Mice chewing furiously into the home

ferretr33

We have had Mice chewing furiously into the home over the last couple of days could this be a sign of a cold spell, as last year we had none till March which tootle suppressed us as at that point of the calendar you would expect them to be heading to the fields and then we got the weather we were hit with in April.What are your thoughts on animal behavior and weather.

Atlantic Dawn

Are they chewing concrete?

ferretr33

No Atlantic Dawn there chewing and scraping the ceilings in the attic of the house and down through the walls our house is well over a hundred years old and have taught I found all the places they might have been coming in, when we bought the house first it was empty for a bit so we had a rat infestation at first so thank god none in the last 9 years.

doolox

If given a rough enough tree or shrub mice are able to climb and they will enter the roof space and get down into the living spaces of the house especially at this time of year.

Make sure all your attic spaces are sealed with proper sized ventilation grilles and barriers and that there are no trees or shrubs in near contact with the eave spaces of the house to allow the critters into the attic space.

Have you a cat? These are indispensable in older houses. I would also look at food storage and kitchen storage practices, everything in tin boxes straight away and a nightly clean up before bedtime etc... All waste to stored in bins outside to deter mice and rats from entering the house.

The little critters will gnaw through cereal boxes to get at the contents and will also eat fats etc if left outside of a fridge.

vicwatson

What are your thoughts on animal behavior and weather.

I'd have to refer that one to that Postman in Donegal

Graces7

doolox wrote: »

If given a rough enough tree or shrub mice are able to climb and they will enter the roof space and get down into the living spaces of the house especially at this time of year.

Make sure all your attic spaces are sealed with proper sized ventilation grilles and barriers and that there are no trees or shrubs in near contact with the eave spaces of the house to allow the critters into the attic space.

Have you a cat? These are indispensable in older houses. I would also look at food storage and kitchen storage practices, everything in tin boxes straight away and a nightly clean up before bedtime etc... All waste to stored in bins outside to deter mice and rats from entering the house.

The little critters will gnaw through cereal boxes to get at the contents and will also eat fats etc if left outside of a fridge.

Depends on the cat! I lived in an old stone cottage on a North Sea Island when I was still breeding Siamese. I had ELEVEN cats and nary a mouse did they catch! Traps were best and I lost count. They were everywhere.

Here I am in a modern place with 5 cats and the rats are being slaughtered by my current cats. I think it is because they , the cats, are hunting outside before the rodents get in?

ferretr33

Cheers for the replays Doolox I have done all of the above and we have done the house up with new floors walls and internal walls and insulation new roof tiles to go on this summer as they are perished so I think there must be a crack in them there getting in just strange that we had none last year till March and in the last 2 days the scratching is just crazy wakes you up at night and the kids here it as well. We have a cat that sleeps out side and is for ever hunting between Rats Rabbets been left at the back door and mice as well on a daily advent.

Suckit

There has been an influx of rats around where I live in the past few weeks. I have seen the same cat catching one and killing it (later) one day, and the next day playing with another very big one. My neighbour saw one running across the road on Friday evening and down the far end of our road the people their have hired professionals to lay poison around the bushes and shrubs. I know there are foxes down there as I saw two cubs during the summer with an adult, so I hope they won't eat it.
There was two dead rats out on the track/green area this morning.
There was a lot of trees and bushes cut down a few months ago by the council and I am guessing that is why they are easy to see. There is no building work going on in the immediate area, although there was over two years ago, so I (and a couple of neighbours) have come to the conclusion that there is a cold snap coming as they are seemingly headed towards the houses.
I hate rats. Already bought traps.

James 007

Its time to move out, the mice have taken over

PukkaStukka

This is an interesting topic! Here, we had a mouse 2 weeks ago that was duly dispatched with a trap. The last one prior to that was the week before the "Beast from the East" last March.

In my parents home, they got two mice in the run up to November 2010 snowfalls. Prior to that, the last they had was New Year's Day 1982! So yeah, perhaps mice have a better long range forcasting technique than the meteorologists!

kod87

chewing ??? Is your house made of cheese by any chance?

57Chevrolet

ferretr33 wrote:

We have had Mice chewing furiously into the home over the last couple of days could this be a sign of a cold spell, as last year we had none till March which tootle suppressed us as at that point of the calendar you would expect them to be heading to the fields and then we got the weather we were hit with in April.What are your thoughts on animal behavior and weather.

