out storage areas, you’re likelier to notice droppings, gnaw marks, nesting material, and the musty smell of urine you might have missed in winter months when those areas went undisturbed.
If you have an infestation of mice right now, it’s better to handle the problem head-on than try to outwait them. Professional control can help a lot here.
For Long Island homeowners dealing with rodent activity,Mosquito Squad of Long Island offers rodent control services that include inspection, targeted trapping, and exclusion. A trained technician can find out how mice are getting in and where they are nesting. Then with that information, they can come up with a custom plan to deal with the existing population and prevent the next round from moving in.
