Mice

[Ed]

Any recommendations for getting rid of a mouse in the house, we rarely see him or where he goes, but know he or her is there Regards Ed

[Mary Fisher]

Is it a problem?

If yu have one you'll have more. I belive that a Little Nipper trap (the spring trap which you bait with a raisin, bit of biscuit or peanut) is best.

Mary

[Richard Savage]

If you want to be sure that you have caught at least one of your mice use a humane trap or (inhumane) rat trap (both from Rentokill) or Little Nipper mouse trap baited with peanut butter. Or use poison bait. But then you may not know if you have killed anything until you smell the rotting corpse!

FWIW my rat trap, which was catching mice, became self-baiting after the first successful capture. It seems that having had a dead mouse draped over it for a day or two made it irresistible to other, overly curious, mice! Also the humane trap seemed to atract the progeny of any mouse caught by the rat trap.

I'd be interested to know how successful baiting is and any precautions you must take, e.g. are baited rodents harmful to cats?

I understand that if you have mice then you can be reasonably sure that you don't have rats - according to my local EH bod rats eat mice.

BTW I think that ammonia makes mouse/rats nest uninhabitable.

Richard

[Alan]

In message , Richard Savage wrote

You can have my Little Nipper trap for free - what a waste of time. I watched a mouse climb all over it without setting it off. Any slight prodding with my finger and it would snap shut with ease :(

I used poison bait, but you have to make sure that there is not something more tempting around.

After having the bait down for over a week one evening I noticed that a small amount of mashed potato dropped on the floor had disappeared. As an experiment, I placed a few small balls of mashed potato in places where I had seen mice before and sure enough they disappeared during the night.

I then mixed the poison bait with the potato and repeated the experiment. For two night the baited potato went missing - but it was left alone on the third night. I haven't had any evidence of mice in the house since.

[Eco Warrior]

When we moved to our present house we inherited a mouse problem (thankfully now resolved - we hope!!). I bought two traps - of the traditional type, one wooden and the other metal, the wooden one caught absolutely nothing but the metal one trapped several. So I would say get a metal mousetrap and bait it with something tempting - a small piece of Mars bar worked for us!

[Ian Stirling]

Can you get mousetraps that fit to central vacuum cleaner lines...

[Rick Dipper]

A Farm Cat - not one of your city ones but one that is used to hunting.

Rick

[Mike Watson]

I've taken them out with 4 differing/unintentional methods.

1. Standard trap baited with a jelly sweet coated in danish blue cheese.
2. My homebrew used to live in bottles which were then in high sided cardboard boxes. Was tidying up some bottles one day and found a mouse that obviously never got back out, it was kind of crispy/mummified.
3. I chased one round the flat one evening, caught it in a plastic bag and let it loose outside (this is an edinburgh tenement so outside was just the common stair). It died overnight sitting next to my neighbours binbags which they always left out on the stair. Result was

1 dead mouse and no more binbags on the stair.

1. The one that drowned itself. We knew we had a mouse and quite often saw it. It looked like it came in though a hole in out neighbours wall. Boldest mouse I've ever seen, would sit and watch me from underneath the cooker. Anyway one morning after a party in our flat we went to do the dishes as we'd been too pissed the night before and found our friend floating in the sink! It'd probably climed up the clothes horse to investigate the nice smells coming from it.

[Dave Stanton]

The mice around Worcester seem to like Kit Kat ( the choc one)

Dave

[mich]

FWIW, in my experience a cat is not only the most effective rodent operative but the most effective deterrent in ensuring your house remains mice free. I always call mine Mickey ( as in michael the mouser or mickey mouser). I am onto my third Mick. I have always had a cat. The other two sadly passed on having met their score of years and several more in cat years. They remained very good at their jobs to the last.

It has to be said in favour of cats that the Royal Mail used to actually employ them to keep mice down in sorting offices, post offices and on mail trains! Their wage was a shilling a week and all the mice they could eat. They also got pensions. The Royal Navy have also used them effectively.

I may not be very good at leaking water mains but I know my history of cats

>

[Badger]

Ah a useful feline, instead of a useless crapping in my garden pest....

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mouse trap.

Baited with cheese or chocolate.

[Graeme]

've used these in our shed over the last couple of years. We've only ever had a few visitors, and only know when they're around when holes appear in the rabbit food sacks. Tried cheese as bait, but to be honest, they work just as well without anything.

[Alan]

In message , Graeme wrote

I believe that mice don't actually favour cheese and it is only suitable for mouse trap bait in cartoons.

[Gordon Henderson]

I was about to say get a cat, but experiences with my own cat over the past day or so might have changed my mind[1]

If you can see them scurrying about and you have a good vacuum cleaner (eg. VAX, Henry) then use that to suck them up. They ought to be well stunned in the bag so you can just put them in the bin.

Gordon

[1] Although living in a rural area, we don't have a mouse problem - until my useless cat brings one in alive and lets it go and loses it before killing it. Had a tiny little fellow in the living room last night which really irritated SWIMBO, and as she was about, killing it in-front of her (whack it with a shoe is the usual mechanism) wasn't an option she was happy with, so had to scoop it up & throw it outside. The cat meanwhile was pretending it didn't exist. Still makes a change from all the headless mice I've been picking up every morning before SWIMBO gets downstairs...

Sometimes he leaves just the tail & hind legs, sometimes the whole mouse. I really don't understand him at all.

[Gordon Henderson]

Indeed - and to cap it all, my cat likes cheese, so if I had a trap, cheese would be the last thing I'd put into it. Small sweet things are, I'm told, the best bait - chocolate, rasins, etc.

Gordon

[Mary Fisher]

If she doesn't like mice and doesn't like your means of dispatch she should do it herself.

Mary

[Andrew Gabriel]

According to Desmond Morris, he is concerned about your lack of mouse caching and is trying to show you what you should be doing.

On more than one occasion, I've got up in the morning, and on the way to the bathroom, still half asleep, stepped barefoot on the entrails of something no longer recognisable. One of the interesting incidents was waking up to find that at some point during the night, a large bird had been completely plucked and half eaten in my brief case which was sitting open on the floor. Having chucked out the top layer of papers and emptied all the feathers out, each time I opened it in the office for the next week or so, yet another feather appeared from somewhere...

[Graeme]

I'd like to see your cat get into one of those Tip-Traps.

I've not tried our cat with cheese. She thinks she'd like to try anything that I'm preparing (all sorts of vegetables etc). Some of her favourites are Frazzles and Hula Hoops (not salt'n'vinegar though).

[Aidan]

Bait the trap with chocolate. You can carefully set the trigger mechanism so that it is on the very verge of tripping. You then have to place the trap VERY carefully, keeping fingers out of harm's way. If done properly, a slight bump on putting the trap down will set it off.

I had a mouse last week. The trap (wooden, probably a Little Nipper) went off within 10 minutes of placing it & turning off the lights. Filthy little beasts.