Mouse catching advice

[Agrispeed]

A lot of cats won't kill things like rats or mice, even rabbit kittens a lot of the time.

Luckily we have two particularly vicious barn cats who ignore ducklings or chicks but kill rats and rabbits (even fully grown) like there's no tomorrow

Air rifles work, but is a lot of outlay and needs both time and practice. By far the best for rats though, and great fun!


Some poisons desiccate the mouse so it doesn't smell (they become crispy mouse shells) most modern poisons are crap though. the double dose stuff just doesn't work. The best solution is to kill 'em and do it properly.

[fatboy b]

The problem round our house is that it's prime mouse territory. Big orchard at the bottom of the garden, barn on one side, and neighbours with bird feeders on the other two sides. Some pest controllers recommend that you clear the traps/poison once the infestation has gone, otherwise you'll attract new mice. Bollux to this. If there's new mice to attract, then there's still an infestation close by. I now keep traps and poison around the house and garage all year, otherwise the fkers get in the loft.

[craigjm]

You might not need to catch it. If you are not on the ground floor it is likely that it is not living in your flat. It is more than likely travelling along the plumbing or gas pipes etc so have a good where all the pipes enter your house and seal the gaps. Get yourself a cheap UV black light and it will illuminate the mouse urine and you can track where they are coming from.

[croyde]

Be warned about the black light if you have kids. You'll be shocked at how much the boys miss the loo and then find out that your teenager daughter wrote all over the walls of her old room in invisible ink, when she was 8.

[craigjm]

croyde said:

Be warned about the black light if you have kids. You'll be shocked at how much the boys miss the loo and then find out that your teenager daughter wrote all over the walls of her old room in invisible ink, when she was 8.

[Jasandjules]

Cats can be good. Ours leave a trail of mouse and rat corpses all over the herb garden area..

A friend however has a cat which watches mice walk around the house - the dog chases them - even over the cat's paws!!

[Willy Nilly]

Find out where it (they) are getting in and block it up with some sort of silicone, but before you do, put copious amounts of Neosorexa Gold down the holes. New ones will follow the urine trail the old ones left behind.

[SMGB]

Willy Nilly said:

Find out where it (they) are getting in and block it up with some sort of silicone, but before you do, put copious amounts of Neosorexa Gold down the holes. New ones will follow the urine trail the old ones left behind.

^
Totally, mice have evolved to withstand heavy predation so if there is an established population locally then trapping is a waste of time. Whenever they establish a route from the ancient woodland that surrounds us into the house the only answer has been to work out roughly where they are getting in and then work at blocking any possible entries. A mouse can squeeze through a pencil sized hole.

[Chris71]

fatboy b said:

The problem round our house is that it's prime mouse territory. Big orchard at the bottom of the garden, barn on one side, and neighbours with bird feeders on the other two sides.

Ours is quite the opposite. Its basically a first floor maisonette above a row of breeze-block garages built in about 2007. It's the last place I'd have expected to find mice.

We set traps around the living room (the only place I've seen one) on Friday, but yet to see or catch a single mouse. Very occasionally we hear a brief scurry coming from the loft. I'm still clinging to the idea that it's one individual whose now retreated to the roof. No sign of droppings or anything.

To be fair, at this point we should probably alert the landlord before it/they start chewing through power cables or anything. I'd really hoped to purge the house with non-lethal means, but that's looking a bit less likely.

[highflyer]

are they in the cupboard under the kitchen sink? thats where we keep the bin and our mice have been in there, they run under the base units where the kick panels are, have used humane catch alive traps then let them go in the compost heap, was sat watching tele one night and the little bugger came and sat in the doorway between the lounge and breakfast room watching tele had a clean then strolled off back into the kitchen/dining room shouted MOUSE ! to the dogs that were asleep on the settee looked up and went back to sleep, working Cockers too!!

[boxst]

Some good advice here. We had mice living around the house and got fed up with it in the end and I had a mission to catch them all.

The humane traps worked but were very hit and miss and frustrating. The bait boxes DID work very well, although I'm concerned where all the bodies are. I picked up a few in the loft and a few in the garage, but I'm sure there are more.

The £1 traps seem to be the best unfortunately. Snap, gone.

This is one that I caught and liberated in the forest:

[Chris71]

highflyer said:

Are they in the cupboard under the kitchen sink?

Yep, that turned out to be the case.

Our humane traps failed to do the job and the other day the landlord sent a pest control service round with bait boxes and a load of the 'fly paper' type sticky traps.

Last night we heard a scratching behind the kick boards under the kitchen units. It remained in the same place, making quite a racket, when we've never even heard any activity before so I assumed something was trapped. I'm not usually the squeamish type, but I do have a soft spot for animals and I wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of leaving one to starve or dehydrate to death on a sticky pad.

I removed the sideboard and sure enough there was a mouse stuck to the paper and scrabbling away for dear life. Initially I wasn't too worried and just calmly pondered whether to try and release it outside - which my fiancee assured me would be impossible due to the paper - or put it out of its misery. I decided to have a quick go at helping it off the sticky pad, which rapidly became an all-consuming obsession. Half an hour later, face contorted with concentration and perspiring like the bomb disposal expert in a cheap B-movie I was still desperate to get it free.

Amazingly, I succeeded. By holding the paper strip vertically just above the bottom of a bucket and helping it's back legs off the pad with a screwdriver (not as brutal as it sounds, trust me...) I got the mouse free. Even more surprisingly it appeared unscathed by the ordeal and was running round quite happily in the bottom of the bucket.

Then it all went a bit wrong. As I was frantically looking for something to cover the top of the bucket, Super Mouse leapt a clear foot out of the top. It scooted across the kitchen floor at great speed and leapt clean through an access slot in the opposite sideboard that I didn't even realise existed.

I removed the sideboard, but the mouse was long gone. Having got so involved in the process only to see it disappear off - presumably to endure a nasty end on one of the landlord's other traps - was honestly one of the most demoralising experiences I can remember.

So, two lessons:
1) Don't name your vermin. You won't want to 'off' Bob when he's staring at your with those frightened little eyes.
2) Either set lethal traps or humane ones. The fly paper types are horrible.

[myvision]

I have mice in my shed i bought two cheap traps and am currently killing two mice every two days. I tried all kinds of food on the traps but Cadburys buttons work a treat they never fail. Thinking of giving the useless cat away.

[boxst]

Chris71 said:

Amazingly, I succeeded. By holding the paper strip vertically just above the bottom of a bucket and helping it's back legs off the pad with a screwdriver (not as brutal as it sounds, trust me...) I got the mouse free. Even more surprisingly it appeared unscathed by the ordeal and was running round quite happily in the bottom of the bucket.at your with those frightened little eyes.

And now it has super-sticky feet and can climb walls. Expect it to be waiting for you ninja like on the ceiling in the corner of one room ready to strike.

[Willy Nilly]

Knock, knock, knock.

Hello, pest control man, I have come to inspect the traps I set.

Ok

Hmm, there is a trap missing

erm

I've never seen a mouse run off with a glue trap before.

erm

That is very odd.

Well, I heard some scratching and had a look myself and found a mouse trapped so I decided to free it. After a little prying with a screw driver I got him off then he ran under the kitchen unit

OK *thinks, you utter tt*