Mouse problem

[Danestress]

We have a mouse problem.

 

I have used cruelty free traps and let the little guys go in the woods nearby.

 

My DH has set traps:(

 

Today I had a termite inspection as part of a Refinance, an the guy noticed that we have a lot of mouse evidence under the house and in the upper attic (and we have a small snake problem as a result).

 

He recommended getting serious about this. He said setting traps will not take care of the problem.

 

It really bothers me to kill mice, especially with poison. I also don't want them to die in my walls and smell bad, but he said that won't happen. Anyway, mice are awfully cute, and I haven't seen any evidence of mice in our actual living spaces in a few years. We have four attic spaces, and I see it there, though.

 

We have hawks and owls in this area, too, and I don't want to poison mice if they are going to get eaten by raptors who will be damaged in anyway.

 

Maybe I should just buy more snakes:) What are my other options? Would you allow "treatment" for mice that are not appearing to come into the house itself?

[itsheresomewhere]

Mice are not cute creatures. They are nasty home destroying pest who carry diseases. Just kill them. They love to eat the coating on your electrical wires and that can cause a fire. We do traps and when it was bad, had a guy put some special poison out that made the mice seek out water. He had put a special box down that they went to and they died in that.

[TexasRachel]

:iagree: you will see them eventually if you do nothing. They will chew through your food boxes, run along your counters leaving droppings behind, they will take over your house and they are difficult to get rid of once established. We constantly battle them every time the weather changes. They are not cute. They are bringing diseases into your house where your family lives. Get rid of them.

[curlylocks]

Agreeing with the others that you need to get rid of them. They are NOT cute...

 

We use the old-fashioned "snap traps",a little PB and you're good to go. ;)

[Harriet Vane]

Agreeing with the others that you need to get rid of them. They are NOT cute...

 

We use the old-fashioned "snap traps",a little PB and you're good to go. ;)

 

:iagree:

[itsheresomewhere]

Agreeing with the others that you need to get rid of them. They are NOT cute...

 

We use the old-fashioned "snap traps",a little PB and you're good to go. ;)

 

A piece of soap works great on the traps for the were not leaving mice;).

[BrookValley.]

A mouse that has ingested poison won't poison an animal that eats said mouse. I forget the exact how and why, but chemically a reaction takes place. The body of the mouse isn't poisonous. Now, if the poison is in a place where other critters can get to it, well that can be a problem.

 

Trapping them and releasing them nearby means they just follow their nose back to where the food and warmth are. The mice you let go probably just came back.

 

I know it's not pleasant (heck, I'm a vegetarian--I don't even eat animals), but I agree with previous posters. Just kill 'em.

[Tohru]

Mice are not cute creatures. They are nasty home destroying pest who carry diseases. Just kill them. They love to eat the coating on your electrical wires and that can cause a fire. We do traps and when it was bad, had a guy put some special poison out that made the mice seek out water. He had put a special box down that they went to and they died in that.

 

:iagree:I detest mice!

 

If you're really not wanting to kill them though, I highly suggest getting several (3 or more) female mice-ing cats. Yes, male cats can hunt mice, but female cats have the scent that scares mice away. If you have several hunting cats, the mice more than likely will move out.

[Denisemomof4]

A mouse that has ingested poison won't poison an animal that eats said mouse. I forget the exact how and why, but chemically a reaction takes place. The body of the mouse isn't poisonous. Now, if the poison is in a place where other critters can get to it, well that can be a problem.

 

Trapping them and releasing them nearby means they just follow their nose back to where the food and warmth are. The mice you let go probably just came back.

 

I know it's not pleasant (heck, I'm a vegetarian--I don't even eat animals), but I agree with previous posters. Just kill 'em.

 

Really? I never heard that before.

 

How about a couple of cats up there?

[Julie Smith]

I'm a vegetarian. We have pet rats.

 

I personally hate poisoning mice. But I will happily have other people deal with the problem for me - and hopefully never mention it to me.

