MOUSE
 Mouse is mostly vegetarian or polyphagia. In Korea, we have mouse and squirrel, among them those posing hygienic threat to our daily lives are roof rat, brown rat, and house mouse which live near residential areas or inside houses. Other mouse except those three are called rat. In Korea, black-striped field mice are predominantly seen across the nation. Its back is red brown, while its stomach is grayish white. The black stripe starts from its head and extends to the tail side, which is a distinctive feature to tell them from other kinds of rats.
It weighs around 20g and looks like a house mouse. Its territory is farmland of millet, barley, and vegetables, along with idle land, and at the foot of mountains or in the middle or the top of the mountains. Rats look for feed and tend to store them for later use. They ran around looking for food in winter and eat grains, Cyperaceae, Gramineae, or seeds. Its kind accounts for 90% of the rats in Korea. It is closely related to our daily lives and those include roof rat, brown rat, and house mouse.
Brown rat is most widely seen across the country and they are everywhere where its feeds can be found. It weighs 400g to 500g and length from head to anus is about 200 to 270mm. The tail¡¯s length reaches 250mm, which is longer than its body. This feature identifies brown rat from roof rat. Its back is brown while its stomach is gray.
Roof rat is mostly seen in port cities. It weighs around 300g to 400g, slightly slimmer than a brown rat and more agile. Its length from head to anus is 145 to 200mm and its tail is 250mm that its tail is longer than its body. This is the distinctive feature to tell a roof rat from a brown rat. Roof rat has bare ear without hair and larger than that of brown rat¡¯s. Its back is shiny black and its stomach is dark gray. Other species of roof rat has brown back with white stomach or brown back and gray stomach.
House mouse is city mouse, weighing around 20g. It has similar lengths of body and tai, which reaches 80 to 100mm respectively. Its back is brown and its stomach is gray. Its ear is larger for its head. Its foot is small and its tail is lean.
Rat-borne diseases
Rat has accustomed to living in man-made environment and cause a lot of damage. They gnaw electric wires, which in turn is led to short circuit, and damage packages, boards, and roads. It also makes holes in a building and cause gas poisoning. Other than those economic damages, it spreads diseases posing threat to mankind.
Among others, the diseases are Black plauge, Rickettsial diseases, salmonellosis, rat- bite fever, leptospirosis, leishmaniasis, American trypanosomiasis, hemorrhagic fever with reanal syndrome, trichinosis
¡́Prevention of the breeding and extermination of mouse¡í
There are four ways to exterminate rats. Due to the development of civilization and pharmaceuticals, it is possible to exterminate rats. The details are as below.
First, the sticky mucilage trap is a most widely known way to terminate them. It is more affective to house mouse..
Second, mouse ointment prevents their entry into a house. This is to prevent mouse¡¯s access to electric wires, expensive home appliances and equipments. Before applying the ointment, the user should make sure that there is no mouse inside the house.
Third, currently the most popular way to exterminate mouse is to set up a trap of poison materials inside their feed and lure them to eat them. Thanks to the development of pharmaceuticals, rats which had eaten the poison go outside and die. Therefore, their carcass does not rot inside a house. However, after setting up the poison, clean the house entirely and check out the whether there is rat or mouse carcass.
Finally, ultrasonic sound equipment can be used to prevent mouse from entering the house. Although it is a little expensive, it can be almost permanently used and simple to set up. However, a certain level of technology expertise is needed to set up the equipment and it is noisy to set up.
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Mouse
