The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has just released new consumer guidelines for ridding yourself of rats and mice.  Although wildly popular among homeowners and businesses, sticky traps are now on the “do not use” list for the CDC.  Their main issue with using the sticky traps is that once mice or rats are trapped, they are still alive and being such, are scared.  Scared mice and rats will urinate as they struggle to try to free themselves from the sticky traps.

Mice and rat urine carry diseases that are dangerous to humans if they are contracted.  Worldwide, rats and mice are known to spread over 35 different diseases.  These diseases can spread directly to humans through rodent feces and urine.  The bad thing is that you don’t even need to touch the feces and urine to contract one of these diseases.  Their urine or droppings becomes airborne through a process called aerosolization.  Humans can also contract diseases from rodents via fleas, mites and ticks.

Now this might give you the creeps, but these are actual experiences that my neighbors have had when using stickytraps to get rid of field mice in their homes.

One neighbor reports that she used a sticky trap when her cat was chasing a mouse late one night in her house.  The mouse ran under a doorway into the nursery where the baby was sleeping.  After searching for it for an hour, she placed a sticky trap down and went to bed.  She completely forgot about it the next day when her older daughter had a play date with a friend.  A fun game of hide-and-seek ended with a scream from the visiting girl as she knelt down on the sticky trap, which did not contain the mouse.  Many tears ensued as it took over an hour to peel the trap off of the little girl’s sensitive skin.  The girl later suffered from a terrible rash where the trap was attached as well.

Please check back on Tuesday for the conclusion.