Of Mice and Men, Mutts, and Morons

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Missy2U’s house has a mouse! Not just an ordinary mouse, mind you, but a super-evil, way-more-intelligent-than-us going-to-eat-us-outta-house-and-home long-distance-call-making bother-the-neighbors-with-the-stereo kind of mouse.

We have tried your run of the mill standard acme type traps. We have tried the trap that the mouse is supposed to walk into and it humanely cages them for easy disposal back in the wilds of nature. Mr. Missy2U has spent countless hours (and much ensuing hilarity) chasing the stupid thing around with a bright, red plastic Solo drinking cup trying to capture it. Mr. Missy2U has dismantled everything in every kitchen cabinet, my broiler under the stove, my onion-potato-garbage bag holding three cabinet thingy. He has taken things out of closets and put them in other closets. He has taken all my china out of my china cabinet so he could move it. He has moved the entire refrigerator into a very anti-feng-shui-kitchen kind of arrangement.

He is, and no, I am not making this up, also attempting to teach the dog, a big, black, really friendly but dumber than a box of rocks part coyote dog, stealth tactics. Who needs to watch debates or Dark Angel or WWTBAM for entertainment when I have Seargent Dorko and his faithful sidekick Mightymutt there to watch chase a stupid little rodent back and forth along the dining room wall?

All the while he was giving the dog helpful hunting/tracking/gathering advice such as “stop” (accomplished by waving his had back and forth behind him - I swear if that dog has a brain it was trying to figure out if Dad’s butt was on fire) and “come” by curling his index finger the way you to do a toddler (“oooh - Dad’s stretching his pointing finger!!!”), and “come over here girl - this is where it’s at - watch it for me while I get something to bag it with” by pointing really really fast at the corner. Well, to give credit where credit was due, the dog DID look in the right direction at least. Usually she goes exactly OPPOSITE of where you’re pointing.

Oh, and they had it trapped. Ooh Yeah, they had it TRAPPED I tell you. Folded up a Sun Times and jammed it between the side of the cabinet and the wall on both sides. They figured no WAY that mouse was gettin outta there. And they were so PROUD! Oh there were puppy high fives, there was talk of what their new Indian Ritual Names should be, there was grunting, there was talk of the danger and thrill of the hunt, there was even a muttered “Beer, woman!” I figured the two of them were going to hit the bars together for a victory beer and a new tatoo after that seek and destroy mission! Of course, 10 minutes after He-man went to bed and Blunderdog passed out on the couch IN MY SPOT, what do I see scurry down the hallway? FROM THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM WHERE THESE NUMBSKULLS HAD IT TRAPPED? Yep.

The mouse.

So - now what? Can ANYONE recommend a mouse trap that WORKS or tell me how to get rid of this mouse? I would have tried a cat or Orkin, but I’ve already been informed by the A-Team at home that those two things are not an option.

Help me PLEASE!

2

Hate to be a killjoy, but I don’t think there is such a thing as one mouse.

(Hilarious story, by the way.) If you are cruel and ruthless, some friends of ours had some success with the kind of traps that stick to their feet. They were dealing with rats, too–big enough to hear when they ran across the floor. So I guess you could count your blessings about that.

3

“anti-feng shui”

:slight_smile:

Feng-phui?

I, for one, hope the mouse lives so that we can get some more installments in the Continuing Adventures of Mr. He-man Missy and Blunderdog.

4

I’m kinda scared to let my dog go after a mouse. A dachshund just ain’t the kind of critter you want catching a mouse…they do the job too good :eek:

5

In one of the Master’s columns, (I have no idea which) he advised putting out two bowls for your rodent guest. One bowl will contain plain, ordinary tap water. The second bowl should be placed next to the first and contain a mixture of flour and quickset type concrete. The mouse will eat the “flour”, get thirsty, and presto- mouse sculpture.

I wish I had mice… you guys have all the fun!! :wink:

6

I know I’m going to get flamed for this, but here it goes. I’ve never used anything but those old fashioned spring mouse traps. I also use peanut butter instead of cheese. In my experience, if you use cheese, they’ll pull it off, but they stick around and lick the peanut butter. Just set it out and wait for the snap.

I did try one of those humane traps once, but the mouse got in, licked all the peanut butter up, then promptly escaped. I’m not sure what went wrong, as I wasn’t watching.

7

You could always seal every entrance to the house and then burn it down. Either it will roast the mouse, thus eliminating the problem, or the mouse survives but there is no longer a house for it to infest, thus giving you a new problem to deal with.

…oh…I guess I’m not that helpful, am I…

8

What’s to be flamed for, Algy? A mousetrap is as humane a way to kill a mouse as any.

Peanut butter is good. A bit of Reeses Peanut Butter Cup is even better.

9

There was a mouse in my house on Saturday. Primus (my cat) played with it for a while, but was not really interested in killing it. Eventually, the mouse crawled onto an unused shelving component & I took it outside. Sadly, this happened after the mouse spent most of the day holed up in my tank top drawer, eating Godiva chocolate & pooping copiously.

10

My great-granmother’s, who is a veritable (sp?) font of knowledge, advice for catching “var-mints” is to put salt on their tail. Think about that for a second.
Oh… Now you get it.

:smiley:

11

This is so easy! You have your coyote/dog lie down in front of the mouse hole with his mouth wide open, you decorate his mouth to look like a nightclub and presto! little horny mouse walks right in.
I mean, duh?

