Mice

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mice are a pain in the butt. i used the 2 inch square by 8 inch long plastic see thru traps. caught 3 in a hour with the same trap. i take them down the road and toss them into the woods (wife won't let me flush them) the short 6 inch one is to short and they back out. i used one of the kids goldfish crackers with peanutbutter on it so that i can get it all the way down to the end and it sticks. one mouse was flipping it off the ground for about 15 minutes before i got there.

when a mouse starts to stand up and plays reach for the sky thats when the cat says right and kills it.
 
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I just bought one of those Tom Cat snap traps for some mice in my ATV shed. Went out the other day and could not easily pull the mouse out. Finally managed to get it out and then I could not reset the trap. I was cursing the company that made the "crappy" trap . . . until I looked inside a little bit more and discovered that like the OP I had somehow managed to catch two mice in one fell swoop.
 
Grizzerbear said:
I feel like I had the best success with controlling mice when D-Con had the pellet style rat killer in bait trays. I read they don't meet the EPA's safety standards for children so they discontinued them. I also read that they caused the unintentional death of wildlife. I can see that and the ban is a good thing all in all but It does seem like now it takes more rodenticide to kill the buggers.
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When rodents find a stash of food, say a pan of Dcon, they will take all of it and stash it in their spot. Over the years I've heard of shoes, pillow cases, bags, etc. It's very possible that that pan of decor only took out 1 mouse, if that. It's not very efficient.

Dcon also was (still might be) warfarin, a 1st generation anti coagulant. It required multiple feedings to be effective. Eventually this left the least affected rodents left to reproduce and resistance was bred in. In urban areas, warfarin isn't effective anymore.

So, now we're on single feed baits. And the Pellets are largely gone. The bait box shown above has spikes that the bait is placed on. The mouse has to eat the bait and consume it there. They can't drag it away and hide it. Only a gram or 2 is needed to kill a mouse. So the bait goes much further.

There is a catch though, you have to place the bait where the mouse is.
 
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Solarguy3500 said:
My wife and I were hearing mice running around in the ceiling and walls of our bedroom, so my wife set a trap in her closet one night recently. Here's what she caught:
View attachment 286658

I've never seen that before. They would have had to both go in at exactly the same time.
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I once had a lot of raccoons roaming around. I set a raccoon trap with NO BAIT, and the next morning I had 2 babies in the trap at the same time. Was not fun taking care of that with the .22.
 
Rats (based droppings in the first cars engine bay) have eaten 2 wiring harnesses on 2/3 of my cars to the tune of 1000$. They just clear cut the forest behind my house (the whole neighborhood really a mile or so of steam bed).

We are driving as regularly as one of us has been on leave with our new baby (she will be 1 in March).

I’m ready to go on the offensive. Kids and dogs all over our property have me staying away from poison.
Plan is traps and peppermint oil. I’m going to give my mosquitoe juice a try too.

Anything else I should do that has worked for anyone?
 
Solarguy3500 said:
My wife and I were hearing mice running around in the ceiling and walls of our bedroom, so my wife set a trap in her closet one night recently. Here's what she caught:
View attachment 286658

I've never seen that before. They would have had to both go in at exactly the same time.
Click to expand...
Im a professional mice killer (ok not really)
I own about 15 different types of traps now.
I assure you, they may or may not have gone in at the same time. One may have been there awhile eating when another came along and actually triggered the trap. My mice have gotten wise, so Ive had to change up my traps. What worked well (the paperclip kind) no longer work. The 'no touch ones' are absolutely useless for me. The old fashioned ones worked well for awhile. They somehow learn to carefully lick the peanut butter off down to a certain level without the trap triggering.

Before I had to play this game, I would have a mouse or two here and there. A few traps out, I would check and maybe once every few weeks would catch a mouse during the colder months at our camp.

Last year, my wife ordered birdseed and dogfood for our camp. Twas delivered onto the porch. Our intention was to be up there that next weekend, then the next then.... well, life happens. At one point last end of winter, we didnt go up for 2 months after this stuff was delivered due to various illnesses and commitments back home. Super rare for us. When we walked in, of course the power was out so it was fairly dark inside. We set our stuff down and then I smelled this death smell. I grabbed a flashlight and about sh** myself at what I found. There was dogfood and birdseed in every drawer, with a nest in every drawer, and our clothes chewed up. Every bed, every shoe, boot, cabinet space.....EVERYWHERE.

