Identify Your Pest Rodents
Identify Your Pest
Rodents in Alberta Homes and Yards
This guide covers mice, voles, pocket gophers and ground squirrels found in Alberta homes, garages, lawns and fields. Alberta has no established rat population, so most rat sightings turn out to be another animal. Compare the size, tail and where you saw it, then open the closest match to see what to do next.
Pick the closest match
Rodents we identify and treat
Deer mouse
The deer mouse is a native Alberta mouse with a tan to reddish-brown back, white belly and white feet. People notice it in fall and winter, when it moves into garages, sheds, cabins and rural homes, and because it is the main hantavirus carrier in Alberta.
House mouse
The house mouse is a small grey-brown rodent that lives alongside people in homes, garages and businesses. Most people notice it by its droppings, chewed food packages or scratching sounds in walls and ceilings at night.
Meadow vole
The meadow vole is a small, stocky rodent that lives in grass and gardens across Alberta. Most people notice it in spring, when melting snow reveals winding runways, dead grass and chewed bark left from a winter of feeding under the snow.
Northern pocket gopher
The northern pocket gopher digs its own tunnel system and seldom comes to the surface. People rarely see the animal itself, but they notice the fresh mounds of loose soil it pushes up in lawns, gardens, acreages and pastures.
Norway rat
The Norway rat is a large, thick-bodied rodent found in cities across much of North America, but Alberta has kept it from becoming established since 1950. When Albertans report a rat, it is usually a large mouse, ground squirrel, pocket gopher or muskrat.
Richardson’s ground squirrel
Richardson's ground squirrel is the plump, tan rodent that sits upright beside its burrow in Alberta fields, parks and acreages. Most Albertans call it a gopher, and people notice it by its sharp whistle and the open burrow holes it digs in lawns and pastures.
Still not sure what it is?
Send us a photo and our office team will call you back to identify it, recommend a treatment and book your visit. Or call us and describe what you are seeing.