Eek! Mice!

[fairfarmhand]

We live our in the country so this happens every fall but this year, it seems different. I have 3 different kinds of traps and the things will not be trapped. 

Ideas? 

I’m sittong in my bonus room and I can hear the nasty creatures in the ceiling running around and squealing to each other! Yuck!

[Ausmumof3]

Cats?  

[Selkie]

We live in the country and experience the mouse invasion every fall. I hate when you can hear them in the walls - so gross! We use a combo of cats and traps to get rid of them.

[fairfarmhand]

We have 3 cats but they’re outdoors! 

This is disgusting!

[City Mouse]

I have tried everything I can think of with no good results. Our cat can only catch so many mice. Sticky traps worked a couple of times. The oldafshioned spring traps were a total waste. I even tried one of those electronic plug in things that is supposed to keep mice away. It only kept my cat out of the kitchen. The mice came back in a day or two. We use canned foam to fill in holes as fast as we can find them, but there always seem to be more.

i finally resorted to poison which seems to have been successful. I (actually DH) pulled out the dishwasher and the stove and put loose pellets under each. I got the disposable boxes that the mice crawl into and eat the poison for more accessible areas although I don't have to worry about little kids. Within a couple of weeks of putting out the poison, I stopped seeing fresh signs of mice and we don't hear the anymore.

[Carol in Cal.]

Poison is illegal in our state. It’s so annoying.

So, you might have rats.  Mice are stupid and you can catch them, but they invade in big numbers so it seems like you’re not getting anywhere until suddenly you get the last one.  Traps work.  Poison works.  I use the spring traps and put them along the walls and in dark corners, 3-4 per room, and check them often. Bait is peanut butter, which retains a tempting smell longer than cheese does.

But rats are much harder because once they spring a trap, they know what it looks like and never go near one again.  So you have to have different kinds.

[Farrar]

Some tips from a city girl in an old house with too many points of ingress to ever get rid of them all:

* Always wear gloves when you touch anything you'd like to use to catch them. They can smell you. So any poison, spring traps, or glue boards - don't lay a finger on them.

* Put two spring traps in a row so that they're perpendicular to the wall, not parallel. Put them in opposite directions as well. This means that the ways they use to try and avoid them may end up getting them sprung.

* Seal up as much as you possibly can. That spray foam stuff is a good quickie way in areas where no one can see. Use spackle with steel wool and so forth in places everyone can see.

* Get the good poison. The main brands in the stores aren't as good as the kind you can get online, IME.

* I have always found that setting out poison openly without the bait boxes works better. But then obviously it has to be in places that no one can get to at all. I put it behind the cabinets then pop the cabinet bases back on, for example. We also get them behind our long row of shelves so I put poison behind those in the center where nothing else can get.

I'll add - ours are definitely mice and they are anything but easy to catch. They're definitely not rats. I've seen them and we have rats in the alley (thank goodness, never in the house) so I know the difference. I think it's a myth that mice are easy to catch. Ours are wily.

[athena1277]

We have battled mice a couple time in the past year due to a farm field behind our house (we haven’t lived hear long, so it’s new to us).  We finally hired a professional to deal with all the critters and bugs when the mice started getting in the kitchen, instead of just the attic.  The sticky traps didn’t do much, so he put out rat traps.  He said they work better if the sticky traps don’t work.  They are a little bigger and more heavy duty than the mouse spring traps.  We caught several with them.

[Rachel]

Our mice have a specific path in the garage. We leave spring traps with peanut on the fake cheese set on the path. We haven’t sealed it off because we know they will go somewhere and I would rather they go on the known path in the garage than the kitchen. We always leave two out and when the weather changes leave a couple extra. It seems we catch them in pairs.

Cats that are good hunters help too, we have two and the neighbor has one. 

[fairfarmhand]

What is a good bait? Peanut butter and cat food are not working and that's what's always worked in the past.

[J-rap]

We've had some mice invasions over the years, one really bad one when we were away from our house for a long period of time.  (I mean really, really bad!!)  

Any animals inside the house helped -- cats and dogs both.  Traps with peanut butter (that's odd that they're not working this time?), and finally, poison.  Mice poison cannot legally be sold here, but we were able to order it online from Canada.  I really hated to go that route, but the situation was beyond containable.  (We finally did get rid of all of them!)

[Liz CA]

7 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

What is a good bait? Peanut butter and cat food are not working and that's what's always worked in the past.

 

Provolone cheese and camembert or  a high quality Brie....? Seems like your mice are past the mundane peanut butter. D-Con has worked well too.

Edited November 1, 2018 by Liz CA

[Rachel]

You have sophisticated mice!  Ours like sunflowers seeds (birdseed) too. 

