Winter is here, and rodents are looking for warm places to stay. One of those places could be your home. You might have mice without even knowing it, but it can actually make the problem worse if you DIY rodent control.

"The population has increased tremendously. They are winning,” explains Ryan Katz, a rodent remediation specialist with Graduate Pest Control.

Katz points out that rodents don’t need much space to get inside. They look for cracks and crevices usually found by wires and pipes.

Once they’re in, the health risks rise quickly.

“The amount of pathogens contained in their urine, droppings, their dander, and everything they carry on them can get us sick,” Katz says.

Many homeowners reach for poison first, but improper use could also poison pets, groundwater and the wildlife that eats rodents. Sick or dying rodents are often eaten by predators, and that’s how secondary poisoning spreads. Katz warns, “You have all these sick animals walking around, and they become easy prey for owls, hawks, fox.”

The main culprit are second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides. Once the toxin enters the food chain, it can devastate populations of animals that naturally help control rodents. 2. Mice are smart

Mice are intelligent enough to learn to avoid trapping methods quickly making your efforts useless. When the methods do work, it doesn’t eliminate the problem and causes unnecessary suffering to these intelligent creatures.

It’s important to properly act on rodent control because they reproduce very quickly. Female mice can start reproducing at only 6 weeks old and can produce a litter of five to 10 pups (and these “pups” aren’t adorable dogs) about once a month.

Professionals like Katz rely on exclusion and targeted trapping. Katz has invested in a K-9 program. These rodent-sniffing dogs can pinpoint rodent entry points and track infestations, and specialized abatement dogs can quickly eliminate mice without causing suffering.

One of those dogs in training is Katz's own puppy, Mia. “She’s going to be hunting rats all through the city,” he says. It’s a level of precision and effectiveness that DIY baits and home-store traps simply can’t match.

You don’t need to handle rodent removal yourself, but you can support the experts.

Basic landscaping care like keeping leaf clutter away from your home and pruning shrubs away from exterior walls will help. Removing this clutter will make it easier to find entry points and less appealing for rodents to find a way in.

Ryan Katz is a second-generation pest management specialist and the operations lead at Graduate Pest Control. The family-owned business was founded in 1983. Katz is recognized for his advanced rodent exclusion work, structural diagnostics and intelligence-based prevention strategies. Katz is frequently called in to solve the most challenging rodent cases across New York City and Long Island. Together with rodent-abatement expert Kimberly Camera, he is developing one of the most comprehensive East Coast rodent-control platforms. They are combining cutting-edge exclusion science with elite canine detection and removal capabilities. Their integrated approach delivers one of the most comprehensive pest management solutions in the eastern United States.