Took me two weekends to clean. We threw away 8 bags of stuff and laundered 12 bags of stuff. I went through a whole gal of bleach and two gal of pinesole.

I FU**ING HATE MICE
 
I am a professional. I do this for a living, lol.

Rats are tough. They are one of my least favorite critters to deal with.

Do you know where they are living? Do you know their routes of travel?
 
EbS-P said:
Rats (based droppings in the first cars engine bay) have eaten 2 wiring harnesses on 2/3 of my cars to the tune of 1000$. They just clear cut the forest behind my house (the whole neighborhood really a mile or so of steam bed).

We are driving as regularly as one of us has been on leave with our new baby (she will be 1 in March).

I’m ready to go on the offensive. Kids and dogs all over our property have me staying away from poison.
Plan is traps and peppermint oil. I’m going to give my mosquitoe juice a try too.

Anything else I should do that has worked for anyone?
Click to expand...

Have you tried this?

Amazon product ASIN B07CNR241T
A customer of mine gave me some to put in my classic cars. Just trying them for the first time this winter. So far, so good. Smells like a Christmas tree!
 
Computer_mouse_trap.jpg
 
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They chewed my friends truck so bad insurance wrote it off.red squirrels are bad where I am.rat trap works well on those. They chewed wires in my friends attic and started a fire.
 
EatenByLimestone said:
I am a professional. I do this for a living, lol.

Rats are tough. They are one of my least favorite critters to deal with.

Do you know where they are living? Do you know their routes of travel?
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1/2 of the acre lot was just forest. Same on each side. They cleared about 1/4 of an acre on everyone. Heave brush (azaleas) in parts of the front yard.

I’m pretty sure they got my neighbors Land Rover. The car alarm has been going off since they got my Toyota.

Are those ultra sonic devices as useless as I imagined them to be. I’m going get traps out and douse everything in peppermint oil I can.

If they get the Tesla is could be really expensive.
 
Those electronic devices do nothing at all.i have 2 in my crawl space wasting electricity as I catch mice in traps right beside them.
 
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electronic devices work the same as peppermint oil.

If a skunk walked by and sprayed your front door, would you move?

If somebody in your neighborhood (you can’t figure out which house) started playing free jazz loudly, would you move?

Are they living in your house? Are your vehicles kept in a garage?
 
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EatenByLimestone said:
The wires are insulated with soy now. It's better for the environment. Traps and bait. It's all you can really do. They have plastic bubbles you can zip around the car, but I imagine s motivated critter will still get in.
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Last summer I had problems with the lights not working on my 12' utility trailer that I use for hauling my UTV. I found the mice had gotten into the frame where the wires were. The insulation was all chewed off of the wires on the LED tail lights up to where they were connected to the main wire harness. All the other wires were fine. I figure the wires on the light fixture wires were insulated with the natural / soy stuff that must be more tasty. :confused:
 
I once heard an old-time tell me about putting sprigs of mint in a cars engine compartment to deter critters. So every fall as part of winterization, I put a new bunch of wild mint we have growing stashed somewhere in the engine compartment. Used to have a lot of problems with packrats. None since I started doing this.

I also adopted a feral cat by proving some cat food and a warm place to sleep. Used to be overrun with mice and chipmunks. Have not seen any since the cat has been around.
 
