Mouse - Help?

MBC

Last weekend I spotted a mouse in our Kitchen, it ran behind our washing machine. I have put traps down with cheese on them hoping to catch the little fecker. Then last night I seen another smaller (looked like a baby) mouse running toward the same area.

So I decided to check the traps and the intelligent feckers took the cheese of the 3 traps and the traps never went off??? If I don't catch these my girlfriend who of course ****s herself even thinking of them is going to do a runner (maybe I should keep the mice ) .........

Question: Should a mouse be cornered??? I always had this theory that if you corner a mouse it would jump for your neck and bite and you could die.......am I crazy thinking this??? and do mice bite?

Or any other help on how to catch these would be very much appreciated.

monkeyfudge

Use peanut butter instead of cheese... they can't get that off without setting off the trap.

connundrum

Tbh

Lone Wolf

Or put some bacon on the traps and then burn it with a match, the smell attracts them and the bacnon is really hard to get of the trap

Archeron

If the traps arent working, you could try ultra sonic pest control. A mate of mine got it and his mousy problem went away immediately. Although, be careful, because even though humans arent meant to hear the noise, I could. It wasnt uncomfortable, but it was a bit weird.

Heres a few Google results.

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&cr=countryIE&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=vermin+control+ultrasonic&spell=1

monkeyfudge

Archeron wrote:

Although, be careful, because even though humans arent meant to hear the noise, I could. It wasnt uncomfortable, but it was a bit weird.

Dear god! Are you a human/mouse hybrid?

jobonar

MBC wrote:

Question: Should a mouse be cornered??? I always had this theory that if you corner a mouse it would jump for your neck and bite and you could die.......am I crazy thinking this??? and do mice bite?

eh i think thats rats not mice... can't imagine a mouse jumping that high or having the teeth to do a human much damage!!

buy a cat!! ftw. you'll never see a mouse again...

Archeron

monkeyfudge wrote:

Dear god! Are you a human/mouse hybrid?

Ahem.

bluto63

We got a cat. Best decision ever.

jobonar

Archeron wrote:

Ahem.

now a mouse that size would attack ya if ya cornered him!! :eek:

scojones

This may sound mad, but cook some smokey rashers and use them in the trap. Rap them around so they cannot be taken off. I had a big mouse problem in new house I moved into. I laid down 6 traps, and within 15 minutes I had 6 dead mice.

Ruu_Old

Indeed a few tiny pieces of bacon does the trick normally or watch a few espisodes of Tom and Jerry maybe you might get some ideas.

MBC

Cheers for the help people. So its streakies all round for dinner 2nite.

InFront

Someone said something recently about a woman who leaves Mars bars around her house and the mice that eat them die, and that's how she gets rid of mice...

Was that boards or real life? The two seem to be slowly merging:eek:

Miguel_Sanchez

If they keep getting the bait and getting away you could always buy one of those humane traps. They get in and get the food and the door closes. Of course you have a live mouse in a cage to deal with the next morning so if you're scared of the little feckers then that's no good.

Once they're in though there's no possible way for them to get the food and get out. Not unless they're super-mice.

They're not.... super-mice... are they?

MBC

I don't know Jeff but when I checked behind the fridge the last time I saw
A tiny weights Bench, Chuckle Sticks, A black belt and a photo of Chuck Norris........:D

Diogenes

Electric trap. It has a grill on one side you smear some peanut butter on the grill and leave a lump on the other side, the mouse licks the peanut butter on the grill and thinks "mmmmm more of that, scurries around and walks down the tunnel to the lump of peanut butter and Zap! it's fried. Killed our mouse an hour after we put it down. And unlike conviently traps theres no blood or chance of wounding or crippling a mouse that you then have to put out of its misery, which, to be fair, isn't the most pleasant way to start your day.

Cost around 40€ though. Aren't cheap but working with those sonic thingajigs we've not had a mouse issue in weeks. Don't penny pinch and buy those really cheap traps, they don't work at all.

Rhyme

jobonar wrote:

now a mouse that size would attack ya if ya cornered him!! :eek:

Tis a rat, Rodney isnt it?

