There's a mouse in my kitchen, and it's mocking me.

[channlluv]

Okay, so three nights ago I'm tossing something in the trash just before dinner and I glimpse a lithe little brown shape reflected weirdly in a glass on my counter, ducking behind a small potted orchid I have there. "Was that what I think it was?" I thought to myself. A moment later, it sticks it's little head out and scampers along the back of my sink - I'm calling my husband by now - around the just-washed dishes, right over the peeled carrots and sliced cucumber and sweet red pepper I was preparing for dinner - I grabbed the salad bowl from out of its path -around the spice carousel, behind the knife block - I grabbed the frying pan with the steaks cooking on the stove - and into the unlit back burner of the gas stove.

Yikes.

So we eat dinner and I'm freaking out because there's a mouse behind my stove. After dinner I clean up while DH goes to buy traps. By the time he gets back, I've cleared everything off the counter and bleached them.

He sets the traps with peanut butter and I've washed the dishes and have set some of them out on a clean towel to dry, including the frying pan, which is inverted and leaning over the salad bowls. I leave the dishes there and we retire to the living room to watch TV and head off to bed, confident that the humane traps will do their job and there will be a new furry resident of the back flower bed in the morning.

So next day I wake up and go into the kitchen to see what trap was sprung...nada. They haven't moved. I go to put the dried dishes away and find a nasty little surprise. The mouse has dragged the seed hull from the sweet red pepper, which I'd left out on the other side of the sink to dry out for planting, and dragged it around the sink and over onto the drying towel under the frying pan where he has chewed it clean, leaving the seed husks in a neat little pile, alongside a little pile of several mouse poops.

I couldn't believe it.

DH went to buy more traps while I bleached the dishes and the counters and threw away the towel.

He comes back with these poison mousenip chew sticks that are supposed to be effective in 3-5 days. We place them behind the knife block, behind the blender, and one either side of the sink tucked up in the window well, and then another over behind the orchid.

We leave for work at 7:15 and Tuesdays are my long days, so I don't get home until 6:30. The mouse, I find out, has carried one of the poison sticks over to the stove and tried to get it down the too-narrow hole where the gas ring comes up. The stick had been chewed. We left it there, figuring the mouse would come back for more.

We took dinner into the living room to watch TV while we ate and while we're in the other room, this little mouse comes out and gets the other chew stick from behind the knife block and carries it out into the middle of the counter!

There were little blue crumblies all around it. We moved it back behind the knife block and marveled at the brazenness of this little mouse.

Since then I've come into the kitchen to find the chewie moved out to the middle of the counter several more times, and then over to the hole where the gas ring comes up from inside the stove. There were two little chewsticks there as of this morning.

I stayed home from work today (I was in a minor car accident on Tuesday morning and was feeling stiff and sore today) and I was in and out of the kitchen all day, in broad daylight and everything, and this mouse has pulled the third chewstick over toward the counter with the knifeblock, toward the stove.

It is strong for a mouse, and I think it has a cloaking device.



Assuming Super Mouse survives the poison sticks - it seems to be more like mouse vitamins to me - anyone have any suggestions? The humane D-Con peanut butter traps didn't work at all for this mouse.

Roxy - okay with mice in the garden, but not in the kitchen

[KnottedYet]

Had one of these supermice.

Put a killer snap-trap baited with peanut butter into an empty kleenex box with a hole cut into it, facing into his/her favorite gap along my floorboards. Heard a SNAP during the night. Dumped kleenex box into the garbage without ever looking into it.

No more problem.

[channlluv]

Thanks, Knot. I like not having to look in the box after the fact.

Roxy

[Maxxxie]

I've had many fun times killing mice. My most successful method has been hand-to-paw combat.

If you want to read some of my Tales Of Mickey, feel free to click this link and this link. Be warned: They both contain a significant amount of cursing, and the first post of the first link (there's more than one Tale of Mickey in the first link) contains significant overuse of the C word. I apologise. Try to look past it, if you can. Aside from my hilarious Tales of Mickey, there are some useful suggestions from other members about how to get rid of mice.

Hope this helps.
Max

[Pedal Wench]

If you want to read some of my Tales Of Mickey, feel free to click this link and this link.

Maxxie - that's just hilarious! You must write for a living - you're incredible! What a page-turner!!! Really - if you haven't written a book, you should start. Now!

[channlluv]

Those were pretty funny stories.

And the house next door to me is renovating, but nobody there was hoarding. They just had 8 people living in a house built for 3. (Three licenses drivers, six cars...go figure...and two of them were big, big truck things. They're all gone now.)

Roxy

[Cataboo]

The previous tenant to my apartment in grad school had had a dog and just left out dog food all day.

In the first 2 weeks, I killed 10 mice. And usually would kill one or two a month, so I just left traps set constantly.

You really want the hair trigger old style traps, not those fancy ones with the fake looking cheese.

For the especially devious mice, I'd line up 3-4 traps baited with peanut butter against the wall in the corner... so bait towards wall, mouse could possibly get the peanut butter off the outside one without triggering it, but it couldn't get to the peanut butter on the inner traps without triggering one of them...

all organic food matter or whatever was kept in plastic containers or in the fridge... even if it didn't need to be refrigerated.. dirty dishes if I didn't wash them immediately got shoved in the fridge, too. (that was especially after my landlord gave me 2 species of roaches in a used applicance one summer) So only source of food was the peanut butter traps.

