We've hung some bird feeders off the arms of a metal post in the garden, but have recently noticed small mice lying down Roman style to eat the lower peanuts, and deterring birds from visiting.
$64 question is: Anyone know of any substance that could be put onto the post that would deter mice from climbing through it?
A conical collar? Like vets put on cats and dogs after surgury etc?
Nick
We've hung some bird feeders off the arms of a metal post in the garden, but have recently noticed small mice lying down Roman style to eat the lower peanuts, and deterring birds from visiting.
$64 question is: Anyone know of any substance that could be put onto the post that would deter mice from climbing through it?
Silicon grease the pole
Also like ships used to put on mooring lines, to stop rats.
Make some funnels out of plastic drinks bottles. Attach to pole with open end down
We have one of these things that is very effective against squirrels so undoubtedly the same for mice.
We have one of these things that is very effective against squirrels so undoubtedly the same for mice.
Yes.
You need the Charismatic Autonomous Terminator system:
The Mark I Charismatic Autonomous Terminator (CAT) system is a family of intelligent, stealthy, terminal-homing mouse-seeking missiles featuring multi-sensor targeting with dual night-vision devices, and neural-net architecture.
The CAT's self-righting inertial platform allows launch from any attitude. Integrated multi-aspect attack profile with indefinite- loiter mode insure a wide lethality envelope. Upon target engagement, the CAT deploys four clusters of retractable submunitions in addition to the primary warhead, providing an enhanced radius of destruction.
The CAT uses regular or exotic solid or liquid fuel and is equipped with a low-signature exhaust-obscuration system. Firmware and connectors compatible with any unit of the Mark I series guarantee unlimited expansion capability, making the CAT system a cost-effective countermeasure to the projected spectrum of rodent-threat scenarios well into the next century.
The CAT is now available* from Acme Anti-Roadrunner Systems Division of McDonald Dynamics.
You might find some ideas here:
Brilliant. If we had a post of the month I would nominate this post.
Thank you.
They don't climb my pole - which is a 2m piece of polished 22mm copper pipe.
Squirrels can jump that high and tear away at spot welds on the feeder so you may need additional countermeasures for them or a squirrel proof feeder with a hefty guage wire cage around it.
Any cheap grease ought to do the job for mice.
The problem with any stuff that you smear on is that it will wash off in time. The inverted cone idea is the most effective, as long as the mice can't reach the outer edge of the cone from the pole. As others have said, inverted 2 litre plastic bottles are cheap and quite effective.
Squirrels will, of course, just treat this as a fun obstacle course...
I quite enjoyed reading that until the middle of the third paragraph when I saw the misuse of the word "insure" in place of the _correct_ word "ensure".
It's extremely important to ensure there are absolutely no mistakes when creating such masterpieces of spoof advertising copy.
I'm afraid I can only offer you 99 marks out of a 100 for this otherwise very fine effort (notwithstanding that the CAT system may cause undesired co-lateral damage in this particular usage case, i.e unintended targetting of the bird feeder clientele). :-(
"Insure" for "ensure" is a US-type mistake.
Not surprising as I think I first read (a version of) the CAT system specification on a US site c.2003. It bears repetition though :)
Mind you, IMLE you do need to watch out for leftovers from the cold war when the Russians sought to diminish the West's capacity, by replacing loyal CATs by lookalikes which appear to be fully functioning but fail to perform at crucial times, in what was known as "the sleeper programme"
Then there is the faulty homing model which, having acquired and captured a target, reverse course and deposit the target back at base without having inactivated it.
Perhaps, but those are designed for narrow poles. The garden lamp post is several inches in diameter.
(Actually, I tried one like that many years ago in North Carolina, but the blasted squirrels just chewed the plastic until the thing fell off and proceeded up the pole!)
I've been trying to persuade the neighbour's tabby version of that system to hang around the post, but as we've not been here long it still regards us as deeply suspicious so tends to stay away, but I'm hoping the wildlife will overcome its suspicions...
The bird feeder is squirrel proof. It's the post that's not mouse proof. The noise-box solution looked interesting, but it seems the battery soon fades.
Yes, that's what we found many years ago. Squirrels won.
Agreed, if I can find one big enough to fit on a 3" diameter metal post (mini-lamp post), and if a way could be found to fix it there.
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