At the moment, around the ‘mansion’, all the ‘maidens’ are terribly miffed as tiny mice are taking much advantage to make abode, turning my attention towards murderous attempts to make attractive traps – mouth-watering and tasty morsels.
Alas! Transparently my assays to make a tempting meal are thoroughly mediocre.
Are the massive able to make any triumphant measures available to me?
You can get humane traps that just keep the little buggers banged up for you to release back int the garden.
I’ve got one of those. But it seems the bait I’ve tried – cheese, peanut butter, chocolate – doesn’t work in that any better than in the 20 ‘Little Nipper’ spring traps I’ve placed in every strategic place next to the skirting, behind desks, etc…
All of those work, however, with one added ingredient – patience. I live in an old house directly onto a working farmyard, so my house is a sitting target for rodent over-wintering. I am resigned to hearing scuttling between the joists, but every now and then there is the satisfying clunk of a greedy trap and then silence for several months.
It’s a very unsettling feeling when you have those guys scurrying around. I have had some success with peanut butter in the past – but the one thing that has calmed the family’s nerves on this issue is having a cat on the scene. Every now and then I hear a strange low meow from him …which means he’s got one. As he has got older he hasn’t deemed it necessary to present the corpse to us, which is ideal.
A couple of years ago, the cat and I successfully cornered one. The cat played with it – picked it up with his mouth – and let it go off again! At the next opportunity, we did the same manoeuvre but this time I was ready with the iron shovel we use to remove ash from our log burner. The cat looked disappointed with my actions.
We had success with humane traps baited with peanut butter and/or slices of mars bar. (other chocolate bars are available.)
good luck!
Not a solution that will work for everyone, but ours disappeared the instant we got. Cat. And as a bonus you get a cat!
Nice idea, and our girls would love the excuse/reason to have a cat. The phobia has got to the point where ‘meine Schatzi Katzi’ has replaced ‘meine kleine Maus’ as preferred expression of affection.
Sadly, it wouldn’t be fair, as w live in a top floor flat and also, a have a guinea pig who would probably be scared shitless, and there’s enough rodent poo already without encouraging more…
If it’s a top floor flat (and not a house with a garden) then all those (more or less) sensible measures won’t help. The owner should call the local Amts-Kammerjäger, presto! and they will know what to do. And, as others here pointed out, “your” problem is actually a problem of the whole building. As long as there are mice in any of those flats you’ll have trouble with various diseases and hygiene problems, and eventually, rats.
All those m’s.
I wondered if anyone would notice.
I was overrun many years back & turned into Bill Murray in Caddyshack.
IMO it’s futile to trap & release them. However unsavoury, if you’ve found 1 or 2 , there are others & if you want rid of them, you’ve gotta kill then off to stop them becoming a permanent feature.
The best bait is Peanut butter &/or digestive biscuits. Never seen mice that could resist.
The old fashioned little nipper traps are fine & cheap from old school hardware shops, but you’ve gotta check ‘em very regularly to dispatch any critters not instantly killed.
At the peak of the ‘Tooting Mice War’ I was killing 6 or 7 a day for a few weeks.
If you want to figure out where they’re getting in, use talc or flour – the tails will leave trails _ then you trap around there.
I also invested in 2 Rat Zappers ( for farms & small holdings ) that electrocute them – very humane & clean.
Good luck!
I thought we had a single mouse that had been brought in by the cat but not killed. I set a humane trap and caught a small mouse. Just to be sure I set another trap … and 25 days later I finally (I think) got rid of the last one.
It is very expensive (increasingly so) but I found a small piece of Green & Blacks chocolate draws vermin in to humane traps. The trouble with humane traps, though, is they tend to catch the smaller vermin (I have caught quite a few voles brought in by the cat) but if an adult mouse arrives, and they can be quite big, they will not venture in to the tube. That’s when the Little Nipper comes out, although it is really unpleasant disposing of the mutilated bodies afterwards.
Dude, you have posh mice. None of your Nestlé rubbish for the likes of them.
Glue traps. Sorry, but you can’t coexist with mice. A cat is only helpful if he/she can be arsed. They’re not all farm cats.
I reluctantly agree, but with the strict proviso that everything else has been tried first & that they’re never left unattended for more than a hour or two at most, so you can biff them as quickly as possible. They really are horrible things & there are folks lobbying to have them outlawed.
