Mouse in the house confusing our musing

[Stubee]

I love animals but do not want mice in my house. No mercy here as they are persistent & destructive.

Try some glue traps where you see ‘em running.

 

[guitar_paul1]

I found using latex gloves to keep your scent off the traps helps a bit.

 

[Toto'sDad]

Get a cat

https://external-content.duckduckgo...13e78867f01139031d4d42ab2b9ec78ad6&ipo=images

 

[Bob Womack]

To the rescue.

Bob

 

[Happy Enchilada]

We rented a house in rural Colorado for a while that had hot and cold running mice.
Our oldest was just 2 at the time, and they ran around in the room where he slept.
I tried all sorts of traps, and here's what worked:
Old-school Victor spring traps like in the cartoons.
Baited with Velveeta.

 

[Joebanjocolo]

We rented a house in rural Colorado for a while that had hot and cold running mice.
Our oldest was just 2 at the time, and they ran around in the room where he slept.
I tried all sorts of traps, and here's what worked:
Old-school Victor spring traps like in the cartoons.
Baited with Velveeta.

We had an off grid home in western CO. Same thing mice everywhere. They are destructive little demons. I was at war with the little buggers , snap traps,glue boards, poison in the little boxes. After a year of this I adopted 2 cats and within a month or two the mice were gone. The cats always left a trophy from each kill, tail, internal organs and the like just to let me know the were on the job. I never liked cats before, but I do now.

 

[mixmkr 2023]

Google bucket traps. By far the best. No water in the bottom makes them no kill.
They carry diseases...you want them gone. They'll breed extremely fast. ASAP is important.

 

[wulfenganck]

My mother had mice from the garden in her house. We thought they entered through the front door, because she usually keeps the front door open when getting the laundry or doing gardening stuff etc. It was in fact through the pipeline for the powerline running into the basement.
We tried those no-kill-traps, but they were to smart to enter in. Sadly we had to use kill-traps, because: where's one, there will be a dozen soon. My sister even dicovered a nest in her car and the damn critters chewed on her radio wiring. They entered when she left the door open to get some stuff out of the trunk. A week later she found birdseed in the trunk, searched the car and found a nest near the spare tire. I don't mind them in the garden, but they are not going to take over the house.
We caught 2 over a week in the no-kill-traps, but we knew they were a lot more enjoying running circles in the basement. The very simple spring traps did the trick. About 6 caught in one week. Small pieces of meat sausage covered in chocolate cream lured them straight to rodent's heaven.
This and sealing the power line running into the basement.
Haven't had any problems for 2 years.

 

[johnny k]

You guys want to kill them ? you monsters ! ! build them a nice lego mazes and see them have fun for the sake of science ! this is to be taken as a joke. thank you.

 

[TeleTucson]

So we've had a (very brown) mouse dashing around our house for a month now, with no luck capturing him. (We set out a few peanut-butter-laced no-kill traps in seemingly savvy places. Nada.) Figuring out where he's hiding during the day and what the hell he's up to at night is just as puzzling.

Between 1 and 3 a.m. every night (I'm often up late grading papers & etc.) he scampers from the music room into our small middle-of-the-house hallway, behind the big pine cabinet beneath our TV----and then dashes from that right toward the (recliner) chair I'm in. Across the open floor, and the bright light. Then he disappears. I've flipped the chair over and looked and poked around it aplenty with a flashlight. Nada. He could be zipping beyond the chair, but he's nowhere to be found under the baseboard radiators, under/in any other furniture in the front room (including the couch), etc. At times, two hearty teens are helping me flip furniture over to try to find where he went, sliding a broom all along the space between the radiator and floor, etc. And our dog, who's quite feral, will leap off the couch at the mouse's diagonal dash, only to lose it, each time, when it reaches my chair.

So
1) What is this guy doing? Why is he exposing himself to such risk as that, running into the one room that's lit and occupied, by not just bidpeds but by the dog?

