Operation Squeaky Freedom: Post your tactics and casualties

In My Humble Opinion
1

We have mice. They have, thankfully, confined themselves to the unfinished room in our basement and the garage, but they’ve gone too far, and my husband says they’ve got to go. We heard them on the suspended ceiling, and he worries they will start chewing wires.

Because they’ve been eating cat and dog food freely, there is an off chance they are now the size of racoons, but if so their rectums have not grown commensurately. Their little turds are mouse-sized.

Note I mentioned “cat food.” Yes, we have a cat in residence. You’d think he might chip in and lend a hand on the mouse control. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.

Regretfully (because I have a soft heart), I bought four mousetraps and my husband set them this weekend. He has called this “Operation Squeaky Freedom” and gives me a CentCom briefing every 12 hours.

So far, nothing. No satisfying “snap” of metal severing spinal cord; no little mousie corpses.

In the spirit of trading war stories, I invite veterans to tell me about your rodent wars–your strategies, your alliances with feline coalition members, your triumphs, your humiliations. Do share.

2

Bait with peanut butter. Really. At least it worked like a charm on the occasions I live-trapped for wild rodents ( mostly various Peromyscus ).

  • Tamerlane
3

I had them.
The first time:
I was a bachelor, lived alone, no dog.
A field next door had been razed (disked?) by whoever owned it. We (My duplex) had a sudden explosion of the mouse population. I came home one day, and the house smelled of mice.
I counterattacked in a three prong approach.
1-There was to be no food available.
2-There was to be no water available.
3-Poison and traps were set, and maintained.

I live like a slob, so I had dishes in the sink with uneaten little bits of food. The sink had water in it. I changed my MO in a big way. From then on, I washed every dish at once. I never left uneaten bits of food on any of them. I wiped the droplets off the washed dishes. Mice will lick droplets to satisfy their thirst. The drip of the sink was addressed. I sponged all droplets of water from the surface of the sink. All food was placed in the refrigerator. I didn’t stock any more than I could store inside the fridge.
Traps were set in logical places. Mice like to scurry along walls, and under furniture, and such. Poison was also set in the same types of location.
One week passed. Traps were giving me kills every morning and every evening.
In one and one half weeks time, the mice had learned not to mess with me. It wasn’t worth it to go inside my house. No food or water payoff, and waaaay too much danger!
My neighbors, literally on the other side of the wall, were innundated with mice, but I lived without even a single one.

I concluded that mice were social. Mice live in societies, and communicate with one another. They had been saying, “Forbin’s house has lots of food and water, and no way can any good mouse ever get hurt there.”
I gave them a new tale to tell. When I was finished with them they would tell their buddies,
“I saw Fred (the mouse) die horribly there.”
“There isn’t anything in that desert, but it’s deadly.”
“Scout number sixty seven has not returned from his recon mission. We don’t know what’s become of him.”

Second occasion:
Ten years later.
I now have a dog. Dog dish provides ample food source.
Same strategy, but the dog had to learn austerity.
Dog food goes in a steel trashcan. Food presented to dog, who must then eat. Don’t eat your food when presented, huh Rover? Well, too bad Rover, you’re not getting any food.

Mice must be destroyed without mercy.
Oh how I loathe and detest mice.
I feel for you Cranky. If you have children, dogs, or cats (you mentioned a cat) they are all with the program, like it or not.
If you do not make this commitment, the mice will exploit your weakness.

4

Oh, I didn’t mention it directly.
I win!
I slaughtered mice before, and will do it again.
Rover doesn’t like the new modus operendi.
Rover doesn’t run my house. Rover just has to get used to it.
I win.
Current mouse population: zero.
I win.

5

Be grateful for going the route of conventional methods of rodent-control, Cranky. As evidence, I present tales of ridiculousness and embarrassment from the tdc & moi household:

While living in Western PA, we rented a small house that had plenty of small mouse-sized nooks and crannies. It should have been no surprise, then, in the cold winter months when the small mouse-sized “vacancy/no vacancy” neon signs appeared.

At the first signs of mice, I gave up all displays of “I am woman, hear me roar” and called upon some time-honored gender roles. Husband bought a package of standard mousetraps and set them with peanut butter. Over the next two weeks, I neurotically checked the traps—not because I wanted to find a mousy corpse, but out of fear of stumbling upon one in my day-to-day activities and revealing myself a screaming ninny.

In attempt to be more humane, and I believe in no small part to humor my OC behavior, we switched to a live trap halfway through winter. At this point, we had one dead mouse in the snap trap and one removed via catch-and-release.

As winter wore on, I guess the mice started feeling like the house was more their turf. They got brave. We saw one or two running along the floorboards in the kitchen. The third time we saw a mouse, tdc leapt from his seat and started hunting the damn thing. Furniture was pulled back from the walls. Blockades were set in doorways. Much stomping ensued until, 25 minutes layer, he had caught the mouse and released it outside.

Over the next few months, these ridiculous antics—by mouse and human alike—continued. I caught a mouse in a briefcase. We watched a mouse figure its way out of the live trap. A friend offered to rent her kitten’s mouse disposal services. And, despite our best efforts, managed to kill mice using not only the live trap, but once using a sofa. sheepish grin

Thankfully, not only are we out of that house, but are now in a home patroled by a calico huntress, terror of field mice and squirrels.

6

If you can’t get rid of them, you can at least turn a profit off of them. Hook them up to tiny milking machines and sell the milk to elementary schools.

7

I’d put the cat on half rations. Also, be careful around that poop. Don’t want our Cranky coming down with no Hanta.