Mouse in the house!

[drewmo]

Any suggestions on how to get rid of the critters without poison? I believe the family is residing in one of our walls and I'd hate for them to make their final resting place there. I've had limited success with traditional mouse traps. And with live traps, I understand you need to drive them somewhere near 100 miles away from home, otherwise they just make their way back.

We have a loose dog in the neighborhood that I've seen catch two mice, but he's not as efficient as the neighbor's cats. But, with said dog in the vacinity, the cats don't make their way here.

 

[babalu87]

Cotton ball soaked with water on a mousetrap.
They like cotton for nesting material and they need water

 

[Sandor]

The old style mousetrap with the large, flat yellow piece of plastic looking cheese where the bait should go. Place in corner or along a wall. They work like a champ, with no bait. This is a good trap to use as a preventative measure, since you don't use bait.

Do not use the glue traps. Caught one in there, chewed his leg off to get out, then ended up getting his head stuck in the glue. Found the trap about 10 feet away from where I set it, and blood everywhere. He was still alive when I found him. The little detached mouse leg sitting straight up the glue looked.... odd.

 

[Burn-1]

I have trapped five this week. An unfortunately higher infestation than last year.

(broken link removed to http://www.tomcatbrand.com/traps.html)

I have had good success with the glue traps but I fan them out near each other. One might wriggle away from one but will get stuck on one another. The other one I like is the (broken link removed to http://www.tomcatbrand.com/snaptrap.html) these are really easy to set and effective. I have found that hard dog food is a really good bait since that is what they go for anyway. You really want to try to trap them. D-Con and other baits will kill them but you will smell them in your walls a week or so later.

I am thinking of trying one of the ultra-sonic repellers. Has anyone had success with them?

 

[ilmbg]

Only one?? I could send a few of mine to keep him company! Do you know which wall he(they) are in? If so, open the wall by taking the cover off a light switch, or an outlet.You must give hima a way into your house. Whoever does the electric stuff in the house- unscrew the switch or outlet, pull it into the room so mouse has way to come in- put trap- either the 'No Touch' as mentioned above, but 'Snappy E' is stronger- and reuseable. Put scant amount peanut butter on the tongue of trap- then a pinch of flour. You will have your culprit in a couple days-promise! PS I am an EXPERT I live in the semi-desert/prairie, without a cat.! I know all! (about catching mouses, that is)

 

[Gene K.]

I love the no-touch traps. I'm not afraid of touching the mouse, but the facts are, they never miss, and they don't bite my fingers.

My preferred bait is peanut butter. The smell attracts them, and it's sticky.

I have trapped five this week. An unfortunately higher infestation than last year.

(broken link removed to http://www.tomcatbrand.com/traps.html)

I have had good success with the glue traps but I fan them out near each other. One might wriggle away from one but will get stuck on one another. The other one I like is the (broken link removed to http://www.tomcatbrand.com/snaptrap.html) these are really easy to set and effective. I have found that hard dog food is a really good bait since that is what they go for anyway. You really want to try to trap them. D-Con and other baits will kill them but you will smell them in your walls a week or so later.

I am thinking of trying one of the ultra-sonic repellers. Has anyone had success with them?

 

[Highbeam]

Take the live trap full of live mice and submerge it in water. Bucket, barrel, river, or creek. Then you will have a live trap full of dead mice.

 

[kevinmoelk]

I use poison, d-con, the old school stuff that comes in the fake cheese wedges... works great, dehydrates the mice and you don't smell them. But as most things in life, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Here's a few things you can do:

-Take off baseboards around the outside perimeter of your home, vacuum up any nests. If you have access... stuff any cracks with steel wool followed by spray in foam. Stuff it well and pack it in there. This is good for energy efficiency as well

- Take anything edible out of the lower cabinets in your kitchen. Keep as much food in the refridgerator as you can, transer cereals and grains into tupperware type containers, place in upper cabinets

- Store your dog/cat food in an anti-mouse container

- If you have an attached garage, store any grass seeds in plastic containers

- Keep any blakets or beddings off of the floor if possible (hard to keep the dog bed off the floor) and inspect them once in a while to make sure mousey isn't taking any threads

- Mice don't like bounce or other smelly fabric softener sheets. So place the fabric softener sheets in shoes or along the back sides of closets and other seldom used places

That's all I can think of for now. Oh, yeah, ditto on the peanut butter. Also, if you're using the traditional snap traps, try placing the trap into a paper lunch sack... think no splatter and no touch clean up.

