Mice
The Stockroom Below Your Flat
Most shops on the parade keep their stock in a back room or a basement: sacks, cartons and trays stacked on shelves and on the floor, often right up to the walls. For a mouse this is ideal. It is dry and quiet at night, the packaging is soft enough to nest in and chew, and food is never far away. The ceiling of that room is usually the floor of the flat above, with a void between the two where pipes and cables run.
How deliveries bring them in
Mice do not only walk in; they are carried. A pallet that sat overnight in a warehouse, a crate of vegetables or a box of packaging left by the back door can bring a mouse or two with it. Deliveries arrive every day, through a back door that is often propped open while the van is unloaded, so the chances add up over a year.
From the shop to the rooms above
Once in the building, a mouse follows the services. The gap around a waste pipe rising through the ceiling, a cable fed up into a kitchen, or the space behind boxed-in pipework in a bathroom is enough. The area page describes the building as a whole; for you, the useful question is where the pipes come into your flat, because that is usually where the droppings are. How mice move between flats covers this in more detail.
What to Look For in a Flat Over a Shop
- Droppings in the cupboard where the kitchen waste pipe goes through the floor
- Gnawed packets on the lowest shelf of a kitchen cupboard
- Scratching in the floor or under the kitchen units late in the evening, after the shop has closed
- Droppings behind the fridge or cooker, near the pipes and cables
- Shredded paper or tissue tucked behind an appliance
The signs of mice explains what droppings and gnawing look like, and mice behind kitchen units helps with the most likely hiding place. Larger droppings, or activity out in the yard, could mean rats in Golders Green instead.
What to Do Before Anyone Visits
- Put dry food, cereals and snacks into hard containers with lids
- Pull the fridge and cooker out a little so you can see what is behind them
- Tell the shop below and your landlord or managing agent what you have found
- Do not block the holes around pipes yet, while mice are still using them
- Do not scatter poison under the floor or behind units, where a mouse can die out of reach
Around the Visit
When you book mouse control, tell us which floor you are on, what kind of business is below, and which rooms have signs. Clear the cupboard under the sink and the space in front of the kitchen kickboards. The technician will tell you what they found and what to expect next. The time it takes depends on the flat and on whether mice are still coming up from below, as how long mouse treatment takes sets out. Contact us again if fresh droppings appear after a quiet spell.
Keeping Mice Out of a Flat Above the Parade
The gaps where services come into your flat are the ones to close, and they are usually small: a ring of space around a waste pipe, a notch cut for a cable, a hole behind the boiler. Rodent proofing in Golders Green seals small accessible gaps like these once the mice are dealt with. It also helps if the shop keeps its stock off the floor and its back door shut when no delivery is being made. Why mice keep coming back explains the pattern when the source is next door or below.
In the Edwardian houses behind the parade the story is more about shared floors in a conversion, and in nearby Finchley the converted houses by the stations have the same question. For mice elsewhere in the borough, see Mouse Control Barnet.
