Ach! Mice..

[volvoguy87]

Spiders.

Here's a little trick I learned for energy efficiency, but it works for pest control as well.

Look for spider webs. Spiders build their webs where food comes in. If you see spider webs, rest assured that there are gaps / leaks very close by. Find those holes, seal them, and remove the web. If the spider does not rebuild the web, job well done. If the web keeps reappearing you didn't completely seal the hole.

Clear as mud?
Dave

 

[iheartmaytag]

Traps

I had never had a problem.  Then about two years ago I noticed little presents under the cabinets.  Then one day looked up in the living room and there sat by the TV a little brown Mickey. 

 

Because of kids, cat, and dog in house, I opted for traps, and barriers.  First searched the outside and found the entry way, a large crack from the summer dry spell led into the foundation.  I filled that up with the clumps from the kitty box.    Kind of putting the little buggers on notice that there is a cat present.  No matter how fat, declawed, and fed he is I thought his poop would be a deterrent. 

 

Evidently the methods worked,  not seen a guest again.  I still keeps the traps around, just in case.  BTW--The mice  love(ed) Oreos. 

 

[runematic]

At our cabin, it is impossible to keep the mice out.  A few hunting seasons ago, the big thing at night was to sit in the living room and watch the trap set at a whole in the wall.  Bang!  One down.  reset trap. Bang!  Another dead.  This went on for a long time.  the different cabin members had kept a tally from the beginning of October to the end of January.  The grand total was 76 mice!  Those are just the ones we caught.  We don't use poison because we all take our dogs up at different times of the year.  There is absolutely no way to seal this old place up to keep them out.

 

[kb0nes]

Multi catch traps

A few years back I had a girlfriend that had a number of mice living on her apartment balcony. She fed the birds to keep her cats entertained, and the seed attracted the mice.

To catch them a hobby farm friend of hers loaned us one of these multi catch wind up traps. I set the trap on the deck again bated with peanut butter. It caught 6 mice within a 1/2 hour!

Kinda cool to see a video of it in action!

 

[launderess]

multi catch wind up traps

You see those in the basements of many NYC apartment buildings including those in some very pricey areas such as Central Park West and Fifth Avenue.

 

[tolivac]

Like that spring trap-let the mice go outside-----and they can run the guantlet from the neighbors cats!And to add to the fun--A hawk patrols the neighborhood, too!

 

[twintubdexter]

story time, not mice but rats...

In the almost 15 years I have lived here in the desert I have never seen a mouse. Rats on the other hand are a different story. When I first moved into this house there was a squirrel that lived between the back block wall and the big waterfall for my spa. Even though squirrels are members of the rodent family I thought it was fun watching him from my kitchen window so I started putting out a pie tin of sunflower seeds for him to munch on. The tin needed to be refilled daily. One morning I noticed that the tin was surrounded by big brown rats...desert rats I guess. When I went out to investigate the rats went over the wall into the neighbor's yard. That was the end of the sunflower episode and the squirrel never came back. 

 

Last year some friends that live in a mobile home near me asked if I could look at their dishwasher. It stopped working. It was an easy fix...rats had chewed through the electrical cord. When I told them they said I was mistaken, "we do not have rats"...this after I showed them the droppings under the dishwasher. So much for showing appreciation.

 

Many years ago our next door neighbor was a very good friend. We would play practical jokes on each other. These houses had horizontal studs in the walls, not vertical ones. This provided a highway for rats to get from one room to the other.   My partner had installed one of those vintage ironing boards in his kitchen wall. One day we could hear the rats fighting in the ironing board and I thought I saw a tail stick out. He of course insisted there were no rats in his house. A friend and I took a black giant marker and "painted" a handful of rice with it. We then spread it around a few of his kitchen cabinets. It was good for a few laughs until we confessed but it was very convincing. I was bad.

 

One more quickie...During inventory time in the Downtown San Francisco Emporium which was an immense store that had been there for about 100 years, occasionally you would hear the inventory takers, mostly ladies, scream when they would disturb a rat's nest in one of the stock areas. These were not your typical domestic house rats, they were giant-sized city rats. I once saw a little girl chasing one in the basement store saying "here kitty kitty."

 

[tolivac]

Rats made GREAT targets to shoot at-a small town dump in S.Dak.Good for afternoon target pratice-those buggars were tough-took a .22 loaded with hollowpoints to stop them.Hit them with solids-they would just flinch.Shoot them with a 12Ga with #6 duck&Pheasant loads-they disappear!The town liked folks shooting the rats.And the dump would yeild good bottles and cans for salvage-recycling.