Lure it with peanut butter and smash it with a hammer.

junkyard

Why don't you get a humane mouse trap and set them free? You don't have to kill them.

Diogenes

junkyard wrote:

Why don't you get a humane mouse trap and set them free? You don't have to kill them.

cause then you need to set the piss spraying feral buggers free

junkyard

Its not their fault they're like that, thats just the way they are, no need to kill them, nature is cruel enough to them already.:(

Diogenes

junkyard wrote:

Its not their fault they're like that, thats just the way they are, no need to kill them, nature is cruel enough to them already.:(

I remember an article in the guardian about a woman who caught a succession of mice in her humane traps and the released the in the park

The 1st was so terrified it ran into traffic and got killed

the 2nd was so confused it sprinted into a lake and drowned itself

the 3rd ran around in the open grass and was killed by a cat.

House mice or door mice are capable of living in domestic environments and are pretty much useless in any form of rural environment, so if you release a captured mouse into the wild you are dooming it to, at most, a few hours of terror, and then death. Far better to kill them quickly and humanly.

bounty_hunter

Chocolate also works extremely well in traps, mice love it. Melt a piece of Mars Bar or something a little bit and smear it onto the trap so it sticks (to stop them grabbing it and running off...). I don't condone the use of such traps but if you want to use them there's not much I can do about it.

Contrary to popular belief mice aren't actually very fond of cheese.

tallus

I used bacon in the humane trap a few years back and caught 2 mice and released them a mile or two from the house. After that I got me a cat. No more problems.

MBC

Right people - They are super mice.............

I did what was suggested and did the Bacon in the traps (3 traps )thing.......I bought 2 cooked rashers from the shop down the road, Wedged a small piece into the 2 plastic traps, also put 2 pieces onto the wooded trap (I even sellotaped 1 piece)........this was at about 10am Sat morning! and put the traps behind the dishwasher (which is easier to drag out than the washing machine - but they are right next to each other)

Went back Sunday morning - The wooden trap looked as if it had been dragged around for a bit but still hadn't gone off - sellotaped piece still intact, other piece gone..........2 plastic traps still had bacon intact and looked like they hadn't been touched...............


So I checked again last nite and no movement.............

Question: do I just wait and keep checking or put fresh bits of bacon on????

Cheers for the help people!

ladyez

See below, an excerpt from a friends blog, quite a unique way to kill off a mousey

Post-gig Friday night I left the Borderline a little earlier than usual (sorry if you bought me a drink and I never got the chance to get you one back) as I was staying on the other side of town, and didn’t want to get lost, and end up sleeping in Clapham Common. After heading across London to my sisters’ flat, a few more drinks were taken whilst dissecting the current crop of new bands (The Kooks = Good, The Zutons =Bad) until at around 5am it was time to call it a night.

By this stage, rather than go through the palaver of setting up the spare bed I decided that the quick-and-dirty (but zero hassle) sofa cushions on the floor trick was my best bet for a place to sleep, so I staggered to the lounge and made a valiant stab at a makeshift bunk.

Bearing in mind the previous nights exuberance I awoke feeling relatively fresh, and as such didn’t feel the need to consume the regulation 2 paracetamol and 1 ibuprofen hangover remedy that I compulsively leave next to my bed every time I have a drinking session (it’s hard wired in! I’ve woken up fully clothed, upside down in bed, but they’re always there with a glass of water…). Instead I called out to the shadowy figure attempting to quietly navigate the kitchen to enquire about the chance of some brekkie.

As it happens it was my sister’s fella, who greeted me with the phrase ‘Yeah, are poached eggs OK with… WHAT THE **** IS THAT?!’

As if I was being left a godfather-style warning from the disgruntled security staff at the Borderline (ask Mikey…), lying prostate next to me was the body of a dead mouse. Seriously. I had been happily dozing there next to it and not even noticed!

My first reaction was to leap out of bed and demand that someone call the police immediately. In hindsight this may have been something of an over-reaction, but emotionally drained as I was from the previous night I was in no state to be dealing with rodents, dead or alive.