-Kevin

 

[laynes69]

I use poison and I ditto the mouse traps with the fake cheese. They work well. We have had a few here and there die in the walls. They stink like hell but then they go away. With a 150+ year old home, surrounded by 100's of acres of farm land. The only place for them to go is here. When I do get them, I throw them in the wood furnace when there is a good hot coal bed. They shrivel up to nothing and I don't see or smell em. I forgot to add. Somewhere at some time I had heard of somebody taking a large galvanized steel barrel and stringing a thing of fine yarn, or fishing line across the tub. They put a tin can in the center and rubbed bacon grease on the line and the can then filled the tub with water. They would fall in and drown. They would check it every few days and at one time they had probably 15 or so in the tub. Its something that I would like to try in our basement.

 

[CountryGal]

Victor electronic traps are the best! Expensive, but 50 mice on one set of batteries. Never touch the mouse either. Flip off the top and toss them. Instant, no pain. Safe around children and pets, unlike poison and snap traps.

I live on 30+ acres in the desert. Lots of mice and even my mouser can't keep up. I caught 6 the first night I used this in a downstairs spare room closet. Yikes!!

(broken link removed to http://www.victorpest.com/store/product.asp?dept_id=54&pf_id=M252B)

 

[mayhem]

I've tried more than a few things over the years...nothing works better than a traditional, old fashioned mouse trap with a dab of creamy peanut butter on the bait pad. Poison is very effective, but you wind up with rotting corpeses inside your walls and you're stuck with that smell for a few weeks.

One store in my area sells a modified tradional mousetrap that has a plastic housing that covers the base and bait area. They work well because you occasinally get a clever mouse that manages to eat all the bait wihtout setting the trap off...with the covered trap they have to walk inside throuhg a little gothic archway to get to the peanut butter and once inside they have no way to get at the bait except to sit on the bait.

If you set a trap, leave it for a day or two in the same spot and check it frequently...if you get no luck and the pb is still on there then move the trap to another location as you have no foot traffic in the area you put it in...once you find the sweet spot where you start whacking critters just keep emptying the trap and resetting it.

 

[echo]

The obvious answer is to get a cat or two. My remaining barn brat is a 13 year old Terminator. He patrols the house and 'loves to eat them mousies' Can't say whether he actually gets them all, but his daily catch is quite impressive. No poisons, no risk to us or our Dogs. The only ick factor (at least for me) is finding their stiff little bodies. Mice don't squik me at all, but there is nothing more revolting that finding one stuck in a peanut butter jar! [eyerole]

Rach

 

[DiscoInferno]

Our seasonal house was quite infested with deer mice this summer, we used the cheap little "tipping" style live traps to catch about 12 or so. Eventually no more were caught. We'd release them into the woods on the way into town, about 2 miles away. They didn't come back best we could tell, but then all deer mice look the same. (Cute, actually, not like the standard house mouse.) Unfortunately this is likely to be a yearly ordeal, because the woods aren't going to run out of mice and it's really near impossible to mouse-proof a house, at least against small mice. They go right up under the siding, among other routes.

 

[drewmo]

Caught my first mouse last night, using the peanut butter (suggested by about everyone) and dash of flour (suggested by ilmbg). I read elsewhere that to get to flour, mice push extra hard, ensuring they release they trap. Seems to work. I put a dog treat just beyond the trap from the route I suspected the mouse to take for extra insurance. While the mouse trap I used is aptly named "Lucifer" (it was the only trap I could find on a Sunday morning in France - online at: (broken link removed)), I was the one who ended up being the devil because the "snap" didn't exactly deliver the blow one hopes for in these situations. Will reload the trap tonight to see what other creatures might be lurking.

 

[cbrodsky]

I will have to try the flour idea!