[IvonaDestroi]

poor little guy

I can't help it, I just can't kill them because they are so cute and intelligent... and funny, as you mentioned in your story, lol!

But somehow allowing the cat to get it seems ok, because then it's just nature. Thats what I do nowadays. And it's fun to watch. The mouse will trick the cat, then the cat tricks them, and the patience of my kitty is always so amazing to me.

I used to use those humane traps at my old job and they worked like a charm... we used peanut butter. I 'd let the little guys go every morning in the park.

With poison he will probably die somewhere in your wall. My landlord put out poison traps and that's what happened, they just kept dying in the walls and it STANK, and there was not a thing we could do about it... not to mention the thought of mouse corpses permanantly implanted inside your walls.

at my old work we were using these:
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Mouse-Tr.../dp/B000YFA7HW Just make sure you take them far away. They have an amazing sense of direction. Since he's so fond of your counter, I'd just put it there. But he's probably dead by now anyways

In anycase I'm on the mouse's side, he sounds like an awesome little guy, lol!

[withm]

One of our clients had extensive damage from mice. Here's the portion of his bill that covered the repair. Mice ate the insulation and wiring throughout his house. You might think twice about choosing to live with mice. And yes, it was a large house. A very large house.


Rodent Damage Demo & Repair, Electrical Inspection $73,000
Remove lights, ceiling fans, switch & receptacle covers, HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving, baseboard, casing, paneling, drywall and insulation from the areas listed below. Inspect wires for missing insulation. Any wiring repairs required will be priced after inspection. Reinstall insulation. Install and finish drywall. Reinstall casing, baseboard and paneling. Stain trim and paneling. Paint drywall. Reinstall HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving ,receptacle covers, lights and ceiling fans.

[Biciclista]

One of our clients had extensive damage from mice. Here's the portion of his bill that covered the repair. Mice ate the insulation and wiring throughout his house. You might think twice about choosing to live with mice. And yes, it was a large house. A very large house.


Rodent Damage Demo & Repair, Electrical Inspection $73,000
Remove lights, ceiling fans, switch & receptacle covers, HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving, baseboard, casing, paneling, drywall and insulation from the areas listed below. Inspect wires for missing insulation. Any wiring repairs required will be priced after inspection. Reinstall insulation. Install and finish drywall. Reinstall casing, baseboard and paneling. Stain trim and paneling. Paint drywall. Reinstall HVAC grills & registers, closet shelving ,receptacle covers, lights and ceiling fans.

wow, cats are a lot cheaper.

[oxysback]

I work in the pest control industry. Kalidurga is right, the only way to make sure more don't come in is to seal up the entryways. The usual suspects are crawl space vents with holes in the mesh, wiring coming out of your house that has a hole bigger than the wire, and garage doors that are missing the seal from the bottom. You can usually tell where they're getting in from their droppings. A cheap, temporary fix is steel wool. Push some in any holes that are suspect.

[Cataboo]

Hrm. I didn't think of leaving the mouse attached to the glue trap and just waiting for him to die.

I did the... erm... if I rip him off and let him go however many miles from here... he'll have lost so much hair & skin that he'll probably die (it was winter...)... Not to mention I didn't know how weak he was from flopping on that thing from however long.

Then did the... erm, I could stick him in the freezer, but then I'd have a dead mouse in the freezer. Eww. I could drown him in a bucket, but then I'd have dead mouse contaminated bucket, and since I was in an apartment, I couldn't really go hose it out. Eww. I could smash him with a hammer, but then I'd have a bloody hammer. Eww.

Finally, I stuck him in a few plastic bags, and stuck him behind my car wheel and backed up. Fastest most humane least eww way to get rid of a mouse that I could think of... But then I tossed all the other glue traps I had.

As for living with them... mice spread the plague and carry hantavirus. I tried to avoid disease carriers. Eww.

And cats.... never really cared from them, and am just allergic enough I don't get near so it doesn't get worse. Eww.

[OakLeaf]

There's no sealing most homes against mice without some major rebuilding. They can get in through soffit and attic vents unless very fine mesh was installed when the place was built. They can get in through the gaps between siding and foundation. All they need is 1/4".

[channlluv]

He was still alive and enjoying the warm confines of my stove top this morning - I lifted the lid where the burners are to look underneath to where the pilot lights are because the chewsticks hadn't moved overnight, and I figured I'd find his little body there and I wanted to move it before I started cooking breakfast.

Ninja Mouse was there waiting for me. I had both hands full of stove top and couldn't react. He looked up at me and then walked amazingly calmly to the back of the stove and climbed up into what must be a hollow section on the top back of the unit. For crying out loud.

DH went and bought the snap traps and set one there in the stove top. Oh yay. Mouse innards...well, there's so much poop in there I can't cook in it anyway until it's vacuumed and bleached. Yuck.

And yes, we have a cat. Her name is Duchess. Let's just say she's not much of a mouser.

I also live in the desert southwest where hanta virus is present, so I'm acutely aware of possible health issues. I hope he doesn't go into the wall to die. Or into some part of the stove I can't take apart. Geez.

So far I've only seen the one mouse. I think he may be a rogue ninja mouse looking for shelter.

Roxy

[Russel Mark]

Use mouse killer tablet and put in any sugar box and when mice come shut the door.