I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life because yesterday was the first time I ever encountered a mouse in the house. Sure, there’s been a cockroach or two (or a hundred), spiders big and small, those lizards we get in the South and once a scorpion (bastard got inside a pair of cut-off jeans that were on the floor and stung the living snot out of my outer thigh when I pulled them on), but never a mouse. I woke up to my wife stomping around the house and like an idiot asked her what was wrong. Mouse in the washing machine, take care of it! and she went to powder her nose. I look in the washer and there was the cutest little fuzz ball just hunkered down wondering what to do next. My voice dropped into Tom Hanks mode — Mistah Jangles? Where y’been, bo-uh? — as I fetched a clear plastic container with lid and held it in front of the rodent and he hopped right in and I shut the lid and took him outside and set him free. He ran across the street so maybe that means he won’t be back. Or maybe he’ll have reinforcements next time.
So, here comes m’wife, still fuming, bellowing about the mouse and how are we gonna get rid of it. Done, I said over my shoulder, took all of thirty seconds. For some reason, this did not placate her. Then I said the unthinkable — What a cutie! Twitchy nose, little beady eyes, maybe we should get — NOOOOO! from SWMBO.
I avoided her for the rest of the day and I’m still in hiding; her twitching eye is something you can’t look at for too long.
Mice leave scent trails so they can find their way back into your abode (or wherever else they have invaded – in my case, it was my car). They will bring their friends. And they are the most destructive creatures you can imagine once they make themselves at home.
Upholstery? Child’s play! Your pantry? Get ready to throw out everything. You’ll feel like you can never get your kitchen cupboards or drawers truly clean again even after you’ve cleaned out their nests with your harshest cleaning products.
I haven’t had them in my home here, which is astonishing and a tribute to how well the house is built considering the rural nature of my place and the fact that I haven’t had cats for about 5 years. But I’ve had them in other homes.
Disgusting.
They are cute critters, though, I’ll give you that.
Awww, thank you for savin’ the wee sleekit cowerin’ beastie!
The only time I ever saw a mouse in the house was years ago, a day or two before my best cat Whitey crossed the Rainbow Bridge. It ran across the kitchen… and pow! Whitey the Hunter fulfilled a lifelong ambition.
What a nice story, I’m so glad Whitey finally managed to get the chance to catch a mouse.
We have always had catios so if our cats bring a mouse inside, we catch it in a jar and pitch it out behind the big shed where the bull snake hangs out.
Then we complain bitterly about feeding feral cats and giving snakes water but still have to mess with mice.
When I catch mice in our garage, I take them on a drive to the woods a few kilometers away. Maybe they survive, maybe they get eaten by a hawk or a fox, but I’m not killing them myself.
We would get them in the wood pile. I put Cat the overworked barn cats litter box by it for about a week. Till it rained and it turned to concrete. Threw it away and got her new one for the barn office. Funny, she kept scratching there for months no more meeces.
She is getting older. But the garage cats pick up her slack.
My previous older house had mousies that seemed localized – I assumed they emerged from a hole in the wall behind the stove and occasionally peeked out from between the stove and the adjacent counter, but never really seemed to go anywhere and never got into anything in the pantry as far as I could tell. I have no idea what they subsisted on but the house was near a massive forested green space so they probably just came in and out from their natural abode.
I’d set out spring traps in the space beside the stove and would get one once in a while, and since they never got into the food I didn’t worry about it much.
There was an interesting event when I moved into the current house, which was quite new at the time and presumably lacked mouse-holes for the critters to get in. I soon noticed specks of some strange substance in the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink. A check of the all-knowing internet confirmed that this was mouse poop.
I cleaned up the mouse poop and set up a couple of traps in there and got two of them. And then … no mousies ever again. It’s been about a decade. So my theory is that they were transported here in some of the moving boxes from the old place. I’m glad I got them as soon as I did because the two may have been a married couple intent on raising a family in my house.
We deal with mice every winter. My gf wants to release them unharmed, so I use live traps. She takes the traps to our barn, where she releases them into an area she creates for them, kind of a mouse town with food, water, and shelter. They eventually get eaten by a snake.
Years ago I found a shed snakeskin in our basement. I meticulously trapped and relocated mice after that and the snake moved on. I posted pictures of the shed on Reddit and found out it was a central rat snake, very common in my area.
