Of Mice and Misery

I despair, I really do. I just had to make a thread to let off steam.

I was managing to relax tonight, and went to cook my supper in the kitchen, my stairs are in the kitchen, I was just minding my own business when a mouse comes bouncing down the stairs like it's a slinky spring then vanishes.

I can hear one of them in the kitchen now, the other night I set a barricade of traps all along the path they take, the only way across it was to jump, and looks like that's what they did. I am being outsmarted by mice :rolleyes2:

They may look cute as pets but these things spread disease everywhere, and are making my life a misery - I am on edge waiting for the next mouse to flash out of nowhere and keep seeing mice from the corner of my eye even when I am not in the house. My home of 15 years is starting to feel like a rock around my neck, dragging me down...

Any nice or not so nice advice on mice would be nice, but I must have read a 1000s guides on it, and really I just wanted somewhere I can publicly rant and rave so I don't lose my marbles. Then again, maybe I already have and the mice are not real! :club:

I'd love it if there was someone I could just indulge in some gallows humour with, but living alone it does sometimes seem as if small problems magnify and intensify, especially when you've sent a few texts out to the few people you know in real life and are met with a big fat silence. I just don't get people sometimes, or maybe I'm in denial about the fact that I am just not that important to the people I know, not even worth 30 seconds on a short text message.

Ah. I've depressed myself a bit now and gone off topic. I'd better barricade my bedroom or I'll be waking up half eaten by mice, and that's not the way I want to go out! :club:

^ I really can't offer any practical advice sorry other than the council? Except a (((hug))) .

I know it feels like a rock now, but you will get through this phase and become a self trained expert in mice removal lol.

Take care

Try poison? Different types of baits too is what I would do. Mice are naturally wary creatures to new objects, and there's a reason they've lived so long scavenging off of us! Clever beasts they are.

I captured a mouse in my basement last year. They scurry around sometimes, but thankfully they haven't been around in a while. I saw he had gotten stuck in a bag, and quickly yanked the bag into a bigger box, so deep that he couldn't jump out. I carefully emptied him into the box, closed it with my hands, and walked it down the street to a field where I set him free.

Could you find out where and how they are getting in and block their entrance? Also, if you haven't done so already, make sure you leave no food lying around or crumbs and use a kitchen bin with a lid.
I had mice earlier this year did both these things and haven't seen any sign of them since.
Have also found that living alone can magnify problems and then getting no response makes it harder. At least here you are not being ignored.

Thanks for the replies, it does make things easier to be acknowledged by someone out there!

I live in a house that was built in 1868 which is in a row with other houses. There are far too many acccess points to be able to block (that is if they are not actually nested in the house somewhere) and could be traversing from dwelling to dwelling via the loft spaces.

Since my first mouse infestation everything is sealed in plastic and floor cleaned daily, I suspect there is a food source further along in another house which they are passing through to get to, but without cooperation from the neighbours...

I have a stray cat in my garden, I am trying to entice it in, but the poor thing is half lame and the mice would probably thrash it in a fistfight if there were 2 mice against this effectively 3 legged cat!

TheSkaFish said:

I captured a mouse in my basement last year. They scurry around sometimes, but thankfully they haven't been around in a while. I saw he had gotten stuck in a bag, and quickly yanked the bag into a bigger box, so deep that he couldn't jump out. I carefully emptied him into the box, closed it with my hands, and walked it down the street to a field where I set him free.

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If the release point was less than 2 miles away then the mouse would just come back to your house. I know you were trying to be nice!

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Also, it doesn't seem like you've brought in a professional exterminator to take care of the problem? Maybe try that.

I recommend tigers.

HoodedMonk said:

If the release point was less than 2 miles away then the mouse would just come back to your house. I know you were trying to be nice!

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It was definitely was less than two miles away. It's a pretty big field, but at most it would only be a few blocks away from where I live.

I was trying to be humane, though. I do that with bugs as well. I would only squish it if it's dangerous, or if it causes other problems such as mosquitoes. Everything else I try to capture and set free outside.

Ah yes, the problem is trying to be humane to the mice while at the same time dealing with them. I don't like the idea of the exterminator, as what they will do is put poison down, and dehydrating to death isn't a very nice thing to inflict on a mammal, it would be a last resort, my view is if they live somewhere, in my garden shed or something, I'll leave them alone, but scurrying round my feet in the kitchen and running up and down my stairs like some kind of mouse main road, is a dealbreaker - so if they cross the line and enter my territory, I will try the glueboards arriving soon, I don't plan to leave the boards unattended, but if I catch a mouse in my kitchen I will dispatch it quickly.

I used to have romantic notions of setting mice free in a field, but figure a quick cervical dislocation is a more merciful end for a mouse than ending up in the claws of a cat, or freaking out and starving to death trying to find its way home.

I've been watching Falling Skies lately, don't know if anyone watches it, but it's like the mice are skitters, I just hope they don't morph into some kind of alien bug overnight! Ha!

