I’m usually not afraid of bugs or spiders or snakes (lizards only a little bit) BUT mice make me hysterical, not to mention a rat. When we lived next to a creek some river rats got into the house (thru the ceiling, we later found out.) One night a scritching sound woke me up and there sitting in my window was the biggest rat I’d ever seen. It looked like it had scraggly black hair (not thick and cuddly) and it was long…elongated with a 'possum-like tail. Almost cartoonish but not funny at all.
When somebody stopped screaming (I think it was me) my mother and brother had run in to see if I was being killed. We chased that rat all over the house. Finally, my brother pulled out the piano, where it had hidden, and beat it to death with a baseball bat.
I have lived to tell the tale but I’ll never be the same.
So I’d get a baseball bat. Or a shotgun like Clothahump suggested. When all of this is over, read Black Mountain Breakdown by Lee Smith. They finally just waited on the couch and used shotguns to rid themselves of their vermin problem. Shot the hell out of the house, but they got 'em.
MOL I’m with Annimika, this is hard to accept from my proactive, in control, Ms. Tough guy hero.
But Farmer Jane, come ON now! MOL is a city girl, so she gets a little leeway. A FARM girl afraid of rodents?!? Lawsy, now I’se seen everything!
Celtling and I get the occasional Mickey or Minnie. We use live traps and peanut butter, then take them down to the railroad tracks where they can make a good living and won’t bother anybody.
I hope your trapping is successful. Even so, make your landlord pay attention. There are likely more in the building.
I’m pretty sure if you start blasting your apartment up with a shotgun, you can kiss your cleaning deposit goodbye. Also, it might result in a bit of jail time, and given the chimerical sense of humor the universe has, you’d probably have a mouse in your prison cell.
Ha ha. That was pretty much what happened when I discovered there was a freaking mouse inside of here. A glass-shattering scream came out of someone who I’m *guessing *was me considering I was the only one in the apt.
Thank you! Cut me some slack. I’m from Los Angeles and I live in Chicago now. My mom (who grew up on a farm) thinks I’m sad, but the other ladies I live around and grew up with feel my pain. My mom’s all “Just set a trap.” WHAT DO YOU MEAN JUST SET A TRAP!!!
Okay, back from the other Ace. Unrelated to mice: rode my bike. Way too hot for that. Related to mice: I got traps like the one Joey suggested. Different brand, but they appear to be essentially the same trap, plus some more enclosed traps so that I don’t have to see the mouse once it’s trapped.
My obsession with this would be embarrassing if I had any shame. My friend told me I’ve crossed from “fun crazy to crazy crazy.” :\
Edit: I’ve called the landlord, but like EVERY time I call them, no one answered, and I was forced to leave a message. I’ll call back. Oh, if I don’t hear from them, I will call back. I’ve put up with that stupid noise my shower makes for over a year now, but this… no.
Find a bowl or can or cookie tin at least 6 inches across and no more than 3 inches deep. Set it upside down on a dinner plate with a cracker or breadstick vertically in it, holding it up over a dinner plate, with at least an inch or two of clearance. You want the breadstick supporting the inside of the bottom of the tin, not the edge. Set the assembly on the kitchen floor, turn off the light and go to bed. Within about ten minutes, you will hear the tin fall. The mouse will be trapped inside, merrily eating the breadstick.
At your convenience, hold the tin down on the plate, and walk it about a block down the street and let it go. Do it every night until you don’t catch any more. You might have more than one.
We had a mouse problem last year. It turns out that they were getting in through the dryer vent. I called an exterminator and he told me that the mice prefer the dark and will scurry close to the walls. As long as you stay in the middle of the room, you’ll be safe. Check along the walls for droppings and entry holes which you can seal. Keep any food bagged up or sealed away since that is what is attracting them.
Those enclosed traps really don’t work as well. I think the mice like to stick to the wall so when the come up on one of those they just go around. The open traps you can catch them both by the mice going for the bait or just simply walking over them.
Funny thing about some cats, they bring mice into the house. Mine was on a roll last week - he brought a live mouse into the house 4 times. It was quite the sport me, my GF and the cat and dog chasing it down.
You know, that’s what I thought about the enclosed traps. Unless the mice are super lured in by some mega irresistible bait, wouldn’t it just strike them as some shit on my floor that they’d just go around? So I bought some open snap traps too, and if one of those catches it, I’ll figure out how to dispose of the carcass later.
I didn’t like seeing a mouse when I was growing up in Iowa and I didn’t when I lived in downtown Denver! :o There’s something about a mouse IN YOUR HOUSE that’s scary. No, it’s gross…it’s…I donno. Mice belong outside. Can’t believe I was shocked to find a rodent in a 100 year old building downtown but I was happy to move out later!
Blow up your landlord’s phone. My son still teases me about how bad I screamed when I saw a mouse when he was four. You’re a mean lady and mean ladies deserve mice but…um…did you ever consider that was a baby mouse? Have you seen it since?
Why are you still at home? Do you have funds to vacate the premises? This thread is entertaining, but it’s bringing back memories.
