[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Getting rid of mice..... (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 11/3/2013 10:53:28 AM EDT
| How do I go about this? I've never had mice before until last week. A couple of vacant houses were torn down nearby, and apparently want to move in with us. We thought it was a single mouse, and I thought I knew were he was coming in from so I sprayed foam under the cabinet, and put out snap traps. So far we've caught 2 in the traps. Just keep leaving traps out? I'm at a loss |
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If you have somewhere to put a bucket trap they work nice and can kill many a day, and pretty low maintenance.
5 gallon pail with 3-4 inches of water welding rod or piece of clothes hanger, spanning the width of the bucket, attached via 2 small holes 1/2" down from top of bucket empty tin can with hole in center of top and bottom, insert this on to center of rod in bucket peanut butter, spread on can some sort of ramp to the bait. |
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Great photo. Yours? |
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You can be reactive as much as you want but they will continue to invade.
I recommend being proactive and sealing up your home as best you can to prevent the invasion. Spray foam any small openings where they can get in. Usually in and around the homes foundation, or between the foundation and siding. Once you get the house sealed up use snap traps loaded with peanut butter to destroy the lurkers. |
| Yep, just keep setting traps and make certain that you have found all entry points. They can fit through a much smaller hole than you probably think they can. Whatever you do, don't use poison, unless you want dead mice rotting in your walls and stinking the place up. |
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Quoted: Great photo. Yours? Quoted: Great photo. Yours? I wish. I've never seen a mountain lion in the wild. I've seen their tracks many times. There are two on display at the San Diego Zoo. One, a female, was raised as a household pet by a family that had children, dogs, and house cats. She acts friendly, and will look people right in the eye and say "Meow!" |
| We have year long problem. So far nothing in the house. I have used a lot of methods. Cats work well to a point. Poisons like Decon work but they go into walls and other inexcessible places and then stink for awhile. I will be using traps again and attach fishing line(20lb) so they can't run away with the traps. Peanut Butter is best. I will set out 20+ traps. Outside cats, feed them only enough to stay around. |
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Not just your neighboring houses being gone and the mice being driven out of those houses. Cold weather is arriving and that is driving the mice to seek places to stay for the winter. And without other structures around they are concentrating on your house.
As has been said, properly plugging all possible entrances is your best bet to keep them out. And keep your traps out. |
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Get a 5 gallon bucket and bury it in the ground until the rim is only 2-3 inches above the ground. Next drill a hole in the rim and put a piece of straightened coat hanger through both of the holes and put an empty plastic soda bottle with holes drilled in the lid and the bottom on this coat hanger or steel rod so that the bottle spins freely on the rod. Next put a platform or ramp out of wood or anything from the ground to the rim of the bucket. Fill the bucket with 6 inches of water and coat the outside of the bottle in peanut butter. The mice will jump from the platform onto the peanut butter covered bottle which will spin and dump them into the water below. We used these at my parents cabin and I remember that the first week there were still living mice in the bucket because we killed so many mice that some were able to stand on the other dead mice and not drown. Probably dumped 2-300 mice out of each bucket each week for a few months.
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Quoted:
Get a 5 gallon bucket and bury it in the ground until the rim is only 2-3 inches above the ground. Next drill a hole in the rim and put a piece of straightened coat hanger through both of the holes and put an empty plastic soda bottle with holes drilled in the lid and the bottom on this coat hanger or steel rod so that the bottle spins freely on the rod. Next put a platform or ramp out of wood or anything from the ground to the rim of the bucket. Fill the bucket with 6 inches of water and coat the outside of the bottle in peanut butter. The mice will jump from the platform onto the peanut butter covered bottle which will spin and dump them into the water below. We used these at my parents cabin and I remember that the first week there were still living mice in the bucket because we killed so many mice that some were able to stand on the other dead mice and not drown. Probably dumped 2-300 mice out of each bucket each week for a few months. I tried that trap and ended up catching chipmunks, which don't bother me in the yard so I took it down. |
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We rented a house that was filled with mice once, and it took a combination of traps, plugging the holes from the outside with steel wool/expanding foam, and a semi-feral cat moving in to get rid of them all. I would set out snap-traps but the women of the house(Mrs. IHJ and our daughters)insisted that glue traps were more humane. More humane to the squeamish females in the house, not the mice, as I found several stuck in the traps that had had their heads eaten off by the other mice more than once. They even caught a crow once after setting the trap out on the back porch with a live mouse stuck to it, and the damn bird flew down and grabbed it! It flew off, trap and all, before it got free, or I would have shot it with a pellet rifle because I'm NOT getting my eyes pecked out trying to free a damn raven.