Well the exterminator likely
knows more than you about this sort of thing and may have humane options for you to try and be able to seal up entry points you weren't aware of. Give them a call and ask what they would do given you wish to be humane but yet also need your peace of mind and sanity.

Thanks I will consider all options.

I've been exterminating my Facebook friends. I rarely use Facebook for anything other than checking updates on groups I belong and events that I might want to go to, but I got sick of seeing updates from people I've never met or people who used to be friends who have recently dropped me and post pictures of them with their new friends and how great they are all day long. So I had 67 "friends" and have culled this to about 20 of people I may actually see once in a while.

I've still not heard from a friend I told about the mice and feeling really down, I happened on FB and there has been plenty of time to share and post inane memes. I expected better. Why is it people on here seem to care more and have more time for me even though I am a stranger?

I am going to go to a cinema meetup on Saturday, there are only a few going but it will get me meeting some new people. I have to laugh, someone told me once about going to the cinema and a mouse sat on the seat next to them, munching dropped popcorn and watching the film (back on topic lol!) so maybe I can set a trail of popcorn to the cinema and lead the mice there.

I do like the suggestion of tigers. Or perhaps a pied piper, I'll look on Ebay for a pipe and try the role myself!

Simple domesticated cats might be easier to find than tigers. lol

I feel your pain though, I live in an old farmhouse and have the problem every winter. Last year, the one kept outsmarting me with the humane traps I laid out.

TheRealCallie said:

Simple domesticated cats might be easier to find than tigers. lol

I feel your pain though, I live in an old farmhouse and have the problem every winter. Last year, the one kept outsmarting me with the humane traps I laid out.

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I've not seen one so far today. Perhaps this is a good sign.

I can't remember if I mentioned I've actually got a cat, or actually a cat has me! Poor thing's been living in my garden for months, I started feeding it and now it waits for its dinner at regular times. It's got a hurt paw, but manages to hobble about, it shies away when I go near it, even to put out food so someone's clearly hurt it, but it's getting a bit closer (maybe an inch a month) and trusting me a tiny bit more, and maybe eventually I can get the kitty to come inside.

Not sure how good it would be at catching mice - then again I'm suspicious of the fact that the mice started appearing about the same time I started feeding the cat - it must have been living off something before I started feeding it, could well have been the local mouse population! Maybe it's got lazy and maybe I should ration kitty's meals and make him/her work for the 5 star dinners I've been dishing out!

Living here in a forest, I have to do alot of rodent eradication. Mice looooove tortilla chips. They also rather like peanut butter. I use plastic snap-traps for instant killing, so they don't suffer. I've been really successful with these. I put a dot of peanut butter in the trap, then stick a little bit of tortilla chip in it. I wear plastic gloves when I do this so I don't put my own scent on the traps.

Mice make runways along skirting boards, so traps along the edges of walls are best. I've seen them run across rooms but they feel safest huddled against the wall.

I have glueboards but I haven't used them.

Sometimes said:

Living here in a forest, I have to do alot of rodent eradication. Mice looooove tortilla chips. They also rather like peanut butter. I use plastic snap-traps for instant killing, so they don't suffer. I've been really successful with these. I put a dot of peanut butter in the trap, then stick a little bit of tortilla chip in it. I wear plastic gloves when I do this so I don't put my own scent on the traps.

Mice make runways along skirting boards, so traps along the edges of walls are best. I've seen them run across rooms but they feel safest huddled against the wall.

I have glueboards but I haven't used them.

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Yes, have traps (both humane and snap) with peanut butter, chocolate, cookies, etc, they ignore them.

Also my my don't seem to be normal mice, when I see them it's in a brightly lit room, I am standing there, and they run right across the middle of the floor - the one I saw coming downstairs was bouncing down the middle of the steps. I think I maybe have mutant super mice :club:

These mice must have an ample source of food that they are getting elsewhere, which is more appetising than what is in the traps. Maybe the other connected houses in the row. Sounds like a really difficult problem, and you have my sympathy. Maybe you could call Willard?

two or three robust cats

Get a barn owl.

http://tommy51.tripod.com/aboutbarnowls.html

https://www.barnowlbox.com/installation/

Barn Owl maybe a plan.

I jumped just now at a moth flying past. It's not that I am scared of mice, fast moving furry disease carrying creatures just kind of make me a bit jumpy.

tonight it's all out war. 3 have been running around the kitchen, now one is running from one side of my lounge to the other.

I have glue traps set, and implements ready to despatch mice as quickly as possible. Don't want to do it, don't like doing it, but I once saw a programme about a farm where 2 mice had turned into 1 million mice in the space of 6 weeks... It looks like they are declaring open season on my house, so it's open season on them. Survivial of the fittest.

Except wherever I place the traps, the mice change the location they are appearing from.

Mutant mice, I tells ya! Super Mice! One of the first grown up books I read was James Herbert's The Rats - maybe I have a primal fear memory from that!