It's Tuesday so it must be Holland.

Just completed an audit at a site in Holland. Four days of inspecting machines and building fabric. Everything went really well for most of the inspection. Machinery and general fabric was cleaner than I've seen it, and levels of insect pest activity were minor, with no product risks at all.

Then I started looking in wall spaces and under floors and found a number of locations with mouse activity. Droppings in large numbers under the floors especially. Many of these Dutch factories have a floated concrete floor, or a concrete slab floor set on a sand base. Mice burrow underneath, and can get into wall spaces and follow cable runs into the factory.

What makes this particular situation unusual is that the area of the Netherlands concerned is, like much of England, suffering from low rainfall. This means that a sub-floor normally damp, and not liked by mice has suddenly become an ideal and very dry environment with lots of burrowing space. Hence, very large numbers of droppings present!

Fortunately, I have spotted this before the mice could get access to the wall cavities, but I am worried about what will happen if the weather changes and water table levels start to rise. This could push mice into the building quite rapidly. 

Pest controllers on site have been advised to get plenty (recoverable) bait in place. Let's hope they do so.

This is a classic case of changing environmental conditions allowing mice to exploit a location they have not really used before.