Trace the spot where electrical wires are coming into the house- where the meter is as mice follow the wires which are warm! Guy from pest control advised me to do this so we used insulation material to block entry points and it worked well.

Graces7

someone mentioned poison? Please NO. It gets into the food chain.

Gaoth Laidir

You don't have one of these houses, do you?

ferretr33

LOL super

dmcsweeney

I went through this before. Renovated an empty house, went to great lengths to seal floors, walls etc to prevent entry. I found they were climbing up onto the garage roof and then getting in under the profiled roof tiles. Several rolls of expanding metal mesh fixed behind the eve chutes covering the tile ends, fixed in place with screws and penny washers keeps the critters out while allowing the roof to breath. And I got 3 cats!

KildareP

Graces7 wrote: »

someone mentioned poison? Please NO. It gets into the food chain.

I'd avoid poison for another reason as well.

If a poisoned mouse or rat gets into an inner wall or under a floor or in a ceiling before the poison takes it's toll, you'll either be moving out of the house for a weeks or pulling said part of the structure out - unless you've no sense of smell

lapua20grain

I had issues with mice coming in where the waste pipe was consulted a mate of mine that is in pest control and told me to use silicone and wire wool mixed together as they will not chew through either. filled the hole in and haven't had issues since then. Might be an option OP?

Graces7

lapua20grain wrote: »

I had issues with mice coming in where the waste pipe was consulted a mate of mine that is in pest control and told me to use silicone and wire wool mixed together as they will not chew through either. filled the hole in and haven't had issues since then. Might be an option OP?

Same with me at one house. At another I rammed a crushed tin can in the hole and that worked too

NufcNavan

Graces7 wrote: »

someone mentioned poison? Please NO. It gets into the food chain.

The mice will often die in the walls and you'll have no way of getting them out. No doubt this will leave an unpleasant smell.

My idiot landlord did this years ago and I had to get rid of the poison but thankfully I appeared to have done it in time before the mice got it.

Mars bar is great bait on a trap. Use that brillo pad metal wooly stuff to clog any holes in a house as they cannot chew through it.

I also used a sonar device but not sure if it had any impact. In the end I caught 10 mice in an attic bedroom in the space of about a week.

dmcsweeney

I tried traps and plug in devices and nothing worked. I eventually put 10 bait points in the attic. The main thing is to ensure that there is no water supply available in the attic. They'll usually go out looking for water and die outside. I had two that didn't make it. The smell from one came down where the ceiling wasn't fully finished. I couldn't find it under the insulation so I sealed up the hole and the smell disappeared after a week. The second I didn't find until I ripped down the ceiling in the next section of the house and he fell out on me. I'd agree poison should be a last resort, but it's sometimes the only way, and not a big problem when in an attic rather than under a floor or in walls.

PukkaStukka

Loud hint: the best bait is Nutella. Mice find it irresistible,,!

M.T. Cranium

Mice weather we're having.

malinheader

PukkaStukka wrote: »

Loud hint: the best bait is Nutella. Mice find it irresistible,,!

Or peanut butter. Deadly.

Doctors room ghost

A smidge of peanut butter on a trap and you’ll have them in hours. The ALDI one with the red lid is mouse heroin

Doctors room ghost

Doctors room ghost wrote: »

The ALDI one with the red lid is mouse heroin

Aldi should be paying you for a brilliant marketing slogan

Mars Bar

NufcNavan wrote: »

The mice will often die in the walls and you'll have no way of getting them out. No doubt this will leave an unpleasant smell.

My idiot landlord did this years ago and I had to get rid of the poison but thankfully I appeared to have done it in time before the mice got it.

Mars bar is great bait on a trap. Use that brillo pad metal wooly stuff to clog any holes in a house as they cannot chew through it.

I also used a sonar device but not sure if it had any impact. In the end I caught 10 mice in an attic bedroom in the space of about a week.

:eek:

Mr Bumble

They are most likely trying to get in because of the amount of rain that's been falling. Flooded burrows are not very comfortable. The mice are reacting to their current soggy circumstances rather than making plans for cold to come.
A tip I picked up is to heat the bait (i find fatty meat or chocolate best) with a lighter when you have a trap in place. Smell brings them in quickly.
Also, a dehumidifier sometimes helps if you've a dead one in the walls. Stick it where the strongest smell is and if there's a dead one behind it, it will help dry out the corpse.
Dead mouse smell will go fairly quickly but dead rat pong can linger for months. Nothing worse