When we had a new furnace/ac installed last October and I was cleaning up the basement, I discovered mice were entering through some openings around our Bilco doors. Creeped me out to say the least. We trapped and caught some right away, patched the holes as best we could, but it's been, ahem, almost 10 months and the mess that they created along the sill at the top of the basement wall has yet to be completely cleaned up. The way the house was built the sill does not come flush with the block wall with the floor joists sitting above. There is a gap of 4-6 inches from the edge of the wall to the sill, so the rodents could easily walk along the block wall to anywhere they wanted. This whole infested area happens to be behind/under? a room addition we put on ten years ago, which is where I found another opening they may have been getting into. Another disaster story!

I just can't bring myself to tackle the job of cleaning this stuff up. There's piles of what I assume is drywall dust and wood shavings that must have fallen out of the wall areas they got in. My husband has shown no interest in cleaning it up. I don't even want to think about how long the mice must have been there. Now I am worried that they might be entering again, and we wouldn't know it because of the mess that is there already.

I just wondered if anyone ever had a service come in to clean such pest messes. I'm concerned about using a shop vac (which is what I was using before I discovered the rodent trespassers). I heard you shouldn't vaccuum up droppings because small particles are then released into the air and potentially breathed via the exhaust. Hopefully a cleaning service of some kind could clean everything up and sanitize also. Then I'd like to get someone in who can tell us how or patch up all the areas rodents might be entering.

I'd love to get rid of the Bilco doors! They've been used, but they're more trouble than they are worth.

Thanks for any help.