Mama Cat had a litter of kittens and they cleared out the rest of the mice, but we had to then remove the damn cats from underneath the house. |
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I live at a old farm house (1890s) for 25 years and every fall/winter I run my "trap line"
Would have 10 to 15 traps set at any given time baited with peanut butter. Sometimes I would be watching TV and hear a snap and have to reset traps 3-4 times before I went to bed. My friends would call me on the phone and ask me what I was up to and I would tell them... "running my trap line". "I only need 500 more mouse pelts to make my winter coat so I should be nice and warm by next week". 
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. Don't ask me how I know.........
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Victor tin cats. Never need resetting; just put some D-con in them and empty them every couple of weeks. I have one tin cat in my back yard that has caught almost 30 mice over the past two years. |
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Quoted:
If you have somewhere to put a bucket trap they work nice and can kill many a day, and pretty low maintenance. 5 gallon pail with 3-4 inches of water welding rod or piece of clothes hanger, spanning the width of the bucket, attached via 2 small holes 1/2" down from top of bucket empty tin can with hole in center of top and bottom, insert this on to center of rod in bucket peanut butter, spread on can some sort of ramp to the bait. These. You don't have to do anything with em. Nice and cheap. Unless you have small kids. They can drown in a 5 gallon pail. |
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Quoted:
You can be reactive as much as you want but they will continue to invade. I recommend being proactive and sealing up your home as best you can to prevent the invasion. Spray foam any small openings where they can get in. Usually in and around the homes foundation, or between the foundation and siding. Once you get the house sealed up use snap traps loaded with peanut butter to destroy the lurkers. This and poison, even if you don't do the top suggestion the poison will most likely work. Will smell for for a few day when one dies. |
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Get a cat. Problem solved. They enjoy killing/hunting. Seriously I have no mice so my cat has taken to relentlessly stalking and killing any unfortunate bug that finds its way in, even flying bugs. I don't know how he does it but he's my very own air defense network. Like a little tiger striped ZSU-23/4 taking down moths/flies. |
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One 5 gallon bucket.
One board or stick for ramp. One rod, metal or wood. One soda can. 2 gallons of water. Peanut butter. Bottomless Mouse Trap Another 
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Quoted:
You can be reactive as much as you want but they will continue to invade. I recommend being proactive and sealing up your home as best you can to prevent the invasion. Spray foam any small openings where they can get in. Usually in and around the homes foundation, or between the foundation and siding. Once you get the house sealed up use snap traps loaded with peanut butter to destroy the lurkers. Start with this^^^. A natural repellant that REALLY works is Peppermint OIL, NOT Extract. The menthol is a repellant that the mice hate. A few drops on a cotton ball dropped in the area you're finding evidence of mice will help drive them out. |
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Snap traps with peanut butter smeared on the triggers.
Empty, repeat as needed. Old school is still best. ETA: Had a bag of grass seed in the garage once...once. Then it was a bag of grass seed shells and mouse poop. (Poop thread!) Emptied that trap 15 times before they quit coming back. |
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Looks just like our cat! And my wife just said the other day, that we hadn't had a mouse since we got her. Before the cat, we had to do traps every fall, and sometimes in the winter. |
| You can not get rid of mice....period. You can only keep even or just slightly ahead of the next one. Traps, poison, cat and never let up. At some point you may find peace.....But it will be short lived. Continuous vigilance on mice. Especially once they get in. Good luck |
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I get them BAD in the fall, since I live around fields that get harvested. I go with the glue traps around every door. I steer away from bait/poison, because I'm afraid of one getting into a tight space and stinking up the joint. At this point a cat would just about pay for itself. ETA: Be VERY mindful when coming in doors or opening up your garage. They like to sit in door frames and sneak in when you open it up. I have killed many that were poised to pull this off. |
In a similar thread many years ago I offered instructions on how to use the curved lid of a soap dish, BB's and homebrew to make Rat-B-Gone rodent claymores, and warned that you might piss off HH6 by turning grandma's bone china into nonmetallic shrapnel, but got a warning because of it, so I shall not do so again.
[F.H. Leghorn]It's a joke, ah sez a joke...y'know, HUMOR son HUMOR..somethin you could use'a bit more of yourself....[/F.H. Leghorn] |
