Exclusion beats trapping every time

Setting traps in an attic is satisfying — you can count what you catch. It is also, on its own, a subscription rather than a solution.

The gap is the problem

A house mouse fits through a hole the width of a pencil. On a Gulf Coast home the usual entries are the roofline where the shingles meet the fascia, unscreened weep holes, pipe chases under the sink, and the corners of a garage door seal. Every one of those is fixable.

What exclusion involves

Copper mesh and sealant in the small gaps, hardware cloth on the larger ones, new door sweeps where the seal has flattened. It is priced by linear feet rather than by the hour, so the quote is knowable before the work starts.

Traps still have a job

They clear the population that is already inside while the exclusion work goes on. They are the first half of the job, not the whole of it.