The last time I needed one was for the little sod that would walk out from behind the unused fireplace while we were watching telly- bold as brass it strolled about in the front room, then dashed under the sofa. As we tried to get organised it zipped back into its bolt hole. So I waited for a repeat performance & the put the horrible trap in front of the hole & attempting to exit he was stuck – killed a few seconds later, but not nice.
As kids, my friend’s Dad would sit with on the dining table with his foot on chair & pick them off with a 1.77 rifle. Never saw him miss & in order for us to keep schtum from his Mum , we were copiously bribed with lemonade money.
It’s utterly horrible and I will admit to using one, albeit having exhausted the other options, partly out of rage. Mrs M had had sleepless nights and I was not bloody having that. Anyone touches my princess I swear I’ll do time etc
I used to work at The Savoy a lot, before it was completely gutted and refurbished, haven’t been since. Being an old building and close to The Thames, it inevitably had a mouse problem but the Abraham Lincoln Room, which was at basement level IIRC, was the worst. There were often one or two running around under the tables during lunch meetings, not that anyone at the tables ever noticed. When the refurb took place, thousands of them must have been displaced. Most of the West End hotels have the same problem to some degree.
The late Fay Weldon once had a writer-in-residence position at the Savoy and wrote that a mouse once ran over the top of her foot in her room.
Our dissection room (yup, I said dissection. Of cadavers) was plagued by mice, which was entertaining during dull moments and lectures from the front. The old bit of St Thomas’ down toward Lambeth bridge.
Had a spot of bother with this last week when we first heard the scratching noises and then the next evening saw the little so and so casually jog into a corner behind a drinks cabinet. Using the old-fashioned snap traps with cheese was a total waste of time as he somehow managed to simply remove the cheese without being snapped. The next night we used cheese with mouse poison inserted…at which our furry little git simply removed all the poison flakes and ate the cheese, leaving the flakes in a helpful little pile nearby. But Tesco’s spreadable/soft peanut butter…got him first time. No more noises or any other evidence after that.
Caught 3 of the little feckers last week with a humane trap baited with peanut butter.
No use releasing them in the garden as they come back. All were deported some miles away to “Ratwanda”. Suella Braveman would have been proud.
With the ringleaders gone, the rest have disappeared. Doubt that’s permanent though.
On the box of the humane trap we set in the garage it suggested that once caught we release the creature as far away from our home as possible. By my reckoning that would be Dunedin on the south island of New Zealand.
Very lovely at this time of year. You could visit the albatross colony while you were there.
FWIW I successfully banished rodent inroads into my garage loft using the ultrasonic gizmos advertised on the dodgers and other places. I have a few ‘Really Useful Boxes’ showing signs of meece gnasher gnawings from the time before the sonic blitzkrieg, but nothing thereafter. The little screamer thingamajigs are still running in the garage, and don’t seem to have ever had any effects upon our dogs or upon the hordes of wild birds that I continue to feed right outside the garage doors.
As well as trapping/use of cunning devices, find out where they are getting in and block access with steel wool or metal mesh.
If you can prevent them getting in you can avoid re-infestation, which is bound to happen if their ingress routes are still open.
If you are getting them in your flat then so are the others in your block. If they aren’t bothering to get rid, you’ll be doing it over and over again. Have a friendly word.
Totally agree – steel wool is great & I used to use old CD jewel cases & gaffer tape to seal off certain bits of the house. Rule of thumb is, if you can get a pencil through the hole, the mouse will be in easily.
Unfortunately, as they are deemed incontinent, unlike rats, they poo & pee everywhere including cookers , bedding & what have you.
Gotta take ‘em down!
Mice and rats can (and will) dislocate their bones to get through small holes if there’s food on the other side. They will chew through most materials to get at food, including Thermalite building blocks and plaster. They piss and shit constantly, everywhere they go, and are carriers of all kinds of nasties including Lymes Disease.
I saw one in my kitchen a few months ago. I got an expert in (paid for by the condominium management), he set a few traps, came back a couple of weeks later and found no evidence of them still being here. Found the place where they likely were coming in which needs to be fixed (not my responsibility), not sure if it has been, but I haven’t seen any since last summer. Good luck!
Nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Only Ripley survives…. And her cat, of course
Make my Bonn site a bomb site? Great idea?
Thank you to everybody who posted – helpful hints, tips and guidance. In case anyone is interested before this post rolls off the front page, there is no news on the mouse front. Perpetual vigilance and mouse traps wherever you look seem to have kept the wee fearsome beastie behind cupboards, under floorboards or generally away from human thoroughfares. But until there is sign of a corpse, I have to keep on the watch…