Generally the only rodents that are going to get down in your wall cavities deliberately are Santa Rosa rats and mice, if something like a squirrel is in the wall cavity is probably trapped and has only a short amount of time to live unless it is rescued and you do not want it to die in your wall cavity because to get the decomposing and putrid smelling corpse out will require more work and destruction than rescuing the squirrel in the first place.

If you have California mice in your walls, you can usually tell by hearing the sounds of tiny feet racing up and down inside the wall cavity there is a recommended way of dealing with them, first thing you need to do is go all around the walls and see if you can see a hole they are probably using to get in and out of the wall cavity, this whole doesn't need to be any bigger than a nickel for mice to be using it. Once you've ascertained this is their way in and there way out it is time to do something about them, but poison is not an option because if you poison mouse there is a good possibility it will get back inside the wall cavity before it dies and then you have a rotting corpse with the smell that comes with it inside your wall.

All the experts will tell you that no matter how many Santa Rosa mice you kill there is always one more. To actually start killing off the mouse population that is living in your house and trust me you do want to kill them off due to the fact that they not only carry but spread some pretty nasty diseases, including rabies, you need a few things, the first is a single snap trap, the second is an enticing bait for the snap trap, peanut butter or raisins are good but anything that smells sweet or oily will do the trick. Now you need a small cardboard box and some clear film, you make a hole in the cardboard box level with where the hole in the wall is, you place the cardboard box up against the wall with the two holes together, place the baited trap inside the cardboard box and cover the top with the clear film, you need to stick the box against the wall either by placing something heavy behind it so it cannot move or by sticking it to the wall with maybe double-sided sticky tape.

This type of trapping system has been known to get results within one hour if you definitely have mice in the house. You need to check your box at least two or three times a day and remove any dead  California mice and replace the bait if necessary. You'll probably never wipe them out completely as others will come to take the places of the ones you kill but at least you can keep the populations in check and stop them from overrunning the house completely.

There is only one way to get a dead mouse out of the wall cavity, find out where it is in the cavity, you can narrow this down pretty well by the smell and then cut a hole in the wall and remove the corpse but remember to wear gloves preferably disposable ones that you can dispose of with the body.

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