Mouse: 2 RWS: 0

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For a week or so, I kept noticing fluff on my kitchen floor. Hmm…maybe I need to clean better. Oh, well.

Two days ago, I sat down on the couch to meditate. I was totally into it…when I heard a crinkling sound coming from the kitchen. Well, I’d just come home from the store, and had shoved two bags of chips in a cabinet…they must be settling.

Crinkle crinkle.

Crinkle crinkle.

They aren’t settling.

SIGH

I am totally a wuss when it comes to mice. I just freak out. I hate everything about them, especially setting traps. I hate the way they get EVERYwhere…even up high. They shit everywhere. They ruin food. They scamper. They’ve got a skeeve factor of 99 on a 1-10 scale.

I got a broomstick and poked at the bags and he scampered out. Fast, but enough for me to see him. shudder He isn’t even the cute little light gray fluffball kind. He’s the long, dark grey kind that look like little rats.

So I buy a spring trap. Decon brand. I bait it with peanut butter and set it…wearing a big ol’ work glove to do so. EVERY time I set mouse traps it’s I who gets snapped. FUCK I hate dealing with this shit.

By the next day, I still haven’t caught him. This is odd…they usually are caught in an hour. Upon closer inspection of the trap…no peanut butter. Fucker licked it all off without setting the trap.

SIGH

I get a broomstick and try to trip the trap so I can rebait it.

It won’t go. After a while, I’m slamming the fucking thing and FINALLY get it to go. Ok, I realize I put the bar through the locking mechanism instead of just up against it. My fault.

Reset.

Twenty four hours later…still no mouse. I’d kept checking to make sure he didn’t just lick it off again. Oh, but he did. AARGH.

Time for a margarita.

I’m reaching in the freezer…putting ice in my glass. I drop a piece of ice…it goes off to the right. I don’t even bother to look. I know where it will land. Instinctively, I cringed to the left.

SNAP*

SIGH

Earlier in the day at Home Despot, I’d bought the other kind of spring trap…the kind with the big flap of fake plastic cheese. I don’t even get it set halfway before I realize…this one locks tighter than the other kind!

SIGH

So I drive to Home Despot to get the kind that’s a plastic box with a locking lever a mouse has to get over to get inside. I’d had one years ago and it didn’t work. Not sure why I bought it, but I’m finished with traps.

Oh, but I forgot my wallet.

SIGH

I drive home, get my wallet, drive back, and buy the fucking trap.

A friend suggested the sticky traps. I’ve never used them, but he says they work great. Disposing of the live mouse isn’t fun, but, hey…this hasn’t been a trip to Disneyland so far.

Tell me your stories of matching wits with a mouse and make me feel better!

2

Ugh don’t do the glue traps. They’re horrid. The mouse gets stuck in there and the more it struggles the more covered in glue they get. An old roomie of mine set some out once and we caught a mouse. I tried to free it and let it go out back but it was impossible. So instead of dooming the little thing to a slow death from starvation or trying to gnaw his own legs off, I had to kill him myself.

3

Short answers:

  1. Glue traps work.
  2. So do cats. The upside is they are warm and cuddly, unlike a glue trap. The downside is you may have to clean up fractional mice.
  3. Your problems will never ever end until you take mouseproofing measures.

Long answers:

In college the tenants’ union would check your rental agreement and see if anything was missing. They noticed that the place my buddies and I were going to rent didn’t mention “pest control” so we had that put into the lease.

Smart move. We had mice. They would get into all kinds of things and we could never catch them in the act so we didn’t know for certain that’s what it was until one night the three of us were hanging around the living room watching TV. We were lazing on the couches and evidently being pretty quiet and motionless because suddenly a mouse scurried along one of the baseboards. It was out in the open when it saw us and froze.

It was like a scene out of a Western where someone walks into a bar, the piano player stops and everybody stares at each other silently, stock still, until a few seconds later all hell breaks loose. We were not packing six-shooters but yelling commenced and pillows flew. Mouse pulled a bootlegger reverse and darted back under the sofa and into his hidey-hole. Both roomies were bowhunters and joked about getting their gear to hunt the little sucker down, I called the landlord and said we need to activate that portion of our lease.

Pest guy came around and put glue and snap-traps out. The snap-traps did catch a couple big mice. One of my roommates recalls being woken up at least once by a loud “THWACK”, chuckled to himself and fell back asleep. One snap-trap caught a mouse while we were out of town for a few days and it was bloated and jammed in there when we got back, ick. Disposal method was burial at sea aka flush the corpses.

Glue traps worked quite well and they don’t make any sound, plus it’s hard for the rodents to just nab the bait and run away - the slightest contact gets 'em and they just get more and more stuck as they try and extricate themselves. You can toss the whole thing into the garbage, or whack 'em with a stick first, or I’m told a little vegetable oil will soften the adhesive and let the mouse go free if you are feeling generous (obviously do this well away from your house or they’ll just go back about their business).

Alternately, get a cat or two (don’t have traps and cats in the same house). That cute kitty playing with a toy takes on a new meaning when you imagine it from the perspective of a mouse which has a true-bred killing machine hundreds of times the mouse’s size scoped in on it. I had roofrats and when I got my cats the attic noises rapidly diminished (even though the cats were never in the attic) - maybe the smell or sound or something but it at least scared the hell out of the rats. Years earlier when I was a teenager my cat brought in a live mouse and dropped it in my parents’ bedroom. We chased the cat out and tore the bedroom apart for half an hour trying to catch the little bastard. Finally gave up and let the cat back in (she had been pressed up against the door wanting to join the fun). Sixty seconds later mousey was bagged. They are really, really good at getting mice.

All that being said, you can go through a lot of traps and have some cats that are well-fed with mice and still be plagued with mice if you don’t take corrective action.

Eliminate all free-standing food and water. Clean up, wash, vacuum. Food that is in little bags or boxes they will gnaw right into - put it into sealed containers.

Now check for entry points. Mice can get through openings about 1/4" diameter. Empty out your cabinets and seal up every tiny gap, look under the cabinets, behind the fridge, etc. A bit of steel wool and some expanding foam will plug the holes. Look outside your house for ways in or better yet have local animal vector do a walk-around (they did this for me when I was battling the rats), they’ll spot all kinds of things and suggest ways to fix them.

Good luck!

4

Great post :slight_smile:

Yes…I have entry point problems. It’s a wonder that over the years I’ve only dealt with a few mice.

But…problem about to be solved! Completely unrelated to the current mouse issue: I have three contractors making bids on my new kitchen/bath this week. The issue of giant gaps in the doors will be whisked away with the mice.

In the meantime, if the humane trap doesn’t work, I’m getting the sticky traps tomorrow.

And you’re right about leaving any food water around. They’ll get ANYwhere they need to to get to it.

5

This is my only issue with your post.

Why on earth would you let the mouse die of starvation when you can just kill it quickly? It strikes me as a particularly very cruel and unnecessary way to kill something. Whoever just chucks them in the bin like that are very callous, and deserve to feel a fraction of the pain they’re willingly inflicting. You don’t just throw a live, conscious, injured mammal stuck to a sheet of super glue into the rubbish. That is all kinds of fucked up and wrong, do I really have to explain why?

Glue traps are horrid. Whoever thinks they’re a good idea are kidding themselves. Not only will you be faced with a mouse that has literally maimed itself trying to get off (yes, they will break their bones and tear off skin trying to get off), but it will urinate and excrete out of fear on the spot, increasing the chance of disease transmission. If you’re going to kill the mouse, please do it quickly with something like a snap trap.

Remember, there is a huge difference between the necessity of killing something and flat out cruelty.