Floating Poo.

Floating Poo?

We recently received a call from a customer that had to go in their attic space and found what they thought were mouse droppings on the insulation. Having never experienced an issue with mice, they were quite surprised to see all these dropping. So, they told us they took matters in their own hands, went to the home store and bought a bunch of mouse traps. They set over a dozen mouse traps and waited to catch the little intruders. When a couple of weeks went by and they caught nothing, they decided it is time to call in a pro. 

The Exodus technician, hearing the details firsthand about the customers experience, immediately had a hunch. Once in the attic, he carefully avoided the gauntlet of snap traps, untouched, on the top of the insulation blanket. He noticed there were no mouse tracks in the insulation. He also noticed the droppings on top of the insulation, like they had been carefully placed there... 'floating poo". He carefully inspected the droppings and held them in front of his flashlight for the customer to see more closely. They sparkled! 

That is why the mouse traps are not working, said the tech. You don’t have mice, you have bats! The droppings sparkle from the insects the bat eats and is floating on top of the insulation because it dropped from above as the bats flew to their roost. 

The moral of the story; something as simple as misidentifying a dropping can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of pest control efforts. Setting a thousand mouse traps would not have solved this customers problem, but because they relied on professional advice, the problem was quickly identified, and services were performed to safely exclude the bats from the customers home.