Mice

[Edmund]

Hi guys,

Anyone have any tips for dealing with a mouse infestation? They're partying behind the kitchen cupboards, lurking in the lounge and doing high dives off the half-landing. One jumped out of the toaster at me, the other day.

I've caught four and there's poison out now. All the food is hidden in tins. I hate cats. Any other ideas?

Cheers,

Edmund.

[garynortheast]

Those Little Nipper mouse traps baited with dog biscuits have always worked well when we had a mouse problem (which never happens now with a dog and a cat in the house!)

[neil-c]

Sounds like you're dealing with it Edmund. We had mice in our last house (and two fat lazy cats, who just used to stare at them and occasionally mew with quiet distress - useless felines).

We bought one of these so called humane traps (a bent bit of plastic tube). It took me less than a week to resolve the problem. You put a bit of chocolate in and mouse goes in, tips the trap, shuts the door, and then you can 'humanely' walk the mouse a long way away from your house and dump it in a patch of grass away from it's friends and family and the warmth and shelter of it's mother's breast, surrounded by mouse-eating carnivores, who will do the whole killing thing for you and save on all that mess and tidying up.

Alternatively, you could get a shotgun - Steve would know the ins and outs of this - I've never tried it but I think a shotgun would be quite effective against small rodentia. You may have to do a bit of redecorating. But the mice would nibble away at skirting boards anyway.

N...

[Simon Windisch]

Hi there,

Rats started tunnelling into our compost bin so I bought a kilo tub of poison from Homebase and put out a new spoonful every time they finished the last one off. It took about four days to kill them all.

Simon

[Steve]

Try baiting traps with peanut butter and chocolate too.

[Squigs_Ghost]

Alternatively, you could get a shotgun - Steve would know the ins and outs of this - I've never tried it but I think a shotgun would be quite effective against small rodentia. You may have to do a bit of redecorating. But the mice would nibble away at skirting boards anyway.

N...

Personally I'd recommend a 4/10 over a full bore double barreled shotgun, slightly less damage

Squigs

[neil-c]

...and now for something completely different.

Linking nicely to another recent thread about python favourites, does anyone remember the piano sketch?

Not sure how you'd get the mice to voluntarilly jump up onto the piano, but it could be an effective way of both dealing with the problem AND making art at the same time.



N...

[Edmund]

Thanks, guys.

Shotgun sounds good. Now I just need someone to throw them into the air when I shout, 'Pull!'

(No humane traps for me - I'm from a farming family. I remember my dad once terminating a rabbit with a shotgun without leaving the house. He just stood in the back doorway 'cos he couldn't be bothered to put his shoes on).

[benny]

Personally I'm not too keen on poisoning them. We had some rats skulking around the house a couple of years ago so I put some poison out and they disappeared. Problem solved, I thought. After a couple of weeks there was the most ghastly stench in my study. When rats are dying of poison (dunno if mice are the same) they slink away to find somewhere quiet; well, one of them must have found its way inside my wall cavities somehow and lay there gradually decomposing. I would have had to take the wall apart to find and extricate it so I just used lots of joss sticks until eventually it stopped stinking.

Since then I'd rather use a method that gives me the habeas corpus advantage. I can get rid of it somewhere away from the house. Traps are good but shooting is more fun; if you have no shotgun licence a .22 air rifle is cheap, fun and a great skill to learn...

[Alasdair]

although if you have rats you don't have mice ... or is that ab old wives tale.

Maybe you should get some rats Edmund. They make lovely pets ...

[Edmund]

Isn't that the kind of reasoning that got the old woman who swallowed a fly into so much trouble, Alasdair?

And you know how well that ended...

[Steve]

Talking of pongs...

Quite a few times I have come back from checking trap and snare lines with a dead something or rather lurking forgotten at the bottom of a game pocket only to be reminded of it a few days later by the not so subtle aroma a few days later.

[Al]

We've also got a problem with mice and have managed to trap a couple but I think they're still around. The Wife bought some plug-in deterrents but I'm not sure how effective they are, so I'm going to leave a couple of traps with chocolate around just in case.

[Edmund]

Apparently mice quickly become acclimatised to those sonic deterrents. They can help keep them out in the first place but aren't much good once the mice have taken up residence. Our mice seem totally oblivious to them now.

[neil-c]

Apparently mice quickly become acclimatised to those sonic deterrents.

Not sure if this qualifies as a sonic deterrent, but I don't think they'd acclimatise to it too well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J2FytvoS9M&mode=related&,search=

N...