Please help! I am beyond terrified. There is a mouse in my apt.

In My Humble Opinion
81

Myself, I’m more toxic-chemicals-phobic than mouse-spider-and-bug-phobic, so I’ve always chosen to live with spiders, bugs (even cocky-roaches), and the occasional mouses rather than spraying poisons all over my living space. Mouses don’t bother me (much), except that they dash and skitter about so quickly that they usually startle me a little.

I lived for several years in this fabulously beautiful place (photo). Not sure why cities would be mousier than rural places (as suggested by someone above). Out yonder there, there are field mice all over the place. I prefer them to stay outside, but there were several that came inside just about every week.

I had a regular ritual of setting snap-traps in several strategic spots (several on the ground underneath, and underneath the sinks, and in the bedroom). Every weekend, I inspected them all and replaced any that had done their jobs. I used peanut butter on a bit of bread crust for bait. Every so often, someone would manage to eat all the bait without snapping the trap. Whenever they would appear, there would be several, but there would also be weeks at a time with no mouses. I think they came in families, or came and made families.

Once, apparently, there was one mouse who somehow got trap wise. I saw or heard evidence every day, and the traps were getting their bait eaten, every day for a couple weeks. Usually, the traps catch their mouse very quickly (within a day or less). But for this one mouse, I finally broke down and got a glue trap.

Glue traps are nasty, I think. And expensive. But, it got my mouse. It was heart rending. When I found the trap with the mouse glued to it, his eyes were still open (not sure if he was alive), looking up like he was saying “O please mister just eat me now and put me out of my terror and misery”. The instructions say you can pry the mouse off and release it, but I couldn’t see that. This mouse was fully glued down, from the tip of his chin down to his belly down to the his tail.

Snap-traps seem so much more humane by comparison. They appear to be violent but fast and relatively merciful. And they are cheap, and they are effective.

82

i can deal with rodents or reptiles; but i would react much like you if la cucaracha showed up in my abode.

i have worked very diligently to teach my current crop of felines not to bring their toys into my bedroom. that way if an insect showed up they would not repeat NOT proudly bring it into my bedroom or worse into my bed!

of course if an insect decided to wander into my bedroom on its own, there would be quite a bit of commotion going on.

thankfully the building has a really good exterminator, and the only more than 4 legged beings that i saw (in a blur as i eeked and ran away) were not moving well and were not long for this world, as i raced faster than mr bolt to the nearest building person. (also thankfully the insects were in the recycle/trash area, 2 towers and 9 floors from my unit.)

i totally understand and support your decision to leave the field of battle. you will need a good night’s sleep after this, also a pint or 2 (of ben and jerrys?).

83

I live in an old house so occasionally we get some mice in the fall. Poor mousies. We have 3 cats and a dog. We had a mouse show up in the living room. It was behind a chair. One of our cats, a born killer, sees the mouse. She stands up and turns to the mouse. The other two cats immediately pick up the signal that something is going on. The 3 move to the chair. One around each side and the third come over the top. Even the dog, a Maltese(not a born killer), realizes that something fun is happening so he starts trying to help. So one vs. four. The mouse actually got away, they didnt get him til the next day. It took mere seconds for the animals to realize that they should chase the mouse. Poor mousies.

84

Heh- this just brought up a wonderful memory of my black lab-chow mix, who was absolutely dumb as a rock but an amazing mouser. We found this out completely accidentally, when I came across him one day with the most fake-innocent look on his face, with this.. thread.. or something hanging out of the corner of his mouth. We regarded each other for a moment, and finally I asked him what he had in his mouth (just, y’know, cause it was funny- not because I expected him to answer). He just looked at me with this absolutely dead-serious “Muffing?” look on his face. I told him ‘drop it’ and he SPIT OUT A MOUSE. A STILL LIVE MOUSE. The thread was the mouse’s tail. And the mouse was VERY ANGRY (and very spit-covered). It looked like a reject from Sha na na, poor thing.. it spared a withering look at the dog, and ran off. It was the most hilarious thing ever… almost as good as my black lab-shepard mix getting his paw stuck on a glue trap, with a mouse stuck in the middle (so every time he tried to take a step to get away, the mouse would get smooshed a little and would bite him). :smiley:

I miss both those dogs so much..

85

The one time I had a mouse in my apartment (before I had cats), I put down a straight line of cheap glue traps from wall to wall. There was no way a mouse could cross the line without getting caught. It worked like a charm but disposing of the little guy was no fun.

Not all cats are mousers but I think mice can smell cats and steer clear of them. At least I never saw another mouse after I got cats.

Please do not use traps AND a cat. Cats like poking and sniffing everything and could easily get hurt by a trap.

86

You shouldn’t let a cat eat a house mouse! No telling what the mouse has been into that could poison the cat, or at the least make it sick! (Not kidding, they eat soap and other household chemicals as well as chew drywall etc.) Call your landlord and get an exterminator in there. If you have one (baby?) mouse, you have others! (Such as its mother, father, and littermates!)

87

Dang it. Back from outdoors and no dead mouse! Oh well. I’m off to the bar, then I’m crashing a friend’s. Fuck this shit.

