Homeowner Horror Story: The Mouse Poop Nightmare

My garage isn’t attached to my house, so when I noticed some shredded paper in the corner one fall afternoon, I thought vaguely about a mouse problem, but I didn’t do anything about it. I figured, “Well, it’s not in my house, so it should be fine.”

About a week later, I noticed something had chewed a small hole in one of the dog food bags. “Meh,” I thought, and went about my day. How much damage could a lone mouse really cause? I figured other than some minor losses to my dog food stockpile, it wouldn’t cost me any money.

But then I went out of town. Ten days and one awesome trip later, I returned to Colorado on one of those perfect fall days that is just begging for a motorcycle ride. I went into my garage and grabbed my helmet.

My helmet was completely full of mouse poop.

While holding my poop-filled helmet, I noticed that my garage now smelled a lot like the zoo. (Cue horror music here.) Not only had mice covered the garage with poop while my wife and I were away, they’d also been nice enough to fill every cranny they could with their nasty feces. Ski boots, rollerblades, a golf bag (every pocket was now a mouse toilet), motorcycle helmets, suitcases, and a leather travel bag I’d received from my father all had to be tossed because they were full of poop.

I threw out thousands of dollars worth of stuff that I’d mistakenly thought would be safe in the garage.

Then, I gave a pest control service a call to make sure the problem wouldn’t happen again. Since that terrible afternoon five years ago, I’ve been serious about my relationship with Mr. Pest Control. I only wish I hadn’t dismissed the shredded paper and torn dog food bag as being “no big deal.”

If I could rewind, I’d call pest control as soon as I saw warning signs of a mouse problem. If I’d done that, I wouldn’t still be finding old, dried-up poop pellets in my garage from the mouse nightmare.

To read the full post, and to check out all of our Halloween tips and tricks for today, please visit: http://bit.ly/MouseStory