Mice in the house

[atgcpaul]

Ok, I'm embarrassed to admit we have a mouse problem in our house but I need help. I'm sure they gorge themselves on the crumbs or bits of food my kids leave around and I know they've gone after the dogs' food which we secure in a large plastic tub. We try to clean yet they persist. I set 6 snap traps in the kitchen on New Years Eve after my wife saw one scurry across the floor. In the morning I had killed 4! and a 5th trap had been sprung.

I bought 16 traps at HD yesterday and set them out last night in the kitchen and basement. Before going to bed I had already gotten 2 more in the basement and this morning, there was one more in the basement.

I feel like I'm in living in that old lady's house in the first scene of the movie Ratatouille!

Should I rotate my bait selection so the mice don't learn to associate them with food--are they that smart? I don't want to use poison because it would suck to have one or all die in a wall.

I also don't understand how there are penetrations in the house for them to enter. I know they can squeeze into tight spots but will an outdoor inspection reveal them?

Anyone know what an exterminator would cost and if they would do anything different?

Thanks
Paul

[cwsmith]

We get mice in our house only about twice a year... when winter first sets in and during a very rainy spring. These occasions really freak my wife out of course, as she keeps a very clean house and we neither have pets or kids running around leaving crumbs.

I think many houses have mice, but just don't know it. My personal opinion is that it takes a pretty clean house for the occupants to notice.

Don't use poison, as it's been my experience that mice will seek the nearest water and die there. When we bought this house I found a half dozen or so in the basement sump well... far more disgusting than catching them in a spring trap.

We use spring traps, usually catching two or three over a period of two or three days. Basically they'll just get caught until there are no more. With us, the first signs are usually their droppings, which are found under the kitchen sink or in one of the drawers. That prompts the trap-setting for us!

Our house is over a hundred years old (1887), but we have decent windows and doors as well as steel siding; and the basement walls are in good repair. So, I don't know how they find their way in... but they do!

You didn't mention whether you live in a closely populated area or rural. With so many mice, you have to identify the source, as it could be recent weather conditions, an overflow from neighbors. I'm of the opinion, that mice prefer a nice comfortable and safe place with a good food supply, which would generally be outside, unless the cold or wet drives them inside.

If they've been inside long enough to nest, then you may well have to think about a pest control specialist. You could trap them to extinction, but the question is whether they will eventually get smart enough to avoid your traps. (I have no idea about mice, but I've read that rats can be pretty intelligent.) Hopefully your local pest control guys might have some other way to drive them out, rather that spraying poison or setting traps. I think I'd do some searching via 'Google' or perhaps call your community services. Up here we have Cornell Cooperative Extension or the county office for such information.

I hope this helps,

CWS

[Stytooner]

We have had one in 18 years. We have outside cats. We have them laying dead on the porch all the time along with moles, snakes, squirrels, birds, lizards, toads, etc...
They are all fixed, so they stay on this two acres mainly. Plenty of wild life here to keep them in practice.

[Bill in Buena Park]

Paul,
In my previous home, we'd get mice occasionally until I found the problem - and it amazed me at just how small a space they can get through.

We lived near a stretch of highway under construction for a few years, and the field alongside it had mice in addition to other wildlife - but the work disturbed and dislodged them, and right to my yard they came. The screen over my foundation crawl space had a slight gap (maybe half inch) in it, so that let them get under the house. Then the crafty buggers found a gap in the wall framing from underneath the house that gave them access to a drain-pipe hole under the sink where there was a slight gap between the hole opening and the edge of the decorative hole cover (maybe 3/8 inch). Six mice got through this tiny gap before I discovered it.

After fixing the foundation screening and drain hole issues, as further preventive action, I checked every other drain pipe hole cover, and all were good. I also ensured that there were no gaps under the doors (all had thresholds and door sweeps in good shape), and even made sure there were no broken outlet covers (I have heard of mice coming through those as well). We were fortunate and had no further issues.

[capncarl]

Mice use to come in my open garage to help the dogs eat their food. There was no door and no way to keep them out. I started putting it into 5 gallon buckets rather than leave it in 50 lb bags. I did not realize what a mouse problem we had until I kept finding mice in the bottoms of nearly empty buckets. They would jump in and could not get out! After that I kept a bucket with a couple inches of water in it with dogfood floating in it. The water trap bucket was kept in a corner next to shelves where the mice could access the bucket. Nearly every day it would catch form 1 to 6 mice. Disposal? Pour out he water and drowned mice in a hole in the yard.

[atgcpaul]

Total count is 8 now

[leehljp]

A friend came up with an ingenious way to catching mice. He took a 5 gal bucket, cut a small notch on opposite sides of the top to hold a 1/2 inch wood dowell. He then drilled a 3/4 in hole in a 2 liter PET bottle and placed the rod through the pet bottle. The pet bottle has to rotate freely. it is placed on the bucket in the notch on both sides. Then he puts peanut butter around the middle of the pet bottle. And he leans a board for the mice to climb up to the 1/2 inch shaft and pet bottle.

