In the winter I noticed some droppings under my kitchen garbage bag. I cleaned it up and things have relatively fine since. (Although occasionally the odd tear in my kitchen garbage bag made me think he was still afoot.)
Two nights ago I saw the little bugger, and he scurried into my laundry room. Today I bought some death traps. Sorry buddy, you’re cute and all but you can’t live here for sanitary purposes, so you need to die.
What should I put on the mouse trap? Incidentally it’s a made in the USA Victor mouse trap that says on the packaging “1 Billion Sold.” That’s a lot of mice!
So, peanut butter? Cheese? Cheese smeared with peanut butter? Does it even matter? Maybe anything that even resembles food will do. What do you think?
You have to do what you have to do. The little guy in my house tried to kill me back by putting the D-con in my toaster.
Yeah, peanut butter or cheese if you want.
Interestingly, there was a short video a few weeks back on CBS that talked about how the Victor trap has remained unimproved and unchanged for a century. People have tried to improve it, but no cigar.
Another vote for the Tin Cat. It’s humane, and it really does work. The little guys get curious, clamber in, sit happily and eat the bait, and then in the morning you can “sentence them to transportation.”
(If you feel you must, you can drown them right in the trap. But it’s more fun to go for a walk in the woods and let 'em go sproing. It’s still a death sentence, as you’re feeding them to the owls, but at least it’s indirect.)
We have used peanut butter, but it’s not fool proof. I have heard “Snickers” (the peanut and nugget candy bar) is a better choice. They have to work harder to nibble at it, which keeps them in position for the death blow.
Good on you for not catching and releasing. For one thing you have to take them miles to guarantee they’re not just coming straight back. For another - vermin!:mad:
Nutella. The little mousies love that stuff. If you really don’t want to kill the mouse, you can get a live trap. I have one that works really well–if you’re interested, I can try to find it on Amazon and post a link. You do have to take it far away from your house before you let the mouse go, or it will come right back in. :smack: There’s also the low-budget paper towel tube and big bucket method, but your bucket has to be big enough that the mouse can’t jump out (a 5-gallon bucket might work). I tried this one time but the bucket was too small, so it didn’t work very well.[URL=“http://boards.straightdope.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/”]
A jelly bean really stuck onto the place for the bait works well. In a rent house I lived in when we were young and broke, I used a small piece of paper towel smeared with peanut butter, bacon drippings or braunschweiger liver sausage. Just don’t make it too easy to steal the bait. Make the little beastie tug on it.
Make sure you also remove other food sources as much as possible.
If you’re looking for a non-lethal possibility (which admittedly the OP doesn’t seem to be) you can try peppermint oil. Get a bottle at a health food store or some new age shop.
Then sprinkle a few drops in each room of your house. You want it to be strong enough that your house smells like peppermint.
My understanding is that mice have a much stronger sense of smell than humans have and are very sensitive to peppermint. So enough peppermint for you to smell will be like them getting sprayed in the face with tear gas. They’ll flee your house and if you keep it up for a few days, they’ll settle in someplace else.
I’ve had mice in a couple of places and I’ve tried this. It’s worked for me.
