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Oh crap.
Drez
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Long story medium:
I am moving. As a result, I am cleaning.
A few years ago, my landlady had a mouse problem. The problem was this: She had uninvited mice in her apartment. Mice are small rodent-like rodents. They scurry around like mice.
As a result of my landlady having a mouse problem, we also had a mouse problem. We weathered it and eventually the mice moved out.
We also have 30+ years worth of stuff in our house. This means boxes and bins and whatnot in every corner. Until a week ago, I had forgotten our house had corners. It was like an alien geometry - a cornerless abode barricade by boxes and bins of wires, papers, gadgetry, and unused supermarket coupons.
Anyway, these corners apparently represented some kind of overground underground tunnel for our unwanted guests.
They shit everywhere.
This includes carpeted floors as well as uncarpeted floors (i.e. floors without carpet).
For surfaces like bins and whatnot, I've been using Clorox Wipes and paper towels and latex gloves and a hazmat suit (not really a hazmat suit). But I'm not sure what to do about the floors, especially the carpeted floors.
I understand you want to be careful with mouse poop in case they were carrying that lycanthropy virus or whatever it's called. I know it's rare but I want to err on the side of caution. I've read it's not even a good idea to vacuum because the poop can break down and get into the air or something. Also, vacuuming won't sterilize the floor/carpet.
Any ideas?
I am moving. As a result, I am cleaning.
A few years ago, my landlady had a mouse problem. The problem was this: She had uninvited mice in her apartment. Mice are small rodent-like rodents. They scurry around like mice.
As a result of my landlady having a mouse problem, we also had a mouse problem. We weathered it and eventually the mice moved out.
We also have 30+ years worth of stuff in our house. This means boxes and bins and whatnot in every corner. Until a week ago, I had forgotten our house had corners. It was like an alien geometry - a cornerless abode barricade by boxes and bins of wires, papers, gadgetry, and unused supermarket coupons.
Anyway, these corners apparently represented some kind of overground underground tunnel for our unwanted guests.
They shit everywhere.
This includes carpeted floors as well as uncarpeted floors (i.e. floors without carpet).
For surfaces like bins and whatnot, I've been using Clorox Wipes and paper towels and latex gloves and a hazmat suit (not really a hazmat suit). But I'm not sure what to do about the floors, especially the carpeted floors.
I understand you want to be careful with mouse poop in case they were carrying that lycanthropy virus or whatever it's called. I know it's rare but I want to err on the side of caution. I've read it's not even a good idea to vacuum because the poop can break down and get into the air or something. Also, vacuuming won't sterilize the floor/carpet.
Any ideas?
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Wear a ventilator and open the windows while vacuuming before they get there?
Also, I've been exposed to it before as we had the mouse problem years ago and I've been OK.
I definitely want to be cautious here but I also have to be realistic. I have movers coming Wednesday and the realtors are doing a showing of my apartment (2 story house, landlord selling) the Wednesday after. We won't have everything cleared out where a carpet cleaning service can even come in until right before that. We literally have a very short timeline here.
If you haven't caught it yet, you're probably not going to catch it.
Supposedly, improper cleaning is bad. Inhaling infected mouse poop/urine by crumbling it to dust and getting it into the air is one way to contract the extremely rare hantavirus.
I'm also reading that even infected mouse excrement is only infectious for about a week.
So what does that mean? This poop has been here for like 4-6 years now. Is it potentially still infectious? Like if I swat at it with a baseball bat and a giant cloud of mouse poop dust comes up and I snort it like poopaine, is it possible to catch hantavirus or not?
I'm not going to do any of that, but I don't understand how to reconcile the unqualified "infectious for a week" and unqualified "don't improperly clean up mouse excrement" comments.
Once you start moving it, you've already disturbed it. You said you cleaned some of it already. The chances of you having hanta virus infected mice is relatively small. The chances of it lasting 4-6 years is even smaller. Just be careful, wash skin that comes into contact with it thoroughly. Keep your eyes covered with goggles, and wear a respirator and gloves at all times while cleaning it.
If you want to go nuts, get one of those hazardous material dupont suits, but a long sleeve shirt, jeans, boots, thick gloves, a mask, and a ventilator should be sufficient, so long as you wash and dispose of what's appropriate afterwords.
Like I said, if you've lived with the live mice for so long, you've probably already come into contact with the feces on a regular basis.
I'd still follow bowen's advice- inhaling feces (or getting it in your eyes) isn't good in any case. Goggles, gloves, mask.
If the poop has been lying there for 4-6 years, it will not have any living viruses in it. Or anything else. It'll probably be akin to rock at this point.
The warning is listed by the CDC because:
1) There's no way you can reasonably tell how long it's actually been there. Maybe a mouse randomly strolled through last week and pooped where the old poop was.
2) You always need to handle that material with care, even if it's not infectious. Inhaling dust particles is never a good thing, no matter what those particles are made of.
Back to form.
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And going off my experience cleaning out my grandpa's basement there are probably going to be a decent number of mummified mice in there too.