Well done. This guy is a champ.
[/ Prissy little girl voice]
Heee’s a suitor!
He’s bona fide!!! [\plgv]
Dude’s a hero…props to him. MOL will never forget that.
Grats!
My roommates and I had a mouse problem the other year. In addition to traps, we took a variety of measures to ensure that they never return. So far, so good, knock on wood.
- Buy a big box of steel wool. I got the kind with soap. Carefully, pull it apart or cut it and stuff it into areas where mice might sneak in. For example, we have old school radiators with enough space around the pipes running up for a potential invasion. Mice aren’t likely to eat through the steel wool since it’s not exactly tasty or easy for them to chew.
- Buy a small plastic spray bottle (like a windex bottle) and a bottle of mint extract. Fill the spray bottle with water. Add about 1/4 teaspoon of mint extract. Shake it up. Spray the minty water around your baseboards. Mice don’t like the smell of mint.
- We picked up a few of those weird sonic plug-ins that make a high pitched noise. It’s supposed to bother mice. We keep them in our kitchen and living room. At first, the noise is a little annoying, but you’ll get past it quickly enough.
These aren’t fool-proof, but they might help.
it bothers you more than the mice.
I went thru this. U need a multi-pronged strategy. I don’t wanna freak u out any more than u r, but most people don’t get mouse - they get mice. I never tried a cat, but it seems like a good idea. However, also:
- Find any holes in the walls I mean any - I had 1 next to the gas line that went into the oven, about as big as a dime. the exterminators told me that they have soft bones, and can squeeze thru a hole no bigger than a pencil eraser (!!!). Get an exterminator or you yourself put poison into any holes that it can fit into. This will take a few days, tho.
- Seal the holes with thin wire. There was a raging debate at the time of my battle whether steel wool was good enough, since mice are smart and can learn to chew their way thru. I forget what the wire was called, but it’s mesh and available in hardware stores.
- Cement the holes shut after stuffing with the wire. They can chew thru plaster.
- Traps - another debate, glue vs. wood & steel Victors (the brand). I used both. For bait, I found nothing worked better than peanut butter. U don’t have to touch them - I used prongs & wore gloves whenever handling the traps that worked (seriously - they carry disease).
- It seems obvious, but put away & seal in glass containers all food & drink - even what u don’t think of as such. If u got a leaky pipe, it worx as a fountain to them. Basically, have nothing lying around that they can chew or slurp. In my experience, they didn’t chew thru wiring - but they did cereal boxes, for example.
- Wash the (non-wood) floors with a detergent containing bleach or at least ammonia. The smell gets to them. Wood floors, I still ain’t sure if I used the rite thing - it was some strong non-bleach detergent. I then Lysoled that floor for good measure.
- Get rid o the dead ones fast - the exterminator told me that if hungry enough,
********************** EXTREMELY GROSS FACTOID AHEAD *********
they will eat their dead. - I still don’t know if these worked, since I got them when I was already winning the battle - ultrasonic repellers. I plugged em in & pointed toward the kitchen & bathroom (most obvious food & water sources). I kept them in long after the 1st wave was gone. For what it’s worth, I didn’t get re-infested for the remaining 5 years I was in that apartment.
If you can find another place to sleep while doing this program, I’d do it. My big mistake was toughing it out in my bedroom, while I could hear them scrambling around & climbing thru the walls. No point losing sleep while fighting. BTW, as a rule they’re nocturnal too
Just give the mouse a hug, keep your apt clean, & hide all the edibles.
Then the mouse will just leave for more cozier places.
.-.
Also don’t give it amotorcycle.
:smack:
Or a cookie!
. . . or a canoe.
A mouse in a canoe seems kind of cute. Too bad it’s dead now.
Don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it, but it’s good to just leave traps set all the time. Check the bait every few weeks to be sure it’s still there. That way you stand a good chance of catching a mouse on his first scouting expedition through your home.
I suspect that the mouse in a canoe seems kind of cute BECAUSE it’s dead now 
Originally Posted by The Unexpected Okapi Debacle
I have a “cleaner” I brought home from Africa who has a history of swallowing birds and mice whole, leaving no evidence they ever existed. She kept my house completely pest-free, so I never woke up in the middle of the night with a rat on my arm like a friend of mine did. I would also like to suggest a mosquito net or a zip-up mosquito tent. I lived in a very buggy/crittery part of the world and those things keep the creepy-crawlies out very well.
I too was thinking of a pet Okapi that met an unfortunate demise through aforementioned pet…I was imagining a giant snake…
What kind of cat is this “cleaner”?
I am still imagining a snake!
If you caught the animal in the glue trap, I hope you killed it so it doesn’t suffer hours of ripping its skin off and gnawing on a leg to escape. :o
HOORAY! I just came back in to see if he was dead or not. Good job!
Not giving a fuck if it suffers don’t mean it’s right to make it suffer. If you have to kill it, do it. Don’t torture it.
And it’s not a war by any stretch, it’s your hysteria talking. You have an irrational phobia. Having it die of thirst implies you’d just leave it to die on the trap. And yeah, it’ll cry out in pain. If you encounter that instance, and it doesn’t affect you in any way, then that’s pretty disturbing IMO.
I’ve never heard of anyone having a mouse (singular) in their apartment. You have mice in your apartment. Mice live in colonies. Your building probably has thousands of them. There’s some kind of formula that says that for every mouse that you spot, there are 25 more that you don’t see.
… and they pee on your toothbrush at night.