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

[Selkie]

When we had some mice a couple years ago, we got some electronic traps. Put the bait inside the box and activate it. When the mouse goes inside---ZAP, goes to mouse heaven. The best thing is that there is an indicator light so you know when you got one. Then you can have DH dispose of the body (the traps are reusable and battery powered).

[OakLeaf]

We live in the country, and mice are just a (disgusting) fact of life.

Rule #1 is, while we're not the world's greatest housekeepers, when there's a mouse in the house, it goes into high gear. If I have to leave something out to dry, like your pepper, it goes into a colander with a lid on it. Kitchen gets vacuumed of crumbs after dinner every night. All food containers are kept tightly closed - although in general, a casual intruder won't chew through cardboard or plastic unless we're away from home for a while. They don't have to eat a lot, mostly they've come into the house looking for shelter not food, so if there's anything to eat besides the bait, they'll choose that.

Rule #2 is they have patterns where they like to go. They're not as rigid as ants or deer, but they have patterns. Place traps all over the house, but if you've caught one mouse somewhere, pay most attention to traps in the same area for the next one. Remember again that they're probably looking for shelter, not so much for food, so the kitchen may not be the best place to trap them. At least 90% of the mice I trap are in the basement in front of the dryer. I think they're more likely to investigate a trap when they feel secure generally.

Rule #3 is that they need water. Sponge out the bottom of any sinks that don't drain completely, and place a trap near your dehumidifier drain if you have one.

Rule #4 is if you're a bleeding heart like me, once you trap a live mouse, take it at least a mile and a half from your house or it will come back.


Peanut butter is usually good bait, but it needs to be something they can smell, so I'm guessing non-stabilized PB is probably better. I don't buy the other kind so I don't know for sure. Often they will go for ketchup. Or the cartoon stand-by, a small morsel of the stinkiest cheese you have.

I'd avoid poisoning mice in the house even if I didn't mind killing them, for the simple reason that they will go into the walls to die, and if you've never had this happen, you don't want to experience the odor. You know what road kill smells like after a few days, imagine it in your kitchen. It will linger for 2-3 weeks and return whenever the humidity is high. If you want to use poison, keep it in out-buildings and back alleys (in specifically designed containers so kids and pets can't get in).

Mice Cubes are the traps I've used for years. They used to be available at retail everywhere, but the stores figured out that something this cheap, effective and reusable wasn't making them any profit . If you're handy, it would be easy enough to make one. It's just a polycarbonate box with a door that swings in from a hinge at the top. The door is slightly longer than the opening, so it will only swing in one direction, and once the mouse is in, it can't get out. There are a few air holes in the door so the mice can smell the bait, although I usually smear a tiny bit of PB outside the door. They can't steal bait from this trap - they have to actually go inside to get it. In 10 years we've had one big chunky mouse that figured out how to get out of this trap - by bouncing around so much that it eventually turned the trap upside down and the door could swing in. We put a brick on top of the trap and caught it the next night. <evil g> Other than that, it's impossible to defeat this trap.


Good luck, they can be really frustrating.

ETA: hehehe Maxx

[bmccasland]

Get a cat?

[Biciclista]

Get a cat?

yeah, that is what i was going to say. Feeding poison takes a few days. And then you have a body to first find and then dispose of.

I'm sure the poison you fed the mouse will take effect, but be warned that it will not die on YOUR schedule.

I've lived in the city and in the country (in the middle of a hayfield in Idaho for a few years) and have never had rodents in my house, well, except for the ones that the cats brought in! I cannot attribute it to my fastidious house cleaning, because we're careless and even sloppy. It is the cats!
When i was a kid we had a mouser who was so good that we'd take him to other people's houses to catch mice.

Good luck btw.

[Cataboo]

Oh. Don't ever use glue traps.

Becuase there's the problem that they flop all over the place to try to get free and somehow work themselves under bookcases and you're wandering around looking for a mouse on a glue trap, and then cause ... you have to get them off somehow and do something with them.

[DebW]

I just figure I can live with a few mice. Since I'm not fastidiously clean and may leave dirty dishes out over night, the mice have food and I deal with them. When they get brazen enough to run around in broad daylight, then I do a better job of cleaning and storing food. Luckily, no sign of mice yet in my new apartment.

[OakLeaf]

Trouble with "living with them" is that they're there for shelter, and they will go everywhere.

They don't distinguish between your good, expensive clothes, your irreplaceable souvenir T-shirts, or the painting clothes that they're welcome to, when they decide to shred things for their nests.

I'm not squeamish, but when I find droppings in my silverware drawer, I'm going to wash the whole lot, and doing it every day gets old (and wasteful).

And the one time when one ran across my face while I was sleeping really freaked me out.

Thankfully, I don't live in an area where hantavirus is prevalent. But in some areas of the US, mouse infestations can be deadly to humans. I've known people (granted, in a depressed rural area) for whom it was more economical to burn their house down than to try to sanitize it.

If anyone has figured out how to keep them from eating the wiring in your car/motorcycle (which sometimes just means a couple of hours soldering, and sometimes - especially on the Prius - means a tow and $500 at the dealership)...

[Kalidurga]

Get a cat?

Don't get a cat unless you enjoy picking up pieces of dismembered &/or regurgitated mouse.


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.

[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!

[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...