Dealing with mice right now? Mouse & Rat Control, by a team that does nothing else.
The noise is what most people notice first, often for several nights before they find any other evidence. It is worth listening properly rather than waiting, because what you are hearing changes how urgent the problem is.
Tell them apart by the sound
- Mice. Light, fast, scratchy. Short bursts of movement along a joist or behind a skirting board, then silence, then more. Often accompanied by a faint gnawing. Starts shortly after the house goes quiet and continues through the night.
- Rats. Noticeably heavier and slower. You may hear something being dragged, or sustained gnawing that sounds like it is against wood rather than plasterboard. A rat above a ceiling can sound alarmingly large, and people often overestimate it.
- Squirrels. Heavier still, and the giveaway is the timing: squirrels are active in daylight, particularly at first light and again in the late afternoon. Anything loud in a loft at 6am in spring or autumn is more likely a squirrel than a rat.
- Birds. Scuffling and fluttering rather than scratching, usually confined to the eaves rather than moving across the loft, and almost entirely daytime. Common in spring.
- The house itself. Pipes ticking as they cool, and timber contracting, both make regular noises shortly after heating switches off. They stop; animals move.
Where the sound is coming from
Location narrows it further. Noise directly above a bedroom ceiling usually means the loft or the joist void. Noise inside a wall at head height, particularly in an upstairs room, tends to be mice in a cavity. Noise low down behind kitchen units is normally mice in the underfloor void, and it is often the first sign at ground level.
A useful test: tap the ceiling or wall firmly. Mice generally stop and restart within a minute or two. Rats tend to go quiet for considerably longer. Neither test is conclusive, but combined with the weight of the sound it usually settles it.
How urgent is it?
Mice are a problem worth dealing with promptly because they breed quickly, contaminate far more food than they eat, and gnaw cabling. A month of delay is a materially bigger job.
Rats are more urgent. The gnawing that damages cabling and water pipes is the same behaviour making the noise, and the health risk from urine and droppings is real. If what you are hearing is heavy and slow, treat it as this week's problem.
Squirrels in a loft need dealing with too, but they are a different job with different legal considerations, and they are not what this site handles.
What to look for next
- Droppings along skirting, in cupboards or in loft insulation. Rice-grain size means mice; larger and tapered means rats. See mouse droppings.
- Smear marks along regular runs, where grease from fur builds up on edges
- Gnawing on packaging, cabling, pipework or timber
- A faint ammonia smell in enclosed spaces
- Disturbed loft insulation, or shredded material pulled into a nest
Why it usually starts in autumn
Because that is when rodents move indoors. As the weather cools and food outside runs short, mice and rats look for somewhere warm with a food supply nearby, and a heated house with a loft is ideal. Most of the calls we take about night noise come between September and January.
If you have identified what it is, see mouse control or rat control. If you want to know how they are getting in, see how mice get in.