Pest control hove: what I learned after finding mice in the kitchen

I live just off Church Road in Hove, in one of those Victorian terraces with a kitchen extension tacked on the back. Lovely house, draughty as anything, and apparently a decent way in for mice if you don't stay on top of it. I found the first sign under the sink one morning, droppings along the skirting, and spent about a week in denial telling myself it was probably just the one that got in through an open door. 

It wasn't just the one. Once I actually looked properly, there was gnawing on a cardboard box in the cupboard and a faint scratching sound at night that I'd been blaming on the pipes. Turns out that's a pretty common story round here. Older housing stock, gaps around old pipework, gardens backing onto each other, it's the kind of setup mice quietly take advantage of if nobody's paying attention. 

I tried the DIY route first, snap traps from the hardware shop and one of those ultrasonic plug in things a neighbour swore by. The traps caught nothing. The ultrasonic thing did even less than nothing, as far as I could tell. After about ten days of that going nowhere, I called in a local pest control firm instead of stubbornly carrying on. 

What actually made a difference was someone coming out, finding the actual entry points rather than just guessing, and treating properly rather than relying on shop bought traps scattered around the kitchen. They also flagged a gap round the extractor vent I'd never even thought to check, which was almost certainly how they were getting in to begin with. Once that was sealed along with everything else, the noises stopped within a few days and stayed stopped. 

It's not just mice either, from what I've picked up talking to neighbours since. Wasps nesting in roof eaves every summer, the odd bedbug scare from someone doing Airbnb, seagulls and pigeons making a mess of anything with an accessible ledge, it's a fairly long list once you start comparing notes on a street WhatsApp group. Coastal towns like Hove seem to get a bit of everything, probably down to the mix of old buildings, gardens, and being close to the sea. 

If I'd learned anything from the whole thing, it's that calling someone properly qualified early on saves a lot of wasted effort. I spent more time and money on traps and gadgets that didn't work than I would have spent just getting it dealt with properly from the start. These days if I hear so much as a scratch behind a cupboard, I'm on the phone straight away rather than hoping it sorts itself out.