I maintain an old cottage in the wilderness I’ve had for several years. When I got it, it was completely overrun with mice … it was in that sweet spot of decay between being an animal sanctuary and rotten mass. Since then I’ve had to work hard at restoring what I could and defending what I had left.

I’ve live trapped, death trapped, stomped, killed, purposefully and accidentally killed lots of mice. I’m pacifist and an environmentalist … I’m Indigenous and I’ve hunted before in my life but I don’t like killing animals of any size unless I have to or if it’s something I’m going to eat because I need to. But in order to control the mice, I’ve had to kill lots.

It’s been about ten years now and I’ve controlled the mice problem. Honestly it took about a year to control the majority and about two or three years to completely move them out … but it’s an ongoing battle … it’s just vigilance. And animals thrive and die in cycles (at least in my area in Northern Ontario) … my hunter father used to tell us it was about seven or eight lean years and seven or eight years of plenty … with peaks that appear every seven to eight years where animals, especially mice just explode everywhere.

Keep everything clean and clear, plug up holes and keep an eye out for everything.

At least once a year, move everything … I mean disturb everything … everything. Reorganize your garage, shed, outhouse, out buildings. Take out everything from storage, any storage … check it over, throw out stuff you don’t need, clean the space and put everything back. Do this inside your house as well outside … do it for closests, drawers, dressers, kitchen cabinets, etc. Do the same for anything sitting on your property … old vehicles, old sheds, log piles, junk piles, rock piles … everything, at least turn it over to see if anything is there. Check out as much as possible any nooks and crannies … under sheds, crawl spaces, gaps in buildings, under log piles. Do all this at least once a year.

The more you search, the more you disturb, the more you make in uncomfortable for animals and insects to make it a home.

When you leave spaces or storage alone long enough and never move anything, eventually something will make a home there and you’ll never know until you lift up something or move it aside. The more you disturb the homes of animals, the less likely they’ll stick around and the less likely they’ll return. I find that it takes about a year or two of not disturbing anything that an animal like a mouse will return. The longer you leave an area unmonitored, the more likely something will find their way there and settle in.