Once the mice get on top of the pet bottle, it rotates and they fall into the bucket.

I haven't seen it in action, but he swears by it and talkes about it quite a bit.

[atgcpaul]

The count has stayed at 8 for the past 2 days. I'm using cheese but may re-bait the traps with peanut butter so they don't get numb to it.

I have read about the water bucket traps for catching chipmunks. The guys posting called them "Chipper Dippers". I think I'm too squeamish for that. Maybe a vat of hydrofluoric acid would be better. I wouldn't have to look at the little mouse carcasses.

[tfischer]

First make sure they aren't getting in from outside. If that's happening you'll never trap them all.

Then just keep trapping them. Keep the traps baited for several weeks beyond your last catch. After that, if you haven't seen any additional signs of an infestation, you may have got them all.

We had this happen a few years back. I knew there were signs of "a mouse" in the house but I didn't worry about it until they bored into my son's Christmas stocking and ate into his chocolate bear! That made me declare war. We started with those plastic clothespin style traps... awful, awful things. They don't snap hard enough to kill the mouse. In one case we had a mouse chew its own leg off when getting caught in one of these I switched to spring traps and caught mouse after mouse for about a week, then suddenly, no more. And we've had no signs of them ever since.

2 summers ago we completely gutted our kitchen down to the bare studs, I did all the demo work and figured I'd run across the remnants of the mouse nest. Never did find it, although we've found several food caches since. We did fine one mouse skeleton inside a wall, most likely got trapped in there and died.

[capncarl]

Sometimes you have to know when to say enough and get out the traps! Not mouse related, but similar, we have a lot of Mocking Birds, they are a terror on the bugs in the yard and continuous sing. They are territorial and try to keep competing males out of their territory and funny to watch. One male kept fighting with his reflection in our patio glass, then he started hanging on the window screens and fighting with the reflection, ruining the fabric screens. Then there was the poop he dropped on the patio chairs. We shooed him off when we could but I mainly just put up with him....... Until one day when my Miata was parked on the driveway with the windows down. He went in the car to fight with his reflection on the mirror or windshield and crapped on my seats, dash and steering wheel: I gave him a sporting chance to escape my little 20 gauge, then I gave him a nice dumpster funeral. His replacement has already shown interest in fighting the windows so I put out a sticky trap on a stake. He landed on it and lost all his tail feathers and seems to have forgotten about fighting the windows for a while!

[os1kne]

A friend came up with an ingenious way to catching mice. He took a 5 gal bucket, cut a small notch on opposite sides of the top to hold a 1/2 inch wood dowell. He then drilled a 3/4 in hole in a 2 liter PET bottle and placed the rod through the pet bottle. The pet bottle has to rotate freely. it is placed on the bucket in the notch on both sides. Then he puts peanut butter around the middle of the pet bottle. And he leans a board for the mice to climb up to the 1/2 inch shaft and pet bottle.

Once the mice get on top of the pet bottle, it rotates and they fall into the bucket.

I haven't seen it in action, but he swears by it and talkes about it quite a bit.

I've done this, and it does work. I had a problem with mice in my garage in my previous home. (My trap was just a bit different - instead of the dowel, I used a section of a wire shirt hanger, and instead of the PET bottle I used a sode can with a hole for the hanger drilled through the center of the top and bottom. I put a 50/50 mix of water and antifreeze in the bucket 3-4 inches deep.)

[lrr]

We had mice getting in our basement 30 years ago, and they squeezed thru the space surrounding the gas pipe that entered into the basement. That gap was tiny! Once sealed, that ended the problem.

A couple years, we started getting mice again. I could not find any places similar to the gap around gas pipe, but our patio paving stones were sinking in a few places, so I got into our crawl space and looked around. The hole dug for the foundation was not back-fiiled sufficiently, and started to sink over the years. The mice followed the sinking dirt, and tunneled under the crawl space wall, and came up into the dirt in the crawl space. Our basement is 1/2 crawl space, and the footings are not that deep on the crawl space side. Once we had the sinking fixed and had the gaps mud-jacked, the tunnels were filled and the mice problem disappeared.

I learned from this one to never underestimate the persistence of these little critters wanting to get into your home.

[phrog]

About 3 years ago I had mice problems. Got some live traps and baited them with peanut butter. The little beggars can't resist the stuff. Caught 7 (which I released far from the house) and haven't had a problem since. I was later told by an exterminator that peanut butter is the one thing they just can't resist.

[TB Roye]

12ga works and is fun

[capncarl]

Never use a 12 ga in the house! It will mess up the appliances!
I must confess that I have used a .22 with rat shot though. It does not leave a mark when used with metal such as the dish washer as the backstop!
capncarl