The remaining residents of the flat were quickly raised in an attempt to locate someone that could provide a degree of perspective on the incident, as neither my sister’s fella nor myself could quite comprehend what we were dealing with. Unfortunately all we got was a few photos on my someone’s camera phone before people lost interest and went back to bed, leaving the two of us in the same predicament as before.

After a quick smoke and a cuppa it was decided to assess the situation scientifically. Step one: establish cause of death. Had I rolled onto it in the night and crushed it? Had my snoring terrified it into an early grave? There were plenty of questions, but worryingly few answers. We were getting nowhere fast, and there were speed cameras everywhere.

It was around this point that bailiff’s representing the firm I had mortgaged my liver to the night before came to collect payment, and it became evident that I was going to need my patented hangover cocktail after all. So I returned to the scene of the crime to retrieve my glass of water and 3 magic pills, only to find the water untouched next to a small pile of white crumbs… the bloody mouse had only gone and over-dosed on my hangover remedy!

It seems that the cheeky bugger had taken a fancy to my over the counter stash, and had necked the lot before crawling in to bed and passing out. He only went and pulled a Jimi Hendrix on me!

In the tradition of the great dead rock and rollers (Bonham, Moon, Morrison, Joplin, the list goes on) in an opiate induced stupor the furry fella had apparently choked on his own vomit, and been granted free entry to the great gig in the sky.

As it turns out, said rodent had been raiding my sister’s flat for some weeks, but due to nobody ever managing to actually see the mouse in person it had simply been nicknamed ‘Russell’. Although initially annoyed that nobody warned me I might be sharing my lodgings with someone furrier than Johnny B, I was soon caught up in the air of sadness that filled the flat. It was as if an old friend had left an empty space on the sofa, so to fill the hole a battery-powered singing kung-fu gerbil was quickly procured and given pride of place on the mantle, to remind us of good old Russell and his cheeky plague-spreading antics.

It was only on the train home that I began to wonder if Russell had actually done me a favour, and taken a bullet for me. What if it was a poisonous batch of paracetamol, and had it not been for Russell and his insane craving for narcotics it would be me lying in my sisters back garden in a Sainsbury’s bag?

So next time you’re staggering to the medicine cupboard at 6am, listen out for the sound of scurrying at the skirting board, and leave out a couple of extra aspirin on the bed side table. You never know, it just might be Russell, still chasing that next fix.

Paulie

Our man in Havana

jobonar wrote:

eh i think thats rats not mice... can't imagine a mouse jumping that high or having the teeth to do a human much damage!!

buy a cat!! ftw. you'll never see a mouse again...

We have 11 cats & still have mice! So a cat will not guarentee a mouse free house.

BTW a cornered rat is actually trying to jump over the human - they are more scared of us than we are of them.

FranknFurter

If you want to capture the mouse, make sure your trap is not hampered by anything other than bait (bacon, wholemeal bread or peanut butter is best), no sellotape, you would be surprised how much of a difference a little bit of tape makes to a highly sensitive trap mechanism.

Personally I would use humane traps but I understand its not always possible.
you may also want to make sure there is absolutely no other food available for it for a few nights, hoover up every crumb you have dropped during the day, mice aint that stupid, and if there is absolutely no other choice they will have to tackle the trap.

b

myjugsarehuge

Diogenes wrote:

House mice or door mice are capable of living in domestic environments and are pretty much useless in any form of rural environment.

I agree with the house mice bit as by their very name they usually live in houses or farm buildings. I used a humane trap to get rid of mine last year but didn't realise you had to let the buggers go a mile away or they come staight back! I swear I caught the same one 3 days running.

Dormice are another matter, we don't have dormice in Ireland as far as I know, they are restricted to certain areas of England/Wales and live in isolated woods and mainly eat mainly hazel nuts. Perhaps Diogenes is thinking of field mice which sometimes venture indoors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/wales/south_west/3301063.stm

"Dormice are an endangered species protected by UK and European legislation. The dormouse is a protected species It feeds on berries, nuts, pollen and insects It is arboreal, which means it tends to live in trees. They have disappeared from more than half of their historic breeding grounds in Britain. Today their presence is restricted to parts of southern England and Wales".

