How to Get Rid of Pests
Pests are everywhere. Hopefully they won’t be in your apartment since they can quickly turn an amazing place into a nightmare. The staff at Apartments.com understands this issue and wants to help make sure that even if you do find yourself sharing a room with a gang of mice, you can get them out quickly and safely. Even if you’re positive you don’t have any bugs or rodents in your apartment, read on for how to continue to prevent their presence.
Preventing Infestation
The easiest way to prevent bugs and rodents is by keeping your apartment clean. This does NOT mean just keeping the clothes in the hamper and the dishes in the sink. While those are good ways to start, you also need to be sure to wash your dishes in a timely fashion, clean kitchen counters and floors, keep food stored in rodent-proof containers (they can eat through plastic bags and cardboard boxes), vacuum carpeting and rugs regularly and dust everything that is sitting out in your apartment. Your bathroom, while it may not contain food, can attract rodents if it is dirty. Wash and disinfect the floor, tub, sink and toilet often. All garbage cans should have tight-fitting lids and garbage bags should be taken to the dumpster immediately. Pet food should not be left out overnight.
Beat the rodents at their own game by placing spring-loaded traps around baseboards. By the time you see rodents in your apartment, you can be relatively sure that they are crawling in all the walls and have run out of room. Use an EPA-approved poison rat bait under the plastic or plywood shelter along baseboards. Be sure to follow the directions carefully as this is poison for pets and humans, too. Rodents can squeeze through holes as small as ¼ of an inch so make sure to seal any holes you find. You can do this with lath screen or lath metal, cement or wire screening. Your landlord should have already done this but may have missed any new holes that have formed.
I saw a mouse!
If you have been keeping your apartment clean, call your landlord and inform them of the critters that have moved in. Landlords are required to keep apartments free from rodents and should do an inspection of the building for points of entry and block them. Additionally a professional exterminator may be called out. If your landlord does not respond within a few days, call your local health department and inform them. In the meantime, set spring-loaded traps and bait as described above. Continue to patch up any holes you find. Many animal-rights organizations take issue with sticky traps, which are just very sticky surfaces from which mice cannot escape. While spring-loaded traps kill mice immediately, sticky traps simply keep mice from moving and so they have to starve to death. This is a long and horrible death for the mice. You can also purchase no-kill traps, which house the mice in a container until you can let them outside.
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