My parent’s have mice in their house. This is because they no longer have a cat, they live near farm land and it has been a cold winter, so the mice come off the fields and into the house.
Anyone else would have called pest control or bought some traps. Not my mother. She’s smart and I love her dearly, but she has a soft spot for animals, including vermin. The house, by the way, is my mother’s domain, my father wouldn’t dream of going over her head about this.
She bought those humane traps which are weight activated, and is now feeding the mice up with little piles of birdseed in the pantry and cupboards so the mice will be heavy enough to get trapped. Thank goodness all of the perishables have been moved to sealed glass jars, but it’s still disgusting and unsanitary to have them running about the place unchecked.
I was home last weekend and witnessed first hand my mother opening cupboard doors armed with a child’s fishing net…she’s caught 6 mice like that, but it doesn’t do any good because she just puts them out into the garden.
She’s ordered some sort of sonic thing that’s supposed to scare them off (I’m sceptical) and won’t get the exterminator in because she thinks live mice in the cavity walls are more hygienic than dead mice in the walls (I can kind of see her point).
Seriously mum, lying in bed listening to them scratching and squeaking in the walls makes my skin crawl. I don’t care if you think they’re cute JUST GET RID OFF THEM!
Check out this Box Trap, irishgirl. I work in a lab and this is the kind we use to catch any mice that happen to slip their cages. It’s important that we don’t hurt them, and this trap doesn’t which should make mum happy. You just stick a little peanut butter or sausage inside and place them along the wall. The mice will voluntarily go into this dark little hole with the delicious smell. Once they’re in they can’t get out and you can cart the trap over to whereever and let them go. Of course, you’ll have to convince her to go a little farther than the garden.
We have two outdoors-only cats that patrol the perimeter of the house. They do a great job of controlling rodents. Since getting them we haven’t had a single mouse get in our house. (That last sentence was brought to you by Dr. Theodor Geisel.)
I’d love them to get a new cat, but it’s not on the cards. My folks plan to wait until my grandmother (who lives with us) dies, then sell the house and buy a camper van so they can spend a year or two travelling around Europe. They can’t take a cat (they already plan on taking the dog), and they’re not the sort of people who would want to take on a pet they know they’d eventually have to give up.
Did I mention my parents are somewhat eccentric? I mean, apart from the catching mice with a fishing net part.
Maybe you have a friend who has a mouser that would be more than happy for an open season at the folks pad. If not, advertise on tradio that you are looking for one.
If you lived close by I’d loan you Lil Sistor. She’s the sweetest acting, neatest silent killer of shrews I’ve ever seen. In her younger years it looked like a battle zone around here. I raised a couple feeder pigs and the male cat Halfrack, six-pack in each front paw, was worthless besides being severely uncordinated.
Your parents are right about not getting a cat. They live forever with their nine lives and all.
For entertainment before we had electricity was Super Glue a few bits of dry dog food to the bottom of a paper bowl then Super Glue the bowl to the floor. While reading from a Coleman lamp keep a watch on that bowl and a 22 rifle handy with a flashlight duct taped on like a scope. When you see the little rascals nibbling on the dog food take your best shot.
:eek: I’m all about humane treatment and get squeamish when I have to kill creatures but for Og’s sake, when I had a mouse in my house I put down poison & traps. It’s in my house. I don’t bother it outside, it shouldn’t bother me inside.
Remind her that situations that are attractive to mice and also attractive to mice, and that if she doesn’t take effective steps nowshe will, eventually, have rats.
Also, if she has a filing cabinet filled with 20 years of irreplacable family papers and records, you might want to make sure that they are secure: you don’t want to open a drawer in six months and discover that ten year’s worth of tax recods are now a mouse nest.
I know the urge to capture the little critters and set them free is strong, but your mum would really be better off just killing them. Mice (and rats) can breed damn near once a month after they’re only a few weeks old, and have around a dozen babies, give or take a few, which will also breed within only a few weeks. If you don’t actually eliminate them, you’ll be chasing mice forever. And putting them out in the garden to breed just means more in the house later.
A lot of times, mice and rats that have been born in human homes and living their whole lives off table scraps and garbage without the worry of predators, don’t survive once you release them in the wild anyway. They either starve to death, or become prey very quickly. It’s the same as releasing a pet mouse into the wild; it’s an environment they’re entirely unfamiliar with and the chances of survival are extremely slim. And they’re going to do everything they can to come back where they know it’s warm and the food is good.
IMO the quick snap of a trap is more humane than putting them out to starve to death or get eaten alive by another animal, plus it’s the only way to actually curb their population.
If she hasn’t already, you should advise her to fill any mouseholes she can find with steel wool, or cover them with steel mesh. Mice will not chew through metal, they don’t like how it feels on their teeth, so it will help seal off the areas where they are living.
In case your Mom doesn’t know, most commercially prepared rodent poison makes the mice/rats REALLY thirsty. The reason for this is so they will get OUT of the walls in search of water and die on the search. Perhaps this will help Mum with the mouse-bait idea.
My Mom lives on a farm, too, and I know how those little buggers can just take over if you don’t get after 'em. Mum uses Decon and has never had a mouse die in the wall (been on the farm since 1977).
I’m going to have to wait until the sonic thing fails miserably and then break the news about needing the exterminator.
My mother is not the sort of person you do things to behind her back. It’ll have to be with her help or not at all (those squeaking, scurrying, furry little bastards really freak me out, so the not at all isn’t an option).
When there was evidence of mice at my office, one employee protested the traps I set out. I decided to bend a little and I bought an expensive “humane” box trap. Results: Nobody checked the trap until it smelled bad. Three mice starved to death, what could be more cruel? Now we are back to snap traps.
We have traps set up at work for mice that are slowly eating their way through our candy stock.
I can’t do glue traps or anything cruel. We’ve caught one, and the other is scary big and strong (I need to get a bigger trap as he ATE the first one). My thought on releasing them is at least a bird or fox or wild cat will get the benefit of it’s death, rather than it dying for no good reason. I know my logic is probably flawed, but I like my little world, it works for me.
I totally agree with that, and that would probably be what I did myself if I had mice in my house, and I had a good place to release them. But people that release them into the wild because they don’t want the cute little thing’s death on their conscience are kidding themselves. If they want it to stay alive, they might as well just let it live in the wall forever and start feeding it cheese crackers.
Can you post the video?
I don’t think your mom would go for the glue-trap idea, it not being humane. (There is a rather grisly Lawrence Block short story featuring a crazed PETA-type who gets revenge on a person for using glue traps).
Yeah, I did that as a student, only using a CO2 pistol with a laser pointer taped to the barrel - I even rigged it so the switch for the laser was on the pistol butt. Good times, especially since by the time the mice showed up we were too drunk to hit a bass drum.
That place was infested - we got a lot of rats coming in in, so we put down poison, which makes 'em thirsty: I was taking my contacts out one night when I heard a splashing noise behind me. I turned around, and this huge rat was swimming laps in the bath, where my flatmate was soaking some undies: it had fallen in going after the water - either that, or it was some kind of knicker-sniffing pervert rat - and couldn’t get out again.
The stuff in D-con doesn’t just make them thirsty. It actually desiccates the little bastards. They don’t smell when they’re dead; they’re mummified. Hanta virus has already been brought up. How about plague, if it is in your area? Tell her that could kill her dog. Maybe she’ll change her mind about the cute little turd-making, piss-that-smells-like-vomit vermin and see them for what they are. Good luck.