Hellrazer

Diogenes wrote:

cause then you need to set the piss spraying feral buggers free

Someone say "Feral Mice"????
Wonder what size shot those in the shooting forum would recommend for those???

Sorry couldnt resist that!!!!

On a serious note---Get a cat.Havent seen a mouse around here in 5 years since we got ours--other than the ones he brings us home as "presents"

FranknFurter

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054962381

Hmmmm...... *sooo tempted to try shiny new banning buttons!*

B

BarneyMac

Pest control is part of my job and i can tell you that those break-back traps are useless along with those sonic deterrants. There are sticky boards you may still be able to get (i say 'may' because apparently some arseholes were using them recently to catch birds so the government outlawed them)......they're cruel but you'll have the mouse caught in a couple of hours at the most. Only downside is you may have to kill him if he's still alive when you check the trap (usually they die of fright). The glue on these traps is super strength so there's no chance of the mouse escaping.

tallus

I'll stick with the humane traps

ultanmac

I remember an article in the guardian about a woman who caught a succession of mice in her humane traps and the released the in the park

The 1st was so terrified it ran into traffic and got killed

the 2nd was so confused it sprinted into a lake and drowned itself

the 3rd ran around in the open grass and was killed by a cat.

How did this person keep track of these mice? Did she have a tiny little documentary crew follow them around? That sounds ridiculous!

I'm having a problem with mice also. I usually catch them with those crappy wooden traps. But by the time I catch them they've outsmarted me several times and have gotten the food off without dying so they're really fat.

The Swordsman

Caught a little bugger yesterday. Thought that was the end of it. But then my daughter spotted another in the kitchen and her friend saw one in an upstairs bedroom today.

Anyone know how they get in?

The only way I can see (other than through the doors) would involve a lot of climbing. Are they good climbers. Can they jump in through open windows? I had an extension built earlier this year. Could they climb up onto the roof and get in through an upstairs window?

I have a couple of highly strung women in the house and as a result I'm becoming highly strung myself. The missus is starting to hear them all over the place.

bounty_hunter

The Swordman, mice are excellent climbers. It is entirely possible that they could have climbed your house and got in through an upstairs window.
However, it is much more probable that they got in through a tiny hole somewhere around the outside of the house. They are also incredible escape artists (which means that they're just as good at the opposite of escaping), and can fit through absolutely minuscule gaps. No house is entirely free of small gaps in its structure, and there are countless ways that a mouse/spider/any kind of small creature could enter without you even noticing.

Better not tell the ladies!

tallus

I think one of the most common points of entry is the washing machine drainpipe that usually runs outside to a shore.

EsmeWeatherwax

Am I the only girl who likes rodents? I dont mind having a few of em around. They dont spread disease like rats, I think its cool to have a wild animal choosing to live with you, even if they only want you for their food:rolleyes:

We had a family of rats living outside our back door, the dog had recently moved into the kennel out back, none of the four cats would go near the back since he was there. Eight of them ran past the kitchen window one day. I thought they were cool , and wanted to keep them, but no, Mam got rat poison and condemned them to a horrible death. Poor ratties!

Cats arent always the best solution. Some of em cant be arsed hunting em.

prospect

Archeron wrote:

because even though humans arent meant to hear the noise, I could. It wasnt uncomfortable, but it was a bit weird.

Me too....

I though I was teenwolf for a while!!!!!!

mountainyman

BarneyMac wrote:

Pest control is part of my job and i can tell you that those break-back traps are useless along with those sonic deterrants.

I have killed 5 mice in the past 2 weeks with break back traps and nutella.

MM

The Swordsman

Nutella seems to work well - just use a small amount in the middle of the trap. I smeared a good amount on the first couple of traps and I'm convinced that when I checked them the following morning, some of it was gone. Could be paranoia from sharing my house with these bastards, but I reckon they nibbled round the edges without setting the traps off. They knew it would piss me off .:mad:

Started off using ham and took me me four days to catch the first one. After advice from a friend, I switched to Nutella and I caught three yesterday alone.

Nutella - crap on bread, great on mousetraps