If you don’t have rubber gloves, you can use nitrile or plastic ones.
Frankly, if the animal is trapped in your wall, you may be better off just trying to mask the smell and waiting for the mouse to decompose. If you do want to get a mouse in your walls, put small holes in your wall to try and locate the source. Once you find and remove the mouse, you can patch the wall.
If the mouse is in a trap, you can either throw the trap out with the mouse, or soak it in bleach and water after removing the mouse.
As tempting as it may be to toss a tiny mouse in the toilet and flush it, don’t do it. The mouse can get stuck in your pipes quite easily, and it’s really bad for your septic system even if it does make it through.
If you’re uncomfortable reusing the gloves in the future (which is totally understandable), feel free to throw them out after you give them a bleach wash. You don’t want to take the gloves off right away because you may accidentally spread whatever virus or bacteria you picked up when you grabbed the mouse.
Do not mix the bleach with any other cleaning agent (especially vinegar, which will create chlorine gas). Bleach can react in dangerous ways with other cleaning agents. Vinegar and baking soda are great deodorizers, but they won’t do as good a job at sanitizing and disinfecting as bleach will. Alternatively, you can use a general disinfectant cleaning product, like Lysol. So long as it’s designed to disinfect surfaces, it’ll work.
You can do this multiple times if you want to completely ensure that you’ve fully cleaned the area.
You’re now good to go. Short of any lingering odors in the air, your problem has been solved safely!
You do not need to air your home out after cleaning up after the mouse. You only need to do this if you smell anything strange. If the mice were around for a while, you might notice a sticky, musky smell. That’s mouse urine. You’ll need to take special care to remove mouse urine odors.
Leave the fans running for as long as you reasonably can. With the mouse gone, you shouldn’t have any problem gradually removing the smell.
Roasting coffee beans or orange peels in your oven at a low temperature for 30 minutes or so. Orange and coffee particles are known deodorizers. Use a plug-in scent product to fill the room with a pleasant smell over a longer period of time. Set charcoal briquettes out around your home to absorb the odor particles in the air.