I have cats for this. And they are very much murderous and cruel.
Though they rarely actually kill them; they get them 90-95% of the way there, but they are generally still barely alive when I get to them. I guess they’re just not fun anymore at that point.
My log house oughta be over run by mice. But I’ve never had a problem inside.
I’m sure it’s because of cats inside and in the garage.
I also think the snake population here keeps the gathering of the meece type (rats in the barn, gophers and moles) to a minimum.
Now that snake thingy can get out of hand. We’ve had our problems with it.
The edge of the woods is far enough away that we don’t actually step on snakes everyday. They live in the underbrush and kudzu thicket.
We see enough of them that it gets hairy, sometimes.
Just two days ago Dillon, my crazy dog came out from the brush with black snake in his mouth. The snake was actively nipping at the dog but Son-of-a-wrek had to pry his mouth open to get it away from him.
I see snakes on the regular walking around the pond. I’m good at determining venomous or not on the fly.
Every dog I’ve ever had here has been snake-bitten.
No grandkids have. Yet.
I warn them everyday to watch out.
In the end it’s a trade off when you live rurally.
Suburban or Urban might be more of a problem. Without natural predators.
I suppose it’s an argument for a vigorous feral cat population, in some areas.
We are generally thrilled with the snakes in our barn. Every few years a rat snake figures out how to get into the chicken nests to steal eggs. The snake rapidly becomes obese, we catch and relocate it far into the woods
As for our dogs, one of the first things I train dogs is to leave snakes alone. If our dogs see a snake they watch it but leave it alone. I treat them then move on.
One year we had an invasion of mice in our garage and cars. They pooped and peed in the cars, chewed some wires in my husband’s car, and I found a dead, mummified one in my way-back under the spare tire in my car. It was my husband’s regular, weekly chore to check the cars. Most weeks he’d have to vacuum nests and seeds from under the hood of at least one of the cars. He would set traps every night, but he just dreaded checking them in the morning. He caught quite a few. He tried the sticky kind once and said he would never do that again. (I didn’t want any details.) Then he used live traps and caught a few that way and took them out back in the woods. But I’m sure they found their way back. Then they just kind of stopped showing up. We now use Fresh Cab Rodent Repellent bags. They’re made with balsam fir oil. The cars smell great! They seem to work, or maybe the mice have just moved on for good.
My sister had an issue with mice in her basement. They couldn’t find where they were getting in. The pest control guy told them that a mouse can get through a hole as big around as a pencil!
For us it’s generally an annual event. As soon as the weather turns cool, mice appear. We use a Hav-a-Heart trap and relocate them to a cemetery on the other side of a stream about a half mile away. The cemetary has quite a number of red tailed hawks in residence, so it’s probably a death sentence anyway, but at least they’ve got a chance to hide among the wooded patches and all.
We keep the snap-on plastic lid from some old can tucked under the baseboard heaters near the kitchen sink, with exactly three peanut halves on it, and check it religiously every morning when we come down. Missing peanut? Time to get the trap set up again. Definitely need to deal with the initial invaders than face a whole clan taking root.
Glue traps work for mice. I euthanized the critter before bagging and throwing out.
Rats are bigger and can pull themselves out. I found several traps with clumps of hair stuck. I should have checked the trap more frequently before it got away.
The big spring traps are better for rats. Bait with peanut butter. I caught one 7 inches long. he had a few bald spots from the glue traps. I’m glad now I didn’t find that dude on a glue trap.
Yes. It’s easy to train a dog that’s half normal and can understand a “leave it” command. Even easier if they’ve had an intimate run-in with a snake.
Dillon is speshul. If he’s loose in the yard he has to be constantly watched. Mainly we watch for a break out.
He has done about every bad thing a dog can do. (Remind me to tell you about the can of green paint).
We love him tho’. Never fails to make me laugh.
The barn attracts snakes. The Rats have an ongoing war with them about who’s property it is. Mr. Wrekker has lost $$$ in stored dog food and deer corn. It’s a lost cause.
I hate going in to the actual war zone.
Well, spiders too😳.
We’re pretty sure the little goober got in when we had the plumber out last week; he used the side door which opens to the wooded area and left it open a couple times.
No thanks to our two hounds who didn’t know it was in the house. Good thing they’re cute.
he had a few bald spots from the glue traps. I’m glad now I didn’t find that dude on a glue trap.