If you have children, and you take them to Disneyland, you could spend upwards of a couple of hours waiting in line to take pictures with Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Mighty Mouse inspired children everywhere to fight against injustice and save the day. Jerry, of Tom and Jerry fame, continuously outwitted his feline counterpart and amused us all with his mousy antics. You’ll be hard pressed to find a negative depiction of mice in popular entertainment, but the reality is, nobody wants uninvited rodents in their home. Cartoons never portray mice as carriers of disease or causing structural damage to homes. They’re pests, and they have a penchant for a lot more than looking cute and eating cheese. Let’s take a look at a few of the reasons why you don’t want a mouse in the house.

While your brain may be trained to think of mice living in cute apartments marked by a meticulous, arc-shaped doorway, mice are actually nesters, and they’ll help themselves to anything useful they find in your home so they can make theirs. They’ll chew through anything and everything - doors, books, clothes, furniture - in an effort to find a snug hiding place or build one somewhere else. They’ve been known to chew through insulation on wires as well, causing damage to important wiring, and causing a serious risk of fire.

Contrary to the popular animated mice we all know and love, real mice have no respect for any of your property. Have a valuable painting tucked away? They’ll chew through it. Love letters from your Grandpa to your Grandma when he was serving in WWII? They’ll chew through those too. Your favorite pair of underwear? You guessed it - more chewing. It makes no difference to the mouse. Think of a mouse as Pacman, and those little pixelated pellets being, well, everything in your house. To top it off, they won’t be leaving you a thank you note for your generosity. Instead, they’ll leave something much less pleasant in its place - poop. They don’t use a bathroom, either. Mouse droppings find their way onto everything from your favorite couch to your favorite food - they don’t discriminate when it comes to doing their business. And that’s just the excrement you can see. Mice have no problem peeing all over your stuff too. Human food, pet food, clothes, and toys - they’ll pee on it all, and do so with zero remorse. At the very least, it’s annoying and gross. At worst, it contaminates food and poses a serious health risk to you and your pets.

In case you forgot about the covid-19 coronavirus, it was a virus spread to humans from animals. Jerry causing Tom to hit himself in the face with a rake is funny, but diseases are not. Mice can be carriers of hantavirus, listeria, and salmonellosis, and you could potentially contract those from the poop, pee, or nesting materials, without ever coming in contact with actual mice.

If they’re not already in your home, they’ll do their best to get in. They can chew their own holes, and if they see one that’s already there, it makes their potential entry that much easier. A single mouse can be an extreme nuisance. A family of mice can become a serious problem. While some DIY methods of mouse control can be effective at times, they can also be a problem themselves. Mousetraps might work, but they leave a gross dead mouse behind. What if your kid sees that? You’ll have to spend the next few hours dealing with their trauma and explaining that Mickey isn’t dead and Disneyland is still open. Worse yet, you could forget where you set them, and step on one, or one of your doofy pets could go for the cheese and have a painful experience. If you have a mouse problem, you have a real problem. And when you have a problem, you need help from the pros.

How did mice become such beloved creatures in various forms of media, and capture our imagination, making us all think every last one of our dreams can come true? Your guess is as good as mine. What we do know is that the truth is much more unpleasant. Mice are destructive. They have no respect for your property. They carry disease and will spread it to you without ever worrying about it. Take control of your life and your property. Get rid of the mice.