Tips if you vacate (or whenever you get the nerve):
Clear out food.
Make sure you don’t have any laundry piles or anything like that for a mouse to hang out in.
Come back with someone who’s not afraid of mice
Call an exterminator if your landlord doesn’t respond
Ask your neighbors if they’ve seen mice
Still don’t know wtf you’re doing with traps - now you have to see the damned things - but your landlord may have other methods. Mine used poison. He said the mice would be thirsty and go outside. I lived on the THIRD floor, btw, and was surprised to see a mouse up that high. (My son actually said, “MICE DON’T RIDE ELEVATORS!”) Who knows. He could’ve been brought in with my new neighbors…or could’ve made his way up through the walls. Little fucker (fuckers?) scared the shit out of me. I didn’t care how inhumane poison was.
You could always try telling yourself it’s silly to be scared of a mouse, but I don’t blame you.
Use an old plastic bag. From what I recall, mice have poor eyesight, and instead rely on their sense of smell. They’ll smell the bait and go for it. I used peanut butter as bait for them. I also used glue traps but I’m not very squeamish, and it didn’t bother me to get rid of them.
BTW, why are you city folk scared of mice. If anything mice are worse in the city. There is a lot more food for them to go after.
I’ve caught HUNDREDS of mice AND rats over my lifetime with this exact method. This is the cheapest, quickest way of getting rid of the little F’rs. Find a place where you see mouse droppings; Set them down in pairs, against a wall, between the wall and a piece of furniture or something that creates a narrow runway just a little wider than the traps themselves. The traps should be set with bait-side pointing away from each other, in pairs, so the mouse could come from either direction and still get trapped easily. Lots of Peanut butter per trap…like about half a teaspoon…you want him to get fatter and very comfortable and easy to trap/kill.
I’ve caught about a dozen with 4 traps in one night in the garage with this method. GOOD HUNTING!
ETA: Please turn in your Mean Card…until you kill this little bastard yourself.
Chunky peanut butter works the best, but you don’t need much. You DO need to wedge a bit of peanut under the “hook” on the trip lever. A small mouse can eat peanut butter off a trip lever all day and never trip it. But if it has to work at the peanut to get it out…BANG! Almost never misses. After you get the first one, set another trap, cuz there will be at least one other.
Landlord called me back. They’re coming at 9a to do some mouse killing stuff tomorrow.
Until then, I’m thinking of taking up some dude I know (pipe down, Nzinga et al) on his request to crash his place. I just need to sleep somewhere else until the mouse thing is taken care of. I can leave and have been in and out of the apt periodically, but I also feel the need to psycho-check the traps nonstop. I’m going to leave again in a bit and then probably sleep at a friend’s. Cleared my cabinets of everything but flour, lined up several traps along the walls where I saw the bastard, put some more along other walls in case it decides to be adventurous, and now I am in wait-and-see-and-panic mode. Please, please, please Baby Jesus, let us effectively wrap up this shit show tomorrow morning.
I used to have a dog. She was a mix of Chow and golden retriever and very large. Almost 110 pounds. But boy, could she catch mice! She was surprisingly fast and nimble, and when I moved to Arizona with her, she caught a few lizards, too. She passed away about nine years ago. Boy, do I miss her.
I use a live trap, the “Tin Cat,” and it works fine… Except you gotta deal with the mouse in the box.
The OP appears to have a full-blown phobia, and I will always respect that. Phobias are impossible to deal with. They operate way down in the core of the brain, at a level that is beyond any reason, rationality, or sense. I’m an arachnophobe, and it doesn’t do a damn bit of good to try to reason with it: I see a spider, I turn into a baby. Can’t help it, and won’t accept criticism on it. It isn’t “me,” it’s a structural thing in my brain. As well to blame me for gasping for breath after heavy exercise. It’s physiological, not psychological.
MeanOldLady: (Nifty login name, by the way!) Sympathies. But…why haven’t you phoned a professional exterminator? They’ll come out right away, check your walls for holes, take deadly measures, and even follow-up if needed with more traps. The best ones will even come back to remove the carcasses, although, from what you say, you sound like you could force yourself to cope with that bit.
Sure, then you could name it “Mr. Jingles” and teach it to dance.
Mice have very poor eyesight and tend to use the walls to help them navigate. Also, they constantly dribble urine, which tends to leave a scent trail for other mice. So traps are more effective if you place them along the wall. Mice tend not to stray too far from straight baseboards.
My sister and her husband used to live in a farm house. One night we were sitting in her living room and heard the cat making a commotion in the kitchen. A minute later the cat walked into the living room and stopped in the middle of the floor. In her mouth we could see the rear portion of a small mouse. The hind legs were kicking and the tail was thrashing about.
The cat bit down hard and the section of mouse we could see dropped to the floor. We were all going “Ewww!”, “No! No!”, and lifting our feet up onto the couch/chair/whatever furniture we were occupying. The cat chewed up the part of the mouse that was in her mouth, then ate the back end that was on the floor, gave us a satisfied look and walked back into the kitchen.
but…um…did you ever consider that was a baby mouse? Have you seen it since?