Oh also, it helps if you dress the dog’s paw up like a girl mouse and stand it in front of the entrace to the “nightclub” and, uh…

Wait, is this a real mouse? Never mind (blushing)

12

I give the OP a solid 8.5 on the hilarity scale. All the useful ways to abate the annoying rodent have been posted.

I’d recommend Warfarin, except that the little phuquer will find his way into the least accessible corner and give up the ghost there to rot in maggot ridden glory.

Keep us posted with more of the household antics.

13

To catch the mouse, you must think like the mouse. Indeed, you must be the mouse.

14

It’s this one: How to kill cockroaches: a case study. It makes me laugh.

15

Repeat to self: “I am not afraid to go home. I am not afraid to go home. I am not afraid to go home.”

Yea, RIGHT. Mr. M2U has been home all day with idiotdog. I just got off the phone with him and he said that they have been “working” on the problem. I just checked my horoscope and sure 'nuff, it goes something along the lines of “In the thermonuclear war that is life, you are at ground zero.”

Marvelous.

I am going to try the “stick to the mice feet stuff” you mentioned, cher3, although knowing how those two operate, I’ll end up walking in the door one night and everyone will be stuck in their tracks with little mice sitting around them in a circle laughing hysterically, pointing their little mice fingers at them, taunting them…

Tonight, though, (as I can’t do a Home Depot get the sticky stuff trip tonight) I will try peanut butter on the spring trap. I do need to know, though, because I can tell (I swear - I am precognitive this way) that there will, in fact, be much gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness when Mr.M2U snaps that trap on his fingers a few times, that they won’t break any fingers, will they?

Mamapot, you know, he’d do this. He WILL do this if the other suggestions don’t work. In fact, in that he said he was “working on it” on the phone, I have to shudder to think that there might actually BE said sculpture when I get home. As he does construction, he has tons of stuff in the garage that would be useful. Come to think of it, Monster104, I can only HOPE you and he are somehow telepathically male bonded. :smiley:

Lnix, I’m sorry I stole your material, but when we were talking on the phone, I started telling him what you wrote as if it were a serious suggestion from me, verbatim. He hung up on me just as I was telling him to have the dog put it’s paw up to the entrance (after grunting at me). I swear, he has NO sense of humor. ROFLMAO.

Oh - rysdad - I’m gonna call it feng-put my kitchen back together now before you find out just how comfortable living in the garage will really be! :slight_smile:

Finally, thank you all for the suggestions and comments. I’ll let you know what, if anything happens/survives/dies/runs away from home/considers divorce as an option.

“I’m not afraid to go home. I’m not afraid to go home. I’m not afraid to go home.”

Nope, still isn’t working…

16

Disclaimer: this is not meant as an attack on PETA.

Now that that’s out of the way. A friend’s ex g/f was a member of PETA and gave me a huge humanitarian speech about how horrible spring mousetraps are. She said that she could provide me with tons of information from PETA showing that the mice suffer for long periods of time after getting snapped in one of those traps. It was because of this that I was expecting to be flamed. So far I haven’t been, but I was expecting it.

17

Good luck. The only problem is that the critters are often still alive and staring balefully at you from the middle of the trap the next morning.

But, of course, that’s what husbands are for.

18

I’m usually all for humane methods of dealing with unwanted life forms, but I come from a part of the country where rodents mean rabies, plague, or Hantavirus, so I resort to poison. It’s not friendly to the environment or humane to the mouse, but it’s the only effective solution I ever found. Of course, you have to be sure your less than brilliant doggie doesn’t eat up any remains, but as Zenster said, the mousies usually crawl into the walls to die. On the bright side, the bodies don’t generally stink all that much. I think it’s got something to do with the dehydration the poison causes. (Eww)

19

The little bastard won’t be alive if you get one of the high-tension rat-traps…those things will cut right through the mouse, there’s no way a mouse can survive on of those. Come on, we got a possum with one of those suckers! (Of course, it didn’t kill the possum, it just got its foot and it ran away… pitta patta clunk pitta patta clunk)

20

A little story about glue traps:

My second year in college, I was living in an all-male dorm suite. Most of us were pretty messy, so it was no suprise that a few mice moved in. They were eating all our snack food (which was lying around in the open), and people were getting pissed and talking tough about how we’d kill the bastard mice. (We debated flushing, tossing off the roof, etc.)

Someone brings home a couple of those glue traps. We put peanut butter in them, and then placed them in likely locations. Literally two minutes after putting them down, we caught a mouse. A tiny, terrified, adorable little mouse. Which we’re supposed to throw into the dumpster to starve to death. We all stand around, looking at it for a minute, and then start reading the package to see how to get the poor thing off the glue. (One guy tries to just pull it off, but just ends up breaking its leg.) The package says alcohol will dissolve the glue, so we end up in the bathroom, dousing the poor mouse in vodka and trying to pry it free. We finally get it loose, with a broken leg and soaked in vodka, and liberate it to some ivy across the street from our dorm. (Whatever animal killed and ate it probably got really drunk – we should have kept an eye out for drunken owls.)

Meanwhile, we’d forgotten about the other trap. Which had collected another mouse. Damnit! Luckily, we were more experience this time, so we got it out intact (although still fully marinated in vodka) and tossed it into the ivy next to its less fortunate brother. We also threw out all the glue traps. (Luckily, I think those were the only two, as we never saw another mouse. Maybe word got out…)

So beware. Those glue traps aren’t as nice as they sound. Especially if you’re not as immune to cute little animals as you think.