 

(Whenever a good friend of mine who is also a housekeeper comes up for a few nights she brings mouse traps and sets them and then takes them with her when she leaves. Or at least she use to. I don't know if she does so anymore - I have no signs of mice so I'm just going to stay in ignorant bliss about any possible mice)

[Catwoman]

Yes, male cats can hunt mice, but female cats have the scent that scares mice away.

 

My female cat sleeps in the same room where we just saw a mouse last night. Apparently, she lacks the crucial "anti-mouse scent." :glare:

 

With our luck, she's friends with the mouse (and all of his little mouse friends who will undoubtedly show up in our house any day now.) She will probably warn him of the danger of mouse traps and how peanut butter isn't all that it's cracked up to be.

 

Our male cat will kill anything. (I think he even has designs on my dh. I can't prove it, but I've seen the way he looks at him, like dh is a big chipmunk or something... ;)) But the problem is, he also wants to kill our female cat, so he can't be in the same part of the house she's in unless he's on my lap and I have him in a death grip. :tongue_smilie: He's also single-minded when he's after something, so I can only imagine the broken vases, the TV smashed on the floor... :eek:

 

I have to go buy some traps today.

 

Danestress, I hope you can take a little comfort in knowing that you're not alone in this. At least your DH will collect the traps after the dead mice are in them. In my house, I'm the one who will be stuck with the job. :ack2:

Edited April 12, 2012 by Catwoman

[justamouse]

Danetress, I've been battling them, too, and the only thing I've found good is the old fashioned snap traps and a wee bit of peanut butter.

[Lady Marmalade]

Mice are NOT cute. They carry infamous, horrendous diseases that really can cause life-altering problems.

 

By the way, the link above just had a nice, concise list of potential diseases. I certainly don't advocate the bizarre "send me money for my magic mouse-removing secret" thing.

[KristinaBreece]

We use plastic snap traps baited with peanut butter. Our cat likes to play with mice when she finds them. She will terrorize them, and then let them go to play another day. We caught/killed five of them this winter. They've never been a real problem in our house before (on occasion we've caught one at a time), but the house next door has been vacant now for almost 3 years, and is now playing host to stray cats, squirrels, and God knows what else. I think this is what has made mice a problem in our neighborhood. Yuck!

[simplykim]

I wouldn't let them get established in the living areas of yoru house. They are very, very hard to get rid of once they get a foot hold. If you can take care of the problem before it gets worse, that would be much, much better.

[Catwoman]

I wouldn't let them get established in the living areas of yoru house. They are very, very hard to get rid of once they get a foot hold. If you can take care of the problem before it gets worse, that would be much, much better.

 

I know you're new here, simplykim, so I just wanted to hijack this thread for a minute and say, WELCOME!!!! :hurray:

[datgh]

My husband came home this past fall with some kind of gizmo you plug into the wall and it supposedly emits a high frequency sound the mice don't like. I can barely hear it. It doesn't seem to bother our cat and dog at all. I must say that we have seen a big drop in the mouse population. I think the cat is upset with us because we ruined is recreational activity. I hope they are truly working because dealing with mouse droppings got old quick. Our cat is a great mouser but he can't get them if they are in the wall.

 

By the way he got the gizmo's at Home Depot I believe. Good luck with your problem.

[jenangelcat]

Mice are not cute creatures. They are nasty home destroying pest who carry diseases. Just kill them. They love to eat the coating on your electrical wires and that can cause a fire. We do traps and when it was bad, had a guy put some special poison out that made the mice seek out water. He had put a special box down that they went to and they died in that.

 

 

:iagree:

 

We had pet mice once and the dad ate all the male babies. Live traps don't work at all. It's either get a million proper traps or get the poison out. Would you live trap roaches? Same thing.

[mommaduck]

The mice will die in your walls, but they will dry up. They don't stink because of the type of poison. Get a cat, they can help also.

[Amy Jo]

Cats. I have 2 indoor/outdoor cats. We moved in, and there was evidence of mice. We even saw one. Once. They were eradicated in short order. Our best mouser is the stray that moved into DH's former workplace, and we adopted. She doesn't play with her food, if you know what I mean. A mouse trap you can snuggle with! (More snakes might work too. But not snuggly!)

