Mice in the house

[old head]

we have mice problem.  Usually, happens this time of year.  In the past put out some DeCon pellets, done and done.  Can't get the good stuff anymore, used some "so-called" poison from Tom Cat.  Mice won't eat it.  Well first night, the mice took it out of the tray and it disappeared, put more out but nothing is chewing on it.

Put out traps with peanut butter, and some with bread.  Traps go off, but no mice.

put out the sticky trays with bread and peanut butter, nothing after 2 nights.

suggestions?  Tempted to try the high frequency gadgets. 

Old Head

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

I think you need one or more of these: 

[old head]

used to have some feral cats living around the house, never had mouse problem, then.
For some reason they left.

Not a fan of cats, outside is fine, not in the house.

[Knuckle Dragger]

I think you need one or more of these: 

The start of winter always heralds the arrival of mice raiding the larder in my household too.  Moggies CAN be efffective, but they in my experience tend to get a bit too well-fed, chubby & lazy as they age.  The most effective seem to be nursing mothers: Queens will hunt mercilessly & tirelessly to feed her kittens.

Anthropologists suggest that when Felis silvestris cattus domesticated Homo sapiens in Mesopotamia in about 10.000 BCE it allowed us to safely harvest & store surplus grains over winter.  In other words, cats were a necessary step towards human settlement and civilisation.

Rodents spoil & destroy sufficient grain on a global basis to feed an additional 200 million people.

Many people don't like cats.  They've been persecuted, maimed, tortured, burned and maligned by the ignorant for centuries.  But it's impossible to ignore their economic importance to global food production, or their enabling role in the rise of human civilisation.

[pehayes]

Not a fan of cats, outside is fine, not in the house.

Tell that to your local wild bird population.  Or, what's left of it.

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

[Knuckle Dragger]

Moles?  Do you mean the underground burrowing, worm eating, hill-forming, near-blind & naked moles, or is it another distinct species merely sharing the name.

Or do you mean Voles?

I'm fairly unfamiliar with many more obscure new-world mammalian spp.

Not surprisingly, due to co-vergent evolution there's several unique spp. populating similar ecological niches in different habitats.  Africa has its Naked Mole Rats, and Australia its Marsupial Moles.

But the Q remains:  what the hell are these subterranean burrowers doing raiding your larder?  That's traditionally more the province of smaller Rodenta:  rats, mice et. al.

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

Tell that to your local wild bird population.  Or, what's left of it.

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

My big buddy shown above and his grey companion seem almost totally disinterested in birds, but will sit for long periods where there are holes in the ground waiting and listening. I saw him digging for something the other day.

We have lots of birds, btw. 

[Lannis]

My big buddy shown above and his grey companion seem almost totally disinterested in birds, but will sit for long periods where there are holes in the ground waiting and listening. I saw him digging for something the other day.

We have lots of birds, btw.

We had five cats once upon a time, and (of course) zero mice ripping up the soft bits of the house, and zero moles tearing up the yard.   I never saw one of them with a bird, though .... The bird feeders were all high in the air, too high for the cats to get.   Having cats definitely improved our quality of life in one or two ways.

Lannis

[JJ]

There are no rodents in or around our house...  The last two "shrews" that managed to actually get in...were found "dispatched and dead" in the morning!!

[Testarossa]

In my experience (many decades of cat-watching), most outdoor cats specialize, some in birds and some in rodents. The two we have now are rescues and spent their early days feral, so they'll kill anything smaller than themselves.

When not hunting, a cat makes an efficient winter bedwarmer.





And some like Guzzis.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok.. you said you put out traps with peanut butter. Meeses *love* peanut butter. They will come up to your trap and lick the peanut butter off the trigger.  I've watched them do it on youtube.
When they find seeds, they will pick them up and take them back to their nest. Bait your trap with peanut butter, and stick a sunflower seed on it.
Mr. Mouse is attracted to the peanut butter, sees the sunflower seed, tries to pick it up and the lights go out.
I prefer a cat.. we never had a meeses problem for 34 years with Ray, and then Radar in the house, but the sunflower seed trick works, and doesn't need a litter box.

[old head]

I will pick up some sunflower seeds and give it a try.

I built this also, no mice in 4 nights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI

Old Head

[Sasquatch Jim]

 Tomcats are just ball bearing mousetraps but the mom cats are the real hunters.
 But if the mouse problem is bad you need a bucket trap.  a large bucket of water about 3 or 4 inches deep.
 Duck tape a flat piece of yardstick to the rim of the bucket so that about 40% of it extends over the water and it pivot easily.  Set the bucket so that the stick extends to something solid that the mice can get on.
 put a wad of peanut butter on the end of the stick that is over the water.  The mice will walk out the stick to get the peanut butter and the stick will tilt under the mouses weight dumping him into the water.  Theater makes it so the mouse cannot jump up out of the bucket and he drowns.  Each morning you can dump out the dead mice and refill the water in the bucket and make sure there is fresh peanut butter on the stick.  If you have a bad mouse problem, this can kill about
 2 dozen mice a night.  Until there are enough mice in the bucket for them to stand on without sinking into the water.
 then they might be able to jump out and get away.  Be sure and put this trap where your dog can't eat the bait off the stick cause he will.

[not-fishing]

I just bought a big box of bait and tossed it around the attic.

For the garage I set traps where my dogs couldn't reach.

Then there protecting all the food that's attracting them.

Mine was rice in the garage, dog food/treats in my pheasant hunting vest (also a new vest) and generally making any garage stored food unavailable to mice

[Gusable]

First off I love that tuxedo cat
Second. Good ol’ victor rat trap with the peanut butter.
Key is set the trigger super “hair”!  If they get the butter and make it out alive they’ll be back for the next “ snack” lol
You gotta bait em” sometimes.

