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

[Biciclista]

And I'll second the veto on glue traps. You can hear the mouse flopping around until it dies and the glue ends up stuck on anything that's nearby.

My mouse problem from several years ago didn't end until I sealed up the hole behind my stove and the condo HOA replaced a bunch of the siding on the building. You can try any sort of trap imaginable, but the only sure thing is to seal up their entryway.

+++ good points!

[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

[OakLeaf]

I never had a cat (as an adult), but my neighbors did, and all they did was chase the mice into my walls. Made the mouse problem worse, as far as I'm concerned. I can't see how it would be any different if the cat was actually in the house... it still can't get into the walls and cupboards where the mice go.

[Cataboo]

I never had a cat (as an adult), but my neighbors did, and all they did was chase the mice into my walls. Made the mouse problem worse, as far as I'm concerned. I can't see how it would be any different if the cat was actually in the house... it still can't get into the walls and cupboards where the mice go.

Tom was never that good at catching Jerry.

[Chicken Little]

I had one that I let live around Christmas time, and just chased it out the back door, because it seemed the seasonal thing to do. As of January 6th, I had 5 of them giving me the finger from the top of the DVD player while I watched my original version of Star Wars. NO MORE! Sealed every hole I could find, and put out traps. Haven't seen one since.

[tangentgirl]

I was showing clients around my office the other day. We went to the kitchen to get some coffee and noticed a rube-goldberg-like setup with the following items:

• A plastic chair
• Tilted against the chair, a small trashcan
• Laid across the chair and trashcan, with the bulk of its weight in the trashcan, an empty cardboard paper towel tube with peanut butter at the end over the trashcan

"What's that?" asked one of my clients? I looked at it, realized that, oh god it's some kind of homemade mousetrap, and feigned ignorance. It must be those wacky creative types messing around again, right? Who knows what they're thinking. Yes, I blamed the artists. Sorry artists.

I shuffled the clients out of the kitchen.

I asked our IT mananger/office handyman (poor dude) about it later and confirmed. We had mice. Pural. The cleaning folks hade even spied them dancing on someone's desk a few nights earlier.

We did end up getting some no kill traps, and my queries got me a phone call when we caught one of the mice, just to see for myself. Ick!

[deeaimond]

We live on the ground floor and get mice once in a while. once we had a rat ! It ate some of my dirty laundry>>> I had mouse/rat droppings in my room.... my dog is hopeless at even alerting us to the rodents. Usually we know from traces of mice droppings. I wish they'd infest my brother's room, but he's s filthy they're prolly afraid. maybe f he has mice, he's start cleaning up.

local rodents like dried seafood. dried cuttlefish/squid works the best coz its really pungent. its a box trap, so afterwards, dad will put it in the pail and fill with water to drown it. My dad learnt that was the easy way. (I told him so but he wouldn't listen to me. The first time he poured hot water. It made so much noise! it was incredibly incredibly cruel. But maybe thats what dad remembered they did in the old days where people killed their own chickens so it was ok. but next time he just drowned them.)

It's sad, coz they're very cute, but we live in a urban area and if we let them go, they'd just come back or go to someone else's house.

an idea is to keep them as a pet? I used to have pet mice as a kid...

[tangentgirl]

an idea is to keep them as a pet? I used to have pet mice as a kid...

I dunno. Wild mice could carry disease. Mice from stores are (hopefully) raised in a clean healthy environment.

[OakLeaf]

LOL, my first husband, even more of a bleeding heart than myself, kept a mouse he'd trapped as a pet for a while. I don't actually know what happened to it eventually, but I know it never became tame. (It's possible that he let it go before moving in with his new wife, who has 8 cats.) Not much of a pet that you can't clean its cage without a risk of being bitten.