 

I know you said you were moving, so you might not want a cat. But that is the one thing that has ALWAYS worked for me.

[Scuff]

Yes, they are hard to get rid of once they are established. We had a renter upstairs who was a bit of a hoarder and things were *disgusting* after she left. We use the apartment as bedrooms for the kids, so there isn't even food up there now. It still took awhile to get rid of the mice. I'd find dropping in the girls' dressers. Gross! We started with live traps (you do need to release far away, over 2 miles) Then I got sick of handling live mice. (DH would release, but I'd have to put them in a container and keep the cat away from them until he got home.) The snap traps worked at first, but then they got smart. They would lick it clean and not get trapped! So I set out poison. That finally did the trick.

[Danestress]

For the little mice.

 

:iagree:

 

We had pet mice once and the dad ate all the male babies. Live traps don't work at all. It's either get a million proper traps or get the poison out. Would you live trap roaches? Same thing.

 

I would probably burn down a house with kittens in it if it would kill roaches. There is nothing I hate more than roaches.

 

Anyway, I am sort of glad you all gave me permission to kill mice. I don't want them running around in my crawl space or attic. I just have a tender heart. But not towards roaches.

[Catwoman]

We started with live traps (you do need to release far away, over 2 miles)

 

2 miles??? :eek: :eek: :eek:

 

I just bought one of those live traps at Walmart, because ds was hoping to save the one mouse we saw in the family room and set it free outside in the woods.

 

But if I have to drive to the next town every time we catch a stupid mouse, this "save the mice" campaign is going to get old really quickly. :glare:

 

I also bought some of the plastic killing traps, which after hearing the "2 mile rule," we will almost certainly be using after we try to catch the cute mouse tonight.

 

I saw those things you plug into the wall, but I didn't know if they worked so I didn't buy them. If they are effective, I'll make another run over to Walmart and buy a few packs of them. I don't think they were too expensive.

[Scuff]

lol, yes, it seriously did get old. DH was the softie. I finally just bought the other traps without telling him.

[Catwoman]

lol, yes, it seriously did get old. DH was the softie. I finally just bought the other traps without telling him.

 

I'm really hoping we catch the "cute one" tonight. I'm willing to drive a little for him, but the rest of them will be on their own with the snappy traps.

[Danestress]

I was letting them go about half a mile away. And even then, I felt sure that the minute I walked away, a hawk was going to get them. Poor mice. But it sort of allowed me to feel less guilty in a very "don't want the moral responsibility" kind of way.

[Catwoman]

I was letting them go about half a mile away. And even then, I felt sure that the minute I walked away, a hawk was going to get them. Poor mice. But it sort of allowed me to feel less guilty in a very "don't want the moral responsibility" kind of way.

 

I thought "the woods behind the house" was far enough.

 

OOPS.

 

Those mice probably beat me back to the house and were waiting to slip back in the door when I opened it. The probably just figured I was making sure they got a little fresh air and exercise. :glare:

 

As I recall, we switched to the snap traps after a while back then, too... I guess now I know why.

[Scuff]

I'm really hoping we catch the "cute one" tonight. I'm willing to drive a little for him, but the rest of them will be on their own with the snappy traps.

 

 

We ended up with 2 pet mice after live catching "the cute one". DH left to release him and stopped at Petco instead. :lol: The kids got excited, but unfortunately wild mice don't make good pets. As soon as DH tried to move him to his new "home", he jumped and ran off before they even realized what was happening. DH then made another trip up to petco and came back with a cute little grey mouse. She, of course, then needed a friend.

[Blessedchaos]

We had mice bad when we moved into our house 10 years ago. It was vacant for 4 months before we moved in and we heard the running in the attic, but thought it was squirrels. A few months went by and we started seeing the mice. We set live traps and drove them to a nearby park every day for a while; one mouse even gave birth in the trap - eww! Then I saw one run into my kitchen late at night. The next morning I called the exterminator. He set glue traps and those triangular block thingys in their pathways and threw a bunch of block killer stuff into our attic. It still took 6 weeks and several more visits to get rid of them.

