Stopping mice climbing

[d ryan]

We have been feeding Robins with finely chopped peanuts (salt washed off) and porridge oats. The mice have found it and brazenly come out in day time to eat it.

To deter the mice we cut out the sides of a one pint plastic milk carton, and fixed it to a bamboo garden cane about one metre high, but this morning found what look like mice droppings in the new arrangement.

Can mice climb a single vertical garden bamboo cane only about four millimeters in diameter? Or might these be Robin droppings?

Would there be a simple way to stop mice climbing up a bamboo stick?

[harryagain]

Easy to climb for a mouse.

To stop it, you need an "inverted funnel" on the cane. Cut one out from a plastic drinks bottle.

The birds chuck a lot of food on the ground so mice will still be around.

[Dave Liquorice]

Easy peasy.

Mouse poo is approx 1.5 mm dia 5 mm long pretty dry and black.

Robin poo I suspect is like other bird poo, a splodge of wet slimy stuff (when fresh).

The inverted funnel of some sort ought to work, for mice I suspect it would have to be at least 8" in dia. Though that would depend on the material a bit, something hard and smooth (as in mirror smooth) you could probably get away with 4" dia. I can't decide if the texture on a plastic milk bottle would give enough purchase. A 2 l fizzy drinks bottle with just the base cut off and any labels removed threaded on open base end down should work.

[Chris Hogg]

Why are you using salted peanuts in the first place? What's wrong with ordinary peanuts crushed up. Absolutely no risk of any salt residues then.

[Martin Brown]

You need a downwards facing cone or a circular collar around it.

Enough that the mouse cannot reach the edge or jump around it. This will also catch some of the overspill before it hits the ground - birds are messy eaters.

Mice struggle to climb 15mm copper pipe which is what I use to support my bird feeder. A band of grease part way up stops squirrels too. The latter will rip a spot welded one apart if they can get to it.

[tony sayer]

In article , d ryan scribeth thus

I bet they can..

I found one suitably cremated in our boiler with a balanced flue. Only way mousey could have got in there was straight up a brick wall and thru the flue all some ten feet above ground level!...

[Gazz]

oh yes, rodents can climb bricks with ease, their nails are pin sharp and very strong, so they can get a grip on the tiniest cracks that are naturally in bricks,

i had a fancy rat that could shoot up a brick wall as if it was horizontal, he could stop at any point just hanging on by his nails,

Climbing pipes, ropes, string etc is easy for rodents too due to their tails, they are covered with very short stiff backwards pointing hairs, so act as a sort of one way clutch, again they dig into any tiny gaps in what ever they are climbing and assist them climbing,

So for mice, a larger metal pole would be harder for them to climb than a thinner one, add the cone type thing halfway up and any mouse that makes it to the top deserves the free meal.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Used to have a conventional bird table, which would sometimes blow over in the wind, and was low enough that a cat would occasionally jump up and catch a bird on it, so it got modified to sit on top of a 32mm diameter aerial pole which is 8' high (out of cat reach), and fits into a rotary drier socket buried in the lawn so it can't be blown over but can be temporarily removed.

Squirrels have climbed the pole, but I only rarely see squirrels, around so I don't mind. There was an amusing confrontation between a squirrel and large pigeon at the top on one occasion (squirrel won).

Keeping a bag of birdseed in the shed took a few goes before I managed to stop rodents eating through it. It now lives on top of an empty incinerator dustbin with the lid upturned on the top to form a dished table. Nothing has worked out how to climb the dustbin sides for years, even though they are rusty. I found a hole eaten in the side of the bag a few weeks ago, which was due to the rake handle falling against the side of the dustbin to provide a path to the top. One day, they might work out how to climb to the roof and let go so they fall into the bird seed, but they haven't done that yet.

[GMM]

IME mice don't even need as much traction as a brick would give: I once chased a mouse across the living room and it disappeared behind the curtain. When I drew it away, said rodent was spreadeagled vertically on the 'smooth' painted wall about 2ft from the floor. It didn't have much time to contemplate its successful climb before it departed this world however...

[Darkside]

In article , Dave Liquorice writes

That is correct, yes. If you must feed semi-tame robins, don't let them perch on your clothing!

[Gazz]

Yup, mice are a lot lighter, so any surface they can dig their nails into a little will hold them, my rat that liked to climb walls was around 900 grams, so the gravitational effect was much stronger on him :)

[Gordon H]

OK, so explain how a frog managed to get into my toilet bowl at 1st floor level. It happened many years ago, and I never did suss it out. :-)

[Tim Lamb]

65 years ago a Frog got into a farm workers wellington boot and I'm still not admitting how.

[JimK]

google "staddle stone"

Jim K

[Christina Websell]

[Lee Nowell]

Mice hate wire wool..... Can you tape some to the sticks?

[Gazz]

You didn't chew it properly on the way down ?

[Gordon H]

Best answer yet, but no cigar. :-)

[Edgar]

I once discovered a mouse nest with mother and three babys in the middle of a large bale of wire wool in a box in the garage.

Edgar

[F Murtz]

It is not so much a like or dislike of steel wool as a nest, the advantage is as a barrier that they usually will not chew through