[guzzisteve]

get a outside cat or inside dog a Terrier, they(some) are rat dogs. Our cat of 20 yrs died and we got a rat dog, nothing lives in the fenced in area. THey don't come off the fence.




2014 porsche cayenne gts 0 60

[frozengoose]

Back in the day, when we had a lot more sled dogs, we bought dog food by the ton. Well the mice liked that just fine, but our old barn cat had a cure for it. She'd hang out in the shed and dispatch the mice as fast as they arrived. Now a days, we don't have so many dogs, so a lot less dog food. So the cats have to find other stuff to do...



Entertain the sled dogs.





Exercise on the TP, then sleep in the sink. But they still take out mice, voles, shrews, squirrels. or anything else that's smaller than they are. Pest removal system.

[fotoguzzi]

Make a bucket trap, don't need to reload often, use a smear of peanut butter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI

[MMRanch]

Old Head

Those aren't mice your dealing with !

get yourself a couple of those small Live traps made like an oblong box with a trap door on one end , and a bait/trigger station on the other.    Yea they cost $15.oo ... But ... They last a life time . 

:grin:https://www.amazon.com/Kensizer-Animal-Humane-Chipmunk-Outdoor/dp/B07331WZ6G/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=live+trap&qid=1578206314&sr=8-12

I've got them and a mouse can trigger them but they are big enough for a big rat .   Money well spent , but they are only 5" or so and too small for catching cats ??? 

even lower $$$$ :  https://www.amazon.com/Fasmov-Hamsters-Weasels-Gophers-Rodents/dp/B075FRQ78W/ref=sr_1_40?keywords=live+trap&qid=1578206314&sr=8-40


 

[Murray]

How cold does it get there, a few bobtails and maybe a carpet python might be helpful.

[jkguzzi]

Years ago a friend told me the best mouse trap bait were chocolate chips and I thought he was pulling my leg. I put 3 or 4 chips on a plate and soften them, not melt, in the microwave and then glue one to the trap where the bait goes. They like chocolate and can't get the bait off without tripping the trap. Plus the bait normally stays on the trap. I have caught as many as 3 mice on one chip. Very Guzzi-like economy.

[kballowe]

Leroy, the 20-pound Tom cat.





Squeaky The Enforcer.
We ran out of mice






They catch mice and squirrels and moles and other four-legged creatures - and they eat pretty much what they catch.

Except moles

Moles taste like dirt.

[Ncdan]

[SIR REAL ED]

ditto on the cats solution.  cats are a superior life form, for all those humans who don't like cats, just imagine how the cats feel about you!

Lots of great experiences with cats over he decades.  I watched Azeem once eat a rabbit that must have been 3/4 of the size of his own body.  Terry Tiger had legs that seemed a couple inches too long for his body.  I threw out a moldy orange one day and witnessed the fastest land animal I had ever seen.  Hundreds of kills over 15 years, very affectionate, yet came inside only about 20 hours a year.  Spara who is a bit chunky, is an efficient killer, likes to show off by bringing the trophies into house, occasionally even the live snake.

Some day, when the aliens or SkyNet decide to wipe out humanity, we will once again be praying to the Cat gods to save us.

http://www.onthenatureofthings.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=977

[twowheeladdict]

Tell that to your local wild bird population.  Or, what's left of it.

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

Wind turbines take out more birds and bats than cats ever will.  Look it up. 

[LowRyter]

Tomcats are just ball bearing mousetraps but the mom cats are the real hunters.
 But if the mouse problem is bad you need a bucket trap.  a large bucket of water about 3 or 4 inches deep.
 Duck tape a flat piece of yardstick to the rim of the bucket so that about 40% of it extends over the water and it pivot easily.  Set the bucket so that the stick extends to something solid that the mice can get on.
 put a wad of peanut butter on the end of the stick that is over the water.  The mice will walk out the stick to get the peanut butter and the stick will tilt under the mouses weight dumping him into the water.  Theater makes it so the mouse cannot jump up out of the bucket and he drowns.  Each morning you can dump out the dead mice and refill the water in the bucket and make sure there is fresh peanut butter on the stick.  If you have a bad mouse problem, this can kill about
 2 dozen mice a night.  Until there are enough mice in the bucket for them to stand on without sinking into the water.
 then they might be able to jump out and get away.  Be sure and put this trap where your dog can't eat the bait off the stick cause he will.

Hilarious in a perverse way.

I am laughing my ass off but feel guilty for it.

[hauto]

Noticed no mice this year in the basement.Maybe the 4 foot snake skin I found down there has something to do with it. Luckily where I'm at really no poisonous snakes.

[Howard R]

The cat is to lazy to bother with them, and I think they're eating the cat's food.  Looks like its time to clean out all the junk in the garage.

You don't have a rodent problem.  You have a cat food problem.  Solve the latter and the cat will take care of the former.

[Sheepdog]

We have a farm, so we have rodents, but they don't come near our quarters. We carefully sealed our house, have two cats on the porch and a Jack Russell Terrier inside. The only time we see rats or mice is when our pets deliver them to the stoop...quite limp and devoid of life. However, the Jack Russell once brought me an adolescent opossum that was faking!. That was interesting...

[larrys]

I had good luck this year using peanuts in the old fashioned wooden mouse traps. I spread the clip apart enough to wedge a peanut into it. Caught a whole mouse family (7) with two traps in a week in my garage. My four shiftless layabouts are too old and fat to care about mice.
Larry