 

Mice are nasty and they can cause serious damage to your home. You won't get rid of them with live traps - you need to kill them. Call an exterminator that has a guarantee that they will come back until the mice are gone. Also, it is very important to determine how they are coming in and seal the holes well. Mice can enter with just a 1/4" space. In our case our siding was buckling in a few spots so once we replaced it we never got a mouse again.

[LBS]

Mice are nasty. They're noisy too. 'Quiet as a mouse' is not true. I'm not from the country, where having mice come into your house seems more common, and my country mother-in-law said mice LOVE to make noise. I made dh get the humane traps, thought I was doing such a nice thing, then, sitting in living room one night, reading, saw four right after another scampering around. Nasty. He put down the snap-traps and green poison balls the next day. We put the poison balls way back under built in cabinets where no kid could ever reach them. Next time I saw them, two were in my then-three year old's mouth. Poison Control said they had to eat their weight in the stuff to kill themselves. Great. In 16 years, since, I've found a couple of dried up ones, in the basement, no smelly dead ones. DH said that babies can ride in on logs for the fire, or clinging to your clothes. Really? I used to keep a little kiddie pool on the porch for the kids, and we'd find them drowned in the pool. Then the big mama black snake started coming on the porch to eat them. No more porch-pool.

[gardenmom5]

mice can do alot of damage to the "unseen" areas of your house. they defecate in the walls. they chews electrical conduit. they use insualtion as nesting material. they spread D.i.s.e.a.s.e.

 

time to get serious and kill the buggers.

[MistyMountain]

We just moved into a rental almost 2 weeks ago and I found mouse droppings under the bathroom counters. I actually saw one of them under the cabinet in the bathroom. EEEK!!! I don't want to deal with this. Not cool at all. It isn't us.

[Bee Happy]

So, I was sitting at my desk and one ran near my foot.

I haven't had to deal with this before and I have an awful mouse phobia.

I'm not sure where to even start. It ran behind my book shelf and my daughter went to get her cat while the rest of us were standing on the couch. :glare:

She let the cat loose and he went after the mouse, but it looks like he only wants to chase. Not catch. The mouse got away, and our cat kind of stalked around for a while. I'm thinking he's not a good mouser. AT ALL.

 

Did I mention I'm terrified? I've been up all night, and my kids are all camped in my room because they are scared. Great.

 

Last we saw, the "thing" was headed into the kitchen. Guess I'll start a diet today. lol

 

I saw that peppermint oil worked wonders at keeping them away. Then I read that it's also toxic to cats. UGH

[Soror]

For some reason we had mice when we moved back in after the fire, although we didn't before. We used traps but it seems they were smarter than that. We got a cat, the mice were gone. Said cat died, the mice were back, we got a new cat, no mice. Now we are up to 4 cats and never see mice at all and we don't have to do a thing. Ours are all outside fulltime. Dh and I were never cat people but have grown to like them, the kids love them, and they are very useful and never cause any issue or problem. Oh, and another thing mice do, they chew through electrical wires on your cars, we've had a few not so cheap repairs due to mice.

[LaxMom]

I think field mice are adorable. But they are unsanitary in the house.

 

We use the electric (battery) traps that zap them. There have been too many live mice in snap traps for me to be ok with them and the glue traps, :svengo: . No way. And, yeah, after letting the two bored looking mice outside day after day, I started to catch on that the live traps were turning them into pets.

[Bee Happy]

I can't even look at them. When the cat was chasing it, I was screeching. Meanwhile, my daughter patted my back and said, "It's okay Mommy. Just look away." :glare: I'm wondering how I'm going to gather up the nerve to go into the kitchen this morning.

