We appear to have a mice population in the apartment;
My roomate has been seeing them at night in the kitchen. Cleaning on his part revealed a nest, which he disturbed a few days ago.
Last night, I saw one in my room. A few minutes later, a third roomate saw another one in the kitchen.
The microwave top is covered in droppings and the area beneath it as well.
We’re going to take steps to get an exterminator in, but in the meantime, would Victor snap traps, or glue traps be the better option? I’d like to kill as many of them as possible in the meantime so I can get a decent night’s sleep (I haven’t slept since I saw the one in my bedroom last night).
And that’s exactly what I came to say: Get those black plastic ones that look like alligators and put a dab of peanut butter in them. I have a few of them inside my suspended ceiling in my basement.
Glue traps are cruel, IMHO, as the creatures suffer all night long, and then you have to deal with a live mouse stuck to the glue trap.
Every type of trap they sell at a store like Walmart can work to kill mice if baited properly, and I have used them all. The setup I found I liked the most was one plastic style snap trap baited with peanut butter (some on the roof/top of the trap, not just in the cup). Plus two glue traps, one on either side of the snap trap, all of it pushed up against a wall. But even the old school wood traps work if you bait them with wet bread really shoved in there and set enough of them.
Based on catching 46 mice in the last year in my basement (not all at once), I’d like to contribute an observation. I use spring traps, usually the cheap ones, since I can put the carcasses outside for the crows or foxes to dispose of. Twice, a trap disappeared. Most likely, the mouse got only a tail or leg caught, but was able to hobble away, taking the trap with it. Which means that somewhere in a hidden corner of my basement is a dead, decaying mouse that I can’t find, but sometimes I smell it for a few weeks.
I guess the solution would be to tie a short string to each trap and anchor it somewhere. Or perhaps the large traps, like the clamshell one, would be too heavy to carry far.
We had a mouse problem in our kitchen a few months ago. We tried various sorts of snap-traps, and poison, but they were too finicky to eat the poison, and so small that they could nibble the bait off of the snap-traps without triggering them.
We finally resorted to an electronic trap, from Victor. It uses a couple of batteries, and apparently charges up a capacitor. When the mouse comes in to get at the bait, he closes a circuit between two plates, and gets zapped. Worked very well – zapped 3 mice in a week, and that was the end of the problem.
The old wooden Victor traps have been effective. Only once has a mouse not been immediately killed. The plastic ones as shown in post #2 have never caught anything.
We don’t seem to have mice in the house, now that we have cats.
Had a mouse last year in the kitchen. Plastic traps were useless. What got the rodent was the old fashioned snap trap baited with peanut butter. Now I have a cat…
The one time the trap snapped the mouse’s back instead of its neck, I used an H & R 999 loaded with ‘snake shot’ to dispatch it. I just couldn’t bring myself to smash it.
Snap traps are awesome. I also use the plastic style ones mostly because they’re easy to reuse. The wood/metal ones work very well, but you need to pry it off the dead mouse to reuse it and this white collar city dweller is not fond of that grisly maneuver. With the plastic ones, you just squeeze the end without a dead mouse and the jaws open and you can drop the mouse in the trash. Re-bait with peanut butter and set that sucker back down. Easy peasy.
Fold paper plate in half.
Place mouse and trap into fold.
Lay folded plate down on ground (outside - next to trash can)
Step on plate.
Throw folded plate mouse taco in the trash can.
I lived in a trailer in a forest for a few years. Lots of mousies. In a place like that, one accepts that they come with the territory and there will always be some mice around.
I used the old fashioned Victor wooden snap-traps. They worked well. No, I didn’t try to re-use them. They’re cheap.
It’s an on-going maintenance item, though. Regularly (at least once a week), I had to inspect all the traps I had set out around and under the trailer, and replace them as needed.
They should be effective enough for you that you won’t need to hire an exterminator.
There was one exception: There was one mouse that apparently was trap-smart, and simply would not be caught. I eventually resorted to a glue trap for that one, which was successful. Too bad for that poor tortured mouse. He’d have died easier if he weren’t so smart.
Buy half a dozen ferrets ( stoats or weasels will do as well; or polecats in a pinch ) 3 of each sex so they don’t get lonely.
Encourage them to nest on your beds whilst you are away in the day, and turf them out at night to hunt *. I guarantee no-one will complain about mice again.
Not during mating season. Which you can check by… “Female ferrets come into season twice a year, normally around March and August, though this will vary – look out for the vulva protruding like a chickpea and wait 14 days.” Ferret Breeding Facts
If you don’t have pets or kids…poison granules work…the dead victim dessicates…no smell…finally it gets around the mousy community that the grub is bad at your place and they quit coming…i cannot swear on that point though
actually get a Scottish terrier …my moms hunted down all the mice I let accidently loose (store sold me a pregnant mouse .which my snake didn’t wanna eat I left it in the little cardboard box over night …) with a glee ive never seen before or since …turns out that’s their purpose in life …