2) Where could he be going? The kitchen is at the other end of the house, and there have to be safer routes to it (e.g., through the basement and up through plumbing holes and framing spaces, etc.). We cleaned all the crumbs out of the front room as soon as the mouse showed up. We vacuumed under the couch cushions, we move the furniture and sweep several times a week, etc. The three of us poking around with flashlights not only can't find him once he disappears into the room, but we don't see any signs of him. No feces, no chewed-into this and that, no nesting.

3) He's nowhere to be found in the music room, too. (Plus, since he isn't nesting in the '74 Bandmaster Reverb in there, I'm considering him an anti-Fender metal head.)

4) Since he's ignoring the traps, should we bait them with something other/better than peanut butter? If so, what?

I admire his chutzpah and laugh that he's outwitting us. But having had hanta virus already once, and just recoiling from the idea of rodents in the house (lawyer jokes left aside here), I do want him out. Alive, but elsewhere. It's his world, too, yes, but our home.

Thanks for your advice here.

It's about the bait. I've never found peanut butter to work.

A single raisin in the old school wooden Victor spring traps ($2.39 for a two pack at your local Ace) works like a champ. The raisin need to be mushed onto the trap lever. Trap should be against a wall with the bait side towards the wall so the mouse comes across it on its way around the room. As others have said, you'll need to repeat this a number of times because you'll have more than one.

 

[trapdoor2]

I had mice in my trailer (1980s). My buddy sez, "You got mice? Here's a kitten." The kitten had been hanging around his office window.

I was on that cats staff for 18yrs. He never caught a single mouse. I think they employed him as a bouncer for their midnight dances.

Victor snap-traps. I've had the best luck with JIF peanut butter. There is a new pack of traps on the counter as I suspect an intruder in the garage...

 

[Guitharley]

Google bucket traps. By far the best. No water in the bottom makes them no kill.
They carry diseases...you want them gone. They'll breed extremely fast. ASAP is important.

Yes...they will take over...get em gone (as in gone gone)

 

[Skydog1010]

Your chair is a mouse condo, it will reach max capacity soon.

Glue traps and canine, not a good mix.

Spring snap traps best used with cheese.
There is a learning curve for setting the cheese because the crafty little rascals will snack and run. Using disposable gloves for setting up the traps and disposal are recommend.

If you use glue traps be very mindful of what else could logistically get into them.

Good luck.

One last thing, look behind the frig and look into all drawers with any type of fabric material, especially cotton.

 

[Mjark]

It’s living in the chair.

 

[Marc Morfei]

I have very extensive experience with mice in our house. Trust me, the old fashioned spring-loaded snap traps work best. Peanut butter for bait. Put a few of them around. You’ll catch them.

 

[Brian J.]

I had a mice problem that used to intensify as the weather got colder I was trapping them but never could get a handle on it. For every mouse I would trap a new one would appear. I went out and got a cat, the mice just sort of disappeared after that he killed a couple and I guess the rest got the word, haven't saw a mouse in three years.

 

[Martian]

I found peanut butter to not work. Cheese did work in the no kill traps.
The no kill traps didnt end the problem though. I wonder if the same mice learn and get back in in the same spot?
I had to go to old fashioned kill traps. It was ugly to kill the critters but the word got out and they went away entirely!
Beware that there will be others and you'll find an ugly crappy wet nasty nest in a closet many months from now. I found one in my underwear drawer 3 feet up once!
They must communicate. Seriously! They'd come out at night and walk right past us into the kitchen while we sat in the living room.

Also, it was so bad at one point that they built a stash of bird seeds and dog kibbles in my archtop! (see below) View attachment 1085559

The fiends!

 

[Martian]

I agree with Skydog. They’re in your chair. One? 3? 7, 10? Who knows?! You can test this theory out by putting a chunk of liverwurst in your back pocket then sitting down to watch a long movie, Lawrence of Arabia, perhaps. Afterwards check to see if your sandwich meat is still in one piece. Most likely not. The only sane thing to do then is to haul the chair outside and burn it on the lawn. And do it quickly while they’re still goofy on a liverwurst high. Don’t make a scene. Don’t gloat. Just do it, get back inside and get on with your life.

 

[tery]

Kill them before they start breeding.

 

[gitold]