[Rodent Control Issue] Rodent Control in Schools and Other Child-Care Facilities

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Bobby Corrigan’s book, “Rodent Control: A Practical Guide for Pest Management Professionals.” To order, visit www.pctonline.com/store.

Currently, there is much attention on the issue of IPM in schools and other child-care facilities (CCF) such as day care centers. Several states already have legislation mandating that IPM programs must be implemented in their schools. This may be the path that several other, if not all, remaining states follow. The overall goal is to minimize the use of pesticides in schools and should a pesticide be needed, to use the least toxic pesticide and to apply it in the safest manner. All this makes good sense. So it is important here to focus on how the IPM movement affects rodent pest management for schools and CCFs.

Similar to most other commercial facilities, the primary rodent pest inside most schools in the United States is the common house mouse. For schools located in rural and semi-rural areas, the deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus, can be a pest in addition to the house mouse. And for some inner-city schools, rats may be the primary pest from time to time. However, this article focuses attention on only mouse IPM programs.

MANAGEMENT RECOMMENDATIONS. Because schools are one of the most sensitive environments relative to pest management, it is particularly important that school IPM programs be as proactive as possible. Otherwise, a school can go from having a few mice to several dozen mice in just a few months. And rodent infestations, much more than insect infestations, can create significant attention among students, teachers, administrators, parents and even the local press in the surrounding school community. In other words, a serious rodent infestation is among the last things a school and the contracted pest professional wants to have occur. Thus, it is important for both personnel and pest management professionals to establish proactive rodent and insect pest management programs. The following recommendations are provided to help implement proactive programs:

1. Pest Sighting Logs are Mandatory. Pest sighting logs that are filled in by school personnel in between pest management service visits are an essential part of any school IPM program. For mouse IPM programs, sighting logs should record not only live mice, but mouse droppings, mouse-damaged paper or boxes, or any scratching noises heard by personnel in classrooms or other areas. Because of the fast reproduction of rodents and the potential health problems mice can create around schools, rodent entries in the log should prompt the school to call the pest professional, as compared to waiting until the next scheduled service visit.

For large high schools with many rooms where mice are being reported in different areas, such activity can be plotted on the school building plan and those areas showing activity can be surrounded with the program.

2. Monitor and Service the Pest Vulnerable Areas of the School. Proactive pest management programs mean, in part, inspecting and monitoring in those areas of the school that are most vulnerable for infestations. In this way, pest professionals can remain one step ahead of any newly arriving rodents. The “mouse vulnerable areas” of a school include the following:

a) Cluttered classrooms where foods are stored in cabinets.
b) Kitchen cabinets and accessible kitchen wall voids where openings into the walls remain unrepaired.
c) Kitchen storerooms, especially those utilizing old wood shelving with gondola-style bases (creating enclosed floor voids) and/or cluttered storerooms with boxes on the floor or shoved up against the wall.
d) Teacher faculty lounges. These rooms are essentially the equivalent to most residential kitchen environments and thus will provide rodents with harborage, food and water.
e) Student locker voids. Often the void behind, below or above lockers accumulates papers, food scraps, clothing and other items highly attractive to mice for feeding and nesting.
f) Snack bars, promo rooms and closets (any closets where snacks, candles and popcorn are stored).
g) Cluttered receiving areas around large bay doors.
h) Custodial closets where food garbage is not quickly discarded.
i) Suspended ceilings in kitchens, storerooms, teachers’ lounges and classrooms where food is stored.

In each of these vulnerable areas, the school’s role in the IPM program is to regularly repair walls, eliminate clutter, keep floors clear and clean, and store all foods in tight plastic containers. Additionally, items should be stored off the floor in storage rooms to allow for inspections, cleaning and the installation of trapping and stations if needed.

Mouse and monitoring traps (MMTs) can be installed into at least a few of the most mouse-vulnerable areas of the schools, as well as in those areas that have had previous mouse activity. For example, the kitchen storeroom and concession stands are excellent locations for permanent placements of MMTs. Some examples of MMTs include installing glueboards into curiosity traps. Or snap traps and insect sticky monitors can be inserted into heavy-duty plastic monitor boxes. In some MMT setups, ant and roach baits also can be installed into the stations.

