Gizzards. I'm no vet, so I don't want to guess at more detail. Oh, and the occasional head, rarely a front leg.
There was one the other day where she'd taken the head off and left it next to the rest of the carcass, but not actually eaten anything.
Then there was the headless bat a little while back...
That's what I did a couple of years ago, note it is plugged into a cheap radio controlled socket from Tesco or Asda.
My advice is make it a big trap.
The problem of course with a manually operated trap, is unlike the mice, the operator is not nocturnal.
So when I thought the problem had returned a couple of weeks ago I decided to automate the process.
First I tried a sound trigger mic in contact with a sheet of paper, but that wasn't very successful.
I finally used a white LED shining through a slit. I was going to design something with a photocell, op-amp and relay, but I had a light operated Halloween novelty toy which I wired into the R.C socket that effectively pressed the override button and opened the relay.
It caught a slug and a bluebottle on successive nights.
I have since decided I misread the signs, and I havn't got another mouse, so I put it all away for another day.
In message , Graham. writes
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I was quite fortunate with mine last year, as soon as I left the lounge they would come out to play. So I went upstairs to the workshop, shack, and watched on the monitor. When one was in the trap I would nip back down and pull the length of cotton that was attached to the trip mechanism. An earlier version was mouse operated with a pivoted card plate that pulled the cotton. It was a shade unreliable though. Most of the time they had a meal and then left :-( This year will be more reliable!
about 25 seconds in the trap activates.
That catches me out every time.
Try this one
When my mum was pregnant with my brother '59 or so she used to work in a whisky bottling bond (she worked on the line inspecting filled bottles for floaters).
Every morning the bond cat (specifically to catch mice lots of grain lying about) had seven or eight dead mice lined up at her station to help "feed up" the pregnant one. Needless to say with mum suffering a bit of morning sickness the sight of seven dead (sometimes headless and bloody) mice all lined up fairly gave her 'the boak'.
Is that in little nippers or live traps?
We used to get that sort of number in the autumn, live trapping and releasing 100 odd yards away. Until one of the ones had a damaged ear and we cuaght it on three succesive nights... Mice are now deported onto a fell top a couple of miles from any human habitation and about
4 miles from us. We now only catch maybe half a dozen/year and no young ones...Catching that number is not good, they must be coming from somewhere.
Neither. I use plastic break-neck traps like these;
No shit, Sherlock. :o)
I have no idea how they're getting in. Whatever it is, it's obscure.
(Caught 7 in the last 24 hours...)
I thought I had a problem with one per decade. A suggestion : Some temporary for a few days,solid barrier placed at each doorway , like toddler-proof stair gate, but solid, that you can still step over. Dusting flour or talcum powder each side of all the barriers and then regular inspections of the dust and loads of traps. Hopefully will zero in on the room of ingress/site of their nest indoors , then perhaps net curtain quartering , in turn, that room , plus the dusting,
somewhere.
You are assuming they are coming in... Sure they don't have (several) nests up in the loft, in the walls, under the floors?
And where is their food supply? Live on/near an arable farm that has a grain store? Feed the birds on the ground or get spillage from feeders/bird table?
No need. We don't get them in our part of the house. The traps are in the loft (I also bait in the loft) and under the kitchen units. We used to get them in the (integral) garage until I packed around the up-and-over doors with uPVC trim strip. We haven't had one in there since. I've had traps in various other parts of the house, but never caught any there, which is why I'm down to 4 traps in the kitchen & 2 in the loft (those fastened down, since they tend to vanish as injured mice drag them away under the insulation. No, I don't care about the injured mice. I just want my traps back.)
I suspect they're getting into the loft, probably up the exterior walls and then down a pipe run into the kitchen, under the units. I don't see how they can be getting under the kitchen units otherwise - there is simply no way for them to get there. I've removed all the Boston Ivy we used to have up the walls, but that made no difference. All the external doors are either uPVC or very well draughtproofed, so they aren't getting in that way. We don't have a cat-flap. The tumble drier vent is packed with "scrunched up" chicken wire, so they aren't getting in that way. We don't have any air-bricks (solid concrete slab downstairs). The air inlet vent for the (oil) boiler is covered with
1mm mesh and is 6ft off the ground anyway.Believe me, I've been trying to work out how they get in for years, slowly closing each possible point of ingress, but I've never managed to make a difference.
We only get them in the winter.
No, I'm not sure, but given that we don't get any in the summer, I believe they are fleeing the cold weather.