I regularly fight mice this time of year and this year was worse than normal for us. I did find a couple points of entry which may help as they're plugged up now. I've also tried a new snap-trap style because they were no longer going for the traditional wire traps:

(broken link removed to http://www.victorpest.com/store/product.asp?dept_id=51&pf;_id=M130&mscssid=U3TJD1N20T1T8H1E96QKUNNKCS3A2TSE)

I didn't read the directions close enough the first time - you actually put peanut butter on the trap ceiling. They get so caught up in working on it that they inevitably bump what looks like the bait lever. I have caught at least 15 in these, and not one case of a cleaned out trap that wasn't tripped, or a tripped trap without a mouse. And most importantly to me, they are SO much nicer to reuse than a wire trap.

HD is stocking them now around here.

-Colin

 

[jjbaer]

I have a friend who live traps them but before he releases them, he spray paints a small area of florescent orange on their back...that way when he catches more in the future, he can tell if the previously caught an released ones have found their way back into his house....which means he takes the next ones farther away before releasing them.....also, unless you poison them, they'll keep coming. I would think you have to poison them and let them take the poison back to the nest to kill all of them........same with ants........slow acting poison allows them to eat it and live long enough to take it back to the nest to share.....

 

[Eric Johnson]

The only problem I would have with poison would be the possibility of poisoning the neighborhood cats.

I prefer the traditional, baited mechanical, summary execution method myself. Then it's a short trip to the compost pile.

If it makes you feel any better, the mouse traps they sell at Home Depot are made of green certified wood!

 

[Jay H]

I have had much better luck with the QuickSet traps from victor, available at any big box hardware store

(broken image removed)

I've had OK results with the traditional mouse trap, it seems sometimes it gets triggered but no dead mouse. the only problem I've had with the QuickSet ones is it's sometimes touchy with setting it, sometimes it's too sensitive and triggers before being places. the traditional mouse traps are easier to set.

But I get mice occasionally on my sill plate in the basement and nowhere else but they have climbed the walls into my attic though and make a lot of noise that is annoying so I trap them and toss them out in the trash. I get about 2-3 a month perhaps in the colder months...

Jay

 

[cbrodsky]

I have had much better luck with the QuickSet traps from victor, available at any big box hardware store

(broken image removed)

I've had OK results with the traditional mouse trap, it seems sometimes it gets triggered but no dead mouse. the only problem I've had with the QuickSet ones is it's sometimes touchy with setting it, sometimes it's too sensitive and triggers before being places. the traditional mouse traps are easier to set.

But I get mice occasionally on my sill plate in the basement and nowhere else but they have climbed the walls into my attic though and make a lot of noise that is annoying so I trap them and toss them out in the trash. I get about 2-3 a month perhaps in the colder months...

Jay

Yep, this is the one that has been working great for me as well!

Somehow, I'm getting them in my attic but I never get them along the foundation top by the sill plate like I used to. They seem to have found a way to do directly into the attic or up a wall to reach it. No trees overhanging so they must be tucking under the siding somewhere and squeezing in. And they are indeed really annoying at 3-5AM when they wake you up with scratching in the wall.

 

[WILDSOURDOUGH]

Drewmo-
Can't tell you, I,ve got one cat that is a killer- but only outdoors ! If it's indoors, it's there because he brought it in, or he is disintrested- just like the other lazy one, who won't swat at a fly.

 

[Gooserider]

I had a problem with flying squirrels in our attic, used the "Victor method" of dealing with them - was getting some field mice at the same time. Eventually found the squirrels were getting in through a gap in the end of the ridge cap, and after filling it w/ foam they haven't come back. Also haven't seen much sign of mice after that.

I did find a plug in "ultrasonic" repeller, and stuck that in the outlet I put in the attic, and that also seems to be working, but it's hard to tell.

My biggest rodent problem is in our swimming pool - I'm constantly finding dead mice (and occasionally moles) in the skimmer - annoying and I don't like the extra chlorine load...

My prefered bait is peanut butter, but the GF reports that when she lived in Somerville, MA, that the mice there had a strange mutation that caused them to prefer the duck sauce from cheap chinese food places....

I'm of the exterminate school, not the live trap school, as releasing them somewhere else merely gives someone else the problem.

Gooserider