We built our current house in virgin pasture next to a wooded area. We had lots of mice and some pack rats the first while. They never got in the house or vehicles. We didn’t trap many of them. Our dog and cats took care of them. In regards to cats, I’ve always heard that a well fed mouser is a good mouser.
When we lived in Africa, our place was overrun with rats. We got two cats, and they caught some and chased the rest to the neighbors. She caught over 10 in her kitchen one night. She also had a cobra in her kitchen one day, I imagine he wanted in on the feast, also.
I bought a camper that was overrun with mice. I did trap (Victor traps) some in there until I got everything sealed off and killed off. (Fingers crossed)
Had a pack rat once in my ‘71 Chevy, before we lived here. I thought he’d be a bugger to catch. I went and bought a rat trap, like one of those Victor mouse traps, but it’s on steroids. Caught him the first night. It finished the trap, though. Bent the main wire when it snapped shut on him.
Don’t despair, you’ll get on top of them yet.
 
i would get rid of the soy wires and put in regular plastic coated wires. it is tuff trying to catch them i watched them climb a concrete wall like it's a ladder. last one we had in the house ate up my 700 dollar suite i just bought and got 1 wear out of. we have cats that love to eat mice so none in the living quarters just in the basement and attic. i've been in plenty of attics for my job the last 30 something years and every house has mice sometimes you just don't see them
 
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EatenByLimestone said:
electronic devices work the same as peppermint oil.

If a skunk walked by and sprayed your front door, would you move?

If somebody in your neighborhood (you can’t figure out which house) started playing free jazz loudly, would you move?

Are they living in your house? Are your vehicles kept in a garage?
Click to expand...
Could be in the attic. Have not heard any. Couple years ago we trapped a couple in the attic. Cars are outside. Down here a garage is used as living space or a piling space. I know of one garage one garage in The whole neighborhood that gets a car parked in it.

Jazz…. Ehh I’m not a huge fan but could learn to like it;) if a skunk kept spraying my door and I was powerless to intervene that’s a harder call. Probably just get used to it…. Point taken!
 
Ok. Simple enough to check the attic. Look for trails, tunnels and droppings on the insulation. Sometimes trails are harder to find in blown insulation. I find the outside of my eyes pick up the relief difference better than the center, kind of like seeing in low light. It must be a rod vs cone thing.

If they are getting up there, its time to figure out how. Corners are a huge highway. You'll need to seal them with metal as they will chew through all exclusion fibers. They can go through the metal if they want to too, but its a lot more work.

If you physically can't keep them away from the cars, and don't know where the burrows are, its hard to stop them. Rats are smart and tough.
 
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When we do rats its often a combination of exclusion, trapping, and a number of better living through chemistry options that we employ to get them out and keep them out.
 
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I’ve never used one. They’re a neat idea though. Rats usually have 3+ exits from a burrow. I can see them escaping from the other burrows when the machine turns on. I’d bet his pitchfork kills as many, if not more than the gassing.

There’s a real neat YouTube channel Joseph Carter the mink man who uses mink and dogs to flush and kill rats. It’s fascinating to watch his videos.

I’d worry about the gas anywhere near a foundation. If the tunnel goes up against it and the gas finds a crack, I can see where a potentially lethal amount of carbon monoxide could be pumped into an unsuspecting person’s basement. Heck, even if they handed you the credit card and signed the contract they might not have considered you’re pumping a tasteless, order less gas into the ground right beside the basement. I can’t tell you how many people over the years have asked me to spray pesticides on their bbq grills and kitchen counters. For the record, spraying pesticides on your kitchen counter is a bad idea, lol.

I’m curious how he treats on city property. If there’s a tree pit in the sidewalk, it probably isn’t on the homeowner’s land. We need homeowner permission to treat a property.

I’ve seen a few presentations from the guy in charge of killing rats in New Orleans during the pandemic. When they shut down during the pandemic, a large population of rats suddenly didn’t have a food source since the restaurants and trash disappeared. They behaved badly and would move around in swarms looking for food. He chased them around through the neighborhoods killing them the entire time while getting people to tighten up their houses and buildings against entry. I’m sure the problem is back to where it was by now.
 
I have a Toyota Tundra.A few years ago check engine warnings came on. Went to Auto Zone and hooked to computer. It said knock sensor. Went to the Toyota dealership and showed them the readout and they said it’s usually rodent damage. First time I had ever been told something like that right off the bat. Went home and looked it up and found Toyota had had class action lawsuits over all the rodent damage. Soy wiring. I now keep glue traps on top of the engine baited with peanut butter. I glue the traps on flat spots. I catch three or for mice a year.
 
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