For schools in rural areas nearby or surrounded by crop fields, it can be expected that mice will move into the school when the crops are harvested in the fall. Good rodent proofing of the school will go a long way in minimizing the number of mice that successfully gain entry. But even in the tightest schools, a few mice find a way or arrive within supply boxes. For rural schools, pest professionals should anticipate the mouse dispersal seasons. Professionals can install mousetraps in the vulnerable areas just prior to crop harvests and apply additional control efforts as necessary.
 
3. Trapping Programs. In the majority of cases, mouse (or rat) traps properly installed using professional techniques based on experience and thorough inspection of the vulnerable areas should swiftly eliminate new mouse infestations, providing the school program is proactive and the mice weren’t left unaddressed for several weeks. And non-chemical approaches best define school IPM programs.

Snap traps and “repeating curiosity traps” are highly effective mousetraps when properly installed and maintained. However, a common mistake made by both professionals and lay persons alike is the response of setting out only one or two mousetraps in the affected area of the school. In those cases, where it is only one mouse, a couple of traps are likely to take care of the problem. For effective school IPM programs, it is most cost-effective to err on thoroughness.

For other commercial establishments, suspected rodent infestations should be “surrounded” by installing some traps above, below and on both sides of any areas reporting mouse activity.

In some schools the student body occasionally gets involved in the school IPM program (which is desirable). And occasionally, the students desire to control the mice using the most humane approaches possible. Thus, at least some of the mice can be live trapped and released several miles away from the school. For infestations that are more than minor, live-trapping programs are not likely to be 100 percent effective and the disease risks associated with mouse infestations vs. humane programs only should be discussed.

4. The Use of Rodenticide Baits. It has been and remains a wide-scale practice in many schools around the United States, that minor mouse infestations are often handed by custodians, maintenance and grounds personnel, and teachers applying over-the-counter mouse baits in areas where mice are seen or reported. Typically, these are casual applications of mouse poisons into areas such as teachers’ lounges, on the floors of storerooms and in many different closets, including those inside classrooms. Practically speaking, these programs are not of great toxicological threat to the students. And the scarcity of mouse bait/student encounters over the past 50 years — since the introduction of the first anticoagulants — supports this.

Still, people and students encountering rodenticidal baits inside schools can and have occurred. The greatest chance is when packet-style baits or blocks are “tossed” into ceilings or beneath low shelving units in the kitchen storerooms. Or some well-meaning staff member pours some loose pellet baits onto a paper plate and installs it beneath a cabinet sink.

Mice are notorious for moving (translocating) pellet, packet-style and unattached block baits and depositing them in a variety of areas away from the placement site. Thus, the use of baits is of concern inside schools and other child care facilities if casual or unprofessional bait applications are made.

But even so, the actual toxicological threat to a student encountering a few mouse bait pellets is nil because it is highly unlikely the poison bait would be eaten. The exception, of course, is if bait pellets or blocks were found in day care centers by “toddlers” (i.e., children under the age of 6).

Nevertheless, the practical problem for any pest management professional servicing a school is the perception that should any student encounter a bait or consume even innocuous amounts of a bait, (e.g., a child eating a few pellets of the bait), the event will be considered a “poisoning event” by school personnel and parents. The consequences may be very time-consuming for all parties. Therefore, any baiting programs for schools must be designed to ensure students do not encounter baits in any form.

Should a serious rodent infestation develop inside a school and the program is beyond an extensive trapping program, it is clearly a case for the attention of an experienced pest management professional. School custodians and maintenance personnel are not trained in the use of tamper-resistant rodenticide baiting strategies and products.

For example, any rodenticidal baiting programs conducted in schools must be done using only secured block formulations inside tamper-resistant mouse bait stations.

Additionally for schools, all bait stations should be numbered, carefully located in inaccessible areas and all baits removed when the infestation has been eliminated. Still, it is rare when extensive trapping programs will not eliminate school mouse infestations.

Schools play a direct role in preventing serious mouse infestations from occurring and they must work cooperatively with pest management professionals. Pest professionals have a responsibility to perform proactive inspections, implement the safest remedial programs and to communicate/educate school personnel that mousetraps and/or baits cannot (and should not be expected to) compensate for insufficient cleaning, storage practices and rodent proofing.

The author is president of RMC Consulting, Richmond, Ind.