I work in a very old hospital that’s been around since the 20s, and we’re on the outskirts of the city. Most things here are broken or slow and I’ve never minded, until yesterday when three of my staffers noticed we have unwanted furry guests.
According to pest control, the only thing they can do is lay out glue traps, since anything else would involve mice running into the patient areas and dying horrible gory deaths that would apparently, make it so people wouldn’t choose to be treated here. However, I feel glue traps are horrid and inhumane.
My staff is demanding some kind of action, however, so I had to bow to their concerns and let the traps go down. I am now in mortal fear that I will come in one morning to a squealing, bloody stump-mouse.
Is there anything else I can use that would kill them instantly, dry them up, is more humane? Catch-and-release is not really an option, since we are in the city and I would just guarantee that they would infest the first floor rather than the one I’m on.
I’m rather surprised working for a hospital you do not have this sort of thing in the budget…
That being said our medical centre here in town has these little triangular mouse traps that kill the mice instantly and will hold several mice at a time. No messy residue. And they are fairly innocuous to look at. See
I have to say that I had a mouse in my place and it took at total of 3 hours to get rid of it. I have a small dog so I couldn’t put out poison or the snap traps so I went with a “tip” trap.
I put it out on my lunch hour baited with a little bit of peanut butter and when I came home after work, the trap was tripped and my mouse problem was over.
Any of these fine Bushmasters, or try a few of these bushmasters. Either one should cut down on the rodent population. Might cut down on the number of complaints from staff, too.
We have a contract with Terminix. They put down bait stations with coumadin-laced grain, which is a dessicant. It drives the mice to search for water, usually driving them outside. We had an awful lot of mouse corpses around our old house.
I haven’t seen any mouse evidence in our new house, thank Og. I have seen two dead rats outside (from a neighbour who had pest control bait in their yard). This shit works.
Minor nitpick-the grain or other bait with which the warfarin is treated, is there to cause the critters to return, refeed and ingest more poison. It’s mechanism of killing is essentially internal hemorrhage. Medically, the same product is used as an anti-coagulant/blood thinner for afflictions such as deep-vein thrombosis. I’ve never read of the dessicant angle, but if you have some info about that, I’d be happy to learn.
With our mouse/rat problem, I tried really hard to make this work. I hate to kill things - I even do catch-and-release on roaches and spiders.
If you’re protecting against the occasional stray mouse that might slick in, you might be able to use live traps. But the problem is that they’ve actually moved in already, the number that you can conceivably catch and release is dwarfed by the sheer rate at which they multiply.
That is how it was described to me by our pest-control guy. I do know that when we did find dead critters, they were dried out. That’s why when they eat the poison and die within the walls, nothing smells.
You should also think a little preventatively: If possible block the holes that mice are entering areas through, particularly mouse-proof any food-storage areas (and garbage-storage areas and anywhere else that mice might find edible things). Steel wool is great for stopping holes (since mice can’t chew through it). Also making sure good housekeeping is preventing food from lying around on the floor.
Obviously, how much of this you can do depends a lot on the facility, but it’s worth looking into.
Glue traps are stupid and useless–you just get a freaked out pooping mouse dragging the damned thing around and then you STILL get to kill the mouse yourself, but with the added fun of sticky glue all over! Yay! :rolleyes:
Be advised that the warfarin/coumadin baits do work, but the mice don’t always go tidily outside to die, and it’s really pitiful when you find one that’s in process–they roll around and writhe and twitch and squeak and it’s pretty nasty.
Snap traps. All the way. Buck twenty nine for two at my local hardware store, a bit of peanut butter and bob’s your uncle. Only once have I seen an incomplete kill, and that was because the stupid mouse managed to get so far into the trap it snapped on its butt and broke the spine right above the tail. Mostly, though, it’s one alarming noise and get the latex gloves to open the trap and dump dead mousie in the trash, then rebait with peanut butter for the next stupid rodent.
I didn’t mean to sound grumpy, I was a civil servant for a long while.
