For the past few years, we’ve been looking for Mickey. Every Fall and Winter, we get the occasional mouse in our house. We usually catch them in the basement, but once (so far), we’ve found one on the first floor (which I promptly killed).

For about two years, we’ve been stumped trying to figure out how they get into the house. I think that we may have figured it out.

Our basement has hollow cinder block walls. The top of these walls is not covered by anything. So, you can look directly into the wall (see the image above). It looks like an easy method for mice to get into the house. Our theory is that there is a break in the block or mortar where mice are able to sneak in.

I think as a plan of attack, we are going to cut wood to the appropriate size and secure it to the joists of the house so that the wood doesn’t move. This will cover up these holes in the wall. Once we have the wood in place, we’ll caulk around the wood to seal up any extra holes (just in case). I’ve already done one of these to see how it works. It looks like it will work out of us.

Sounds reasonable? I hope so. I am tired of getting mice in our house during the winter.