[Jeannie in NJ]

Bee Happy, I completely get your mouse phobia as I have it to. Why do you think I have 8 cats? When we first moved into our house 19 years ago we saw tons of mouse droppings. Our back yard and as far as you can see is meadows so knew there would be constant mouse problems so started with one cat and just kept adding on but we no longer have mouse problems. However there was the day that one of the cats brought in a live musk rat and let it go (dh was out of town at the time). Dd and I chased it into the family room, shut door , blocked bottom with towels, went outside, opened sliding glass door to family room and put in 2 of my girl cats (girls are the best hunters). Very quickly Sagwa was running around with a dead musk rat in her mouth that was so big, it's bottom was hitting the floor. I had to suck it up and go in and get the rat and dispose of it. I used a broom and sweep it into a can to throw outside. Hope your cat catches the mouse and you get no more of them.

[TranquilMind]

We have a mouse problem.

 

I have used cruelty free traps and let the little guys go in the woods nearby.

 

My DH has set traps:(

 

Today I had a termite inspection as part of a Refinance, an the guy noticed that we have a lot of mouse evidence under the house and in the upper attic (and we have a small snake problem as a result).

 

He recommended getting serious about this. He said setting traps will not take care of the problem.

 

It really bothers me to kill mice, especially with poison. I also don't want them to die in my walls and smell bad, but he said that won't happen. Anyway, mice are awfully cute, and I haven't seen any evidence of mice in our actual living spaces in a few years. We have four attic spaces, and I see it there, though.

 

We have hawks and owls in this area, too, and I don't want to poison mice if they are going to get eaten by raptors who will be damaged in anyway.

 

Maybe I should just buy more snakes:) What are my other options? Would you allow "treatment" for mice that are not appearing to come into the house itself?

You need to watch a couple episodes of the show, "Infested".

 

Then get the exterminator there yesterday and get rid of those mice by whatever means necessary.

[lcelmer]

"Mice attain sexual maturity only within 2 months and a pair of fully matured mice can reproduce 50 to 60 pups in a single year. Because of such high reproduction rate they outnumber other species on this earth so easily."

 

 

Kill them...... If you feel badly about it, buy a pet mouse from a pet store & keep it loved and cared for.

 

Releasing in a town is just letting the problem get into someone else's house.

[Dory]

A mouse that has ingested poison won't poison an animal that eats said mouse. I forget the exact how and why, but chemically a reaction takes place. The body of the mouse isn't poisonous. Now, if the poison is in a place where other critters can get to it, well that can be a problem.

 

Trapping them and releasing them nearby means they just follow their nose back to where the food and warmth are. The mice you let go probably just came back.

 

I know it's not pleasant (heck, I'm a vegetarian--I don't even eat animals), but I agree with previous posters. Just kill 'em.

 

My vet told me that if I had dogs hunting mice, not to set out poison. She said that for smaller dogs (the the JRT) the poison would still be enough to cause damage.

 

 

I have always found the traps only catch a few of the mice. The best way to get them is to train a Terrier of some type to hunt them.

 

My dh's aunt has dealt with hantivirus. It's made me a very firm advocate of killing the mice that come into any of our buildings. Out in the field, I'm happy to leave them alone.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Dory

[mrbmom77]

I've had problems for several years now with tiny field mice getting into the house. This year, I put peppermint essential oil on cotton balls and put them in my kitchen cabinets, utility room, and a few other places they seemed to be coming in. No mice so far! Don't know if it would get rid of them if you have a really bad problem, but worth a try.

[Bee Happy]

I've been crippled with fear most of the day. How is this possible?

The cat doesn't seem interested, but we haven't seen anything today yet.

I won't let my daughter (15 months) play on the floor, so I'm keeping her on beds, couches, and high chairs. She doesn't like this.

 

I really wanted to do the 100% peppermint oil, but fear it's harmful for the cat.

 

My husband won't be back until the 22nd/23rd.

[WishboneDawn]

Fist, I'm with everyone else. Kill them.

 

Second, go around your house and look for the ways they get in. If they can still get in you'll ALWAYS be fighting the problem and never solve it. Block any holes by stuffing them with steel wool and a bit of spray foam. They can't chew through the steel wool and the foam is toxic. If you can't find how they get in, hire a profffesional.

[Wildcat]

.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Wildcat