[Upennmama]

We got a rat zapper for our mice and it was magical. No other traps helped.

[HomeAgain]

I feel your pain!  We live in the woods and they're an issue here.  After several failures we got a live trap.  It looks like a silver box the size of a book with a window on top.  Baited it with good dark chocolate and caught 3 almost immediately.  Then we had a guy come out this year and point out any areas that might be entry points and sealed them up with foam.  In the attic we throw poison (since we don't go there often), but we've yet to have any this year.

[gardenmom5]

have you seen the "log roller"?   I bought one off ebay.  dh hasn't set it up yet, but we get mice in our garage.

 

you can put water in the bucket, or not if you want to relocate them.   (I'd rather kill them.)

 

[El...]

Could one of the outdoor cats become an indoor cat for a little while? Maybe that wouldn't be a good idea.... Maybe you need a new indoor cat!

[fairfarmhand]

7 minutes ago, elroisees said:

Could one of the outdoor cats become an indoor cat for a little while? Maybe that wouldn't be a good idea.... Maybe you need a new indoor cat!

This was the kids idea! And I’m beginning to agree! 

[Mbelle]

We live in an old house and on a street where everyone has at least 1 acre and it backs up to 15 acres of green space.  Yes, we have had mice before.  Eek!!!

We had 2 outdoor cats, down to 1.  We have a mini schnauzer indoors.  And, D-con boxes behind a few things.  Originally the cats + D-con got rid of the problem and then the cats have kept away all other intruders.  Also almost all the neighbors have outdoor cats.  I haven't had any issues in some time.  I do see the caught ones in the yard every so often thoughl

[solascriptura]

10 hours ago, fairfarmhand said:

What is a good bait? Peanut butter and cat food are not working and that's what's always worked in the past.

sunflower seeds?  We've used those with good results.

[fairfarmhand]

Update: I opened up the attic space in the bonus room and found a mouse “trail” along the inside of the door. I placed three springvtraps baited with peanut butter there. And one glue trap. This morning the bait was gone from the spring traps but the traps were unsprung. But....the glue trap has vanished! 

[fairfarmhand]

Oh also we’re being inundated by spiders. I put out spider traps last night and there were 13 spiders in them overnight! This house....

[Baseball mom]

With the poison, don't the die hidden somewhere and stink

[Mbelle]

3 hours ago, Baseball mom said:

With the poison, don't the die hidden somewhere and stink

They usually leave the house seeking water.  I did have one die under the house once.  It did smell for a bit, but better dead than alive!

[katilac]

On 11/1/2018 at 9:11 AM, Farrar said:

 * Get the good poison. 

 

Good advice no matter what you're doing.

On 11/1/2018 at 2:43 PM, Danae said:

 

 shawarma  

 

For some reason, a shawarma-baited trap is amusing me to no end. 

I'd be bringing a cat inside! 

[kbutton]

On 11/2/2018 at 10:22 AM, fairfarmhand said:

Update: I opened up the attic space in the bonus room and found a mouse “trail” along the inside of the door. I placed three springvtraps baited with peanut butter there. And one glue trap. This morning the bait was gone from the spring traps but the traps were unsprung. But....the glue trap has vanished! 

We had to scour the world for the super-sensitive, really old spring traps (I think they were at a dollar store). They were harder to set, but the mice were much more likely to set it off. 

[CTVKath]

The TomCat kill & contain traps have worked best for us.....baited with peanut butter. A couple of weeks ago, we caught 3 in one night!

They used to be made in such a way that my husband could release the carcass and reuse the traps but they've revised the design so it's only 1 use which is a bummer.

I don't like the mice......especially because the rat snakes try and get into the basement to get the mice! Eeeeeeeek!

[Lucy the Valiant]

On 11/1/2018 at 3:04 PM, gardenmom5 said:

have you seen the "log roller"?   I bought one off ebay.  dh hasn't set it up yet, but we get mice in our garage.

 

you can put water in the bucket, or not if you want to relocate them.   (I'd rather kill them.)

 

 

We use the similar "Walk the Plank" traps - reusable, no poison, extremely effective, safe for other pets and small people. My kids have nick-named it the "highway to heaven."

I was tired of wasting money on poison, glue traps, and the little tunnel kind. These are gross, but still easier to dispose of (IMO) by just tossing the whole thing in the woods - water + mouse. We use sunflower seeds as bait, a few floating in the water + a few on the end of the plank.

[fairfarmhand]

My dh did something to the spring traps that made them super sensitive. He put them in a row in the attic space. It wasn’t 3 hour later that we were sitting in the bonus room and we heard the pop! 

Hopefully, there’s no more but we’ll see!