Yep. And there's a nice big tray of Neosorexa in the loft, too. :o)
I see how the bugger escapes on vid 3 - feisty and strong little sod - more like a rat. I constructed a water trap with a roller and bucket a few months ago, but none of the sods took it on, preferring to meet their grisly fate the old-fashioned way with Little Nippers.
In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes
A later mod' was to tape a 10A bridge rectifier and an M8 nut to the lid to stop it lifting. I plan on a strong magnet this year, so that when it closes it stays closed.
I once put 3 little nippers side by side on the hearth and caught 3 in one evening. It does make me wonder at their mentality, sitting down to eat while their mates lay dead beside them.
Another house I was aware of with mouse intrusions. A cat narrowed down the entry point to the gas-fire in the living room. Over a disused chimney, no obvious route in. But some 1/8 inch metal mesh over the flu slot on the rear of the fire and some scrunched up kitchen foil in some small gaps around the bottom of the fire sorted that problem.
Does this indicate that you've found no other solution to the mouse problem other than CAT ?
My cat has brought in lots of baby rabbits ... usually still twitching .. and a crow .. that must have put up a fair fight ... twice the size of the cat.
Hard to tell...
A couple of years back we had a big influx of lots of them[1], and I was routinely trapping several a week (sometimes 3 at once). It seemed that wherever they were getting in, they were making their way under the floor downstairs, and then emerging in a couple of places.
One I found one in our lounge behind a bookcase - a classic Jerry style mouse hole in the skirting. They probably chose that point due to their being a slight gap between floor and skirting at that point. I lifted a board and filled the gap behind with some scrunched up expanded metal lath, and bonding plaster. The other point of entry into the habited bits seemed to be somewhere from the kitchen. So I took the plinths off the units on the outside wall to look for gaps and noticed that there was a sizeable gap between the edge of the floor and the wall again (skirting had been removed, and some plaster hacked away). I had some quite substantial ali extruded shelf supports left over - so sprayed the area with expanding foam, and bedded those into the corner (gnaw through that you little buggers!)
I also searched for any likely looking gaps at low level outside and filled anything that might be possible.
That did seem to stem the tide - not sure if its just a case of they were still getting in but were now unable to escape from under the floor, or if I had also blocked their ingress. However shortly after that we got lumbered with three cats who seem to delight in eating the local wildlife before it even gets a chance to come in (unless they try and drag it through the cat flap that is!)
[1] This was some time after the (welcome!) demise of psycho kitty that came with us, and before arrival of replacements.
oh, they're not bothered by their mates being dead in the traps
On 26/10/2014 09:52, N_Cook wrote:> As a test for any mouse trouble, a "little nipper" loaded and set , in > an out of the way (for humans) but a likely pathway for any mice. > Next to a door and a wall ,under a low shelf, so out of sight of humans > but presumably ideal skulking pathway for any mouse. > Incidently small bit of Mars bar is ideal bait for this purpose, it > lasts for years, only discolouring a bit, but seems to be even more > irresistable by mice then. > Anyway this monitor trap been in place for perhaps 20 years now. 10 > years or so ago catching one after an external door was left open one > hot day, mouse disposed of down the bog, and nipper rebaited and reset. > Recently that ancient trap caught another one , heard the trap spring, > but no obvious route for ingress this time. How to zero in on its access > point? As presumably once one mouse has laid a piss trail, its open > house for all its mates. > Castering flour or talcum powder either side of doorway thresholds and > hope you can tell which way any of its mates were travelling and then > zero in on the entry point, by more localised dustings? Any other ideas > other than borrowing someone's cat and not feeding it with cat-food
As a belated followup. A useful tool for determining where the wee timid beasties gain entry. One of those dash-board camera gizmos , this one Nikkai ER-130V with
2xAAA powering option, that take still pictures every 1 second (or 10 seconds etc) . With software veiwing option , for a static camera and static view, to autosearch for any change in captured image. Set up above the floor, looking down . Place in the view an inch or so barrier of some material across the floor dividing across the room with a Marsbar-baited little nipper , one on each side. Forces them to be more likely to appear in frame longer than 1 second. Leave a light on , so the scene is illuminated and set recording overnight. View the SD contents the next day. Then continue dividing down the floor plan Had a run of the buggers. I'd not thought of looking upwards. They'd opened a gap in the ceiling where the central heating pipes , flow and return, passed through. Scrunched up some aluminium foil and squashed into the gap. Solved that ingress, like a gap between a gas-fire backpiece and the rest of the chimney , scrunched-up aluminium foil is still there doing its job decades later.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.