Also, just so everyone knows this isn’t okay, InnerStickler, I call foul on your posting a picture of a cute little mouse being snuggled on page one. **Jane **is right: mice can be cute, but uninvited mice scurrying around your living room are terrifying!

Trinopus, the landlord people are sending over professionals tomorrow morning.

AnalogSignal, brilliant! The glue trap thing is fantastic. For now my plan is leaving the traps I’ve laid only, tomorrow the landlords claim they’re bringing in some team of mouse luring gurus who can trap it on site during their visit, but I’m skeptical. We’ll see. If they leave with a dead mouse, brava. If not, my friend said I can steal her cat for the weekend. Promise to remove the traps before the kitty comes. Don’t want her getting her paw stuck in glue or being hurt in a snap trap. If the cat can’t kill it, then the door-to-door glue traps sounds awesome. But hopefully none of this will be necessary and the professionals can kill the son-of-a-whore tomorrow morning.

I’m gonna go get drunk now.

88

Yeah, good idea! Hit it with the phone.

Seriously, though, don’t move to the country. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have mice in their basements. They’re not too much trouble because they rarely come up into the actual house (unless they’re brought up by a cat), but I don’t like collecting their wee little corpses after the cats get them.

89

My first summer after I moved out to my farm passed peacefully. Then when Winter came, I heard noises coming from the upstairs. It sounded like they were bowling up there. I thought it was squirrels, which I didn’t want because they chew wires. Then I saw it - a huge rat. I can’t explain why the idea of a rat was so much worse than a squirrel, but it was. I asked my elderly farmer/neighbor, and he was all, “well rats come in sometimes. It’s no big deal”. Maybe not for him. My mother wanted me to move home that night. I said I’d deal with it.

I put my cat up there - no good. I put my doberman, then my airedale. Still no corpses. I put down some snap traps and killed about 3, but I’d still hear them. Finally I put down poison. Upstairs where the dogs and cats don’t go unless I open the door. That took care of them.

Thus endeth the winter of the rats.

StG

90

The line of glue traps worked for me in a matter of hours. I think I put one line across my bedroom doorway and another line across the living room. They are cheap so you can go overboard with them.

I doubt the cat will kill it. I bet the mouse will smell the cat and stay out of sight. Thanks for not using traps while the cat is around.

91

Be prepared for some nasty results if you use glue traps though. We’ve had a couple mice in my apartment over the years (and btw, just because you have one does not automatically mean there are more!) and once one got caught in a glue trap and when I found it he had chewed his own leg off to try to get free. And was still alive. :frowning:

I once heard a mouse scurrying under my bed at 2am and killed it by hitting it straight on with the top handle of a broom, as if it were a pool cue! Seriously it was like a perfect shot directly to it’s head even though it was running around! Instant death.

92

I don’t want to play pool with you.

93

Glue traps are horrible. Yeah, they catch the mouse but they don’t kill them. So you have a trap with a terrified mouse stuck to it. I had a roommate get some of those once against my wishes. Caught the mouse but it was still alive and I could not get it off. So I had to take it outside and do a little mercy kill. I made sure to use her frying pan though.

94

Yeah. There’s no way in hell I’d ever use these. A mouse has never made me angry enough to hope it’ll starve, die of thirst, or maim itself trying to escape. At least snap traps are quick and don’t torture the poor things.

95

Glue traps are torture. Poison isn’t much better, and can have sad consequences to unintended victims. Snap traps are the way to go if you must kill.

I know there’s no arguing with phobias since they aren’t based on anything rational, but…

It’s a mouse. It’s tiny, it’s terrified of you, and it’s just trying to live it’s mousy life. It cares not one whit about you, other than to stay away from you and find a warm place to live.

96

Can I just say, don’t put a cat in the apt. if you’ve been spraying poison around (Raid)?

Also, my kitties lost their mom at a tender age so they have the instinct to hunt and chase but weren’t taught to kill and eat. So if I have a bug or a scorpion they will kindly point it out to me so I can kill it. Thanks, kids. (I wonder if I could teach them to eat bugs? hmm.) So, as someone pointed out earlier, an indoor well-fed cat might not be any help.

97

Another vote against bringing in a free-lance feline. Cats usually take a while to adjust to new surroundings. I doubt if a friend’s cat would go into hunting mode right away.

98

Maybe they were.

Holy shit, is this a thing that mice do? My friend told me a mouse she had in her house chewed its own leg off to escape a trap! Ack!

Do you really think some Raid I sprayed behind my couch and in the corner on Tuesday will hurt a cat that comes over on Saturday? Also, friend says her cat is an excellent hunter, was formerly feral, and pretty much kills anything in its way.

Okay, so as I was typing this, the “exterminator” showed up, who was just some old dude with a plastic bag full of glue traps! WTF? This is not kosher! :mad:

99

I wonder why they’re called exterminators. Wouldn’t that imply they no longer terminate things?

100

In this case, certainly so! Mothertruckers! I got up early, after functioning off no sleep for something like 48 hours, to come home and watch this dude with his leet mouse-trapping skills in action. Aside from the BS of him not actually doing anything, I could have slept in!