I have mice. Not cute little pet mice from the store. Field mice. In the house. Loose. How do I get rid of them without paying an arm and a leg?? The little critters invade when there is a lot of rain. They are usually gone for the summer (at least I think so, they leave no evidence that says otherwise.) Our mouse trap doesn't work very well for us. The mousey gets the peanut butter off easy w/o setting the trap off. Only once in a while do we get a less cautious one.I know this doesn't have much to do with kids and all, but just wondering if there is any advice on this. Please, if you know how to get rid of them... I hate hearing them scratching and chewing and clawing (ew) in the walls, downstairs and upstairs! Thank you very very much!
Well, we have 2 cats... (ok, our sweet boy cat is missing...) and the one who is still home is the reason the cats became outdoors cats. She was naughty. I don't know if that would have changed now that is like a year and a half later and she is grown up or not. But my hubby is planning on bringing in the dogs (2) and the cat for the winter despite his allergies. My MIL and FIL gave us these mousetraps that are interesting things. The mouse has to open this compartment to get the pb or whatever, and when it does SNAP!
The ones we have are the regular old fashioned inexpensive ones. I will try to plant some mint around the house ASAP that is a great idea! And maybe my little kitty will catch a mousey or two (or three...)
Thanks everyone!
Whatever you do...DO NOT poison them!!! If you see that many, then there are MANY more where you don't see them...we had mice at work one time, and someone decided to put out D-Con....well...it worked and the stench from them decaying in the ceiling was enough that we had to close the shop for a week!!!!!
If the traps aren't working, it is worth the money to get a professional in there.
We live on a farm with cats and still get mice in the house throught he winter because we have an old farm house. We often use Blue Death. It comes in packets we put in the basement. The mice take it back to their nest and it eliminates the problem. This one also keeps them from smelling when they die. With other poisons we had the smell when they died in the walls etc. Traps are not that effective. We put poison in the basement unopened. This really helped when I had toddlers. They never got near it. The mice chew right through the package. It works for us every year.
Mice don't like to scent of cat fur, SO...
get a cat or kitten from your local shelter. The places are so overcrowded, euthanasia is getting to be a common option. Save an animal in need of a home and have a mouse-free house.
I'm amazed at how inhumane your other posts are. This is not the Christian way...All creatures great and small...
Worse case scenario, you could call a pest control company. I recently had to call one to get rid of yellow jackets when nothing else seemed to work. Just make sure they guarantee their work. Also, I saw a commercial for a new mouse trap. It looks like a little box. The mouse goes in and you throw out the box.
Hope this helps,
M.
Hi S.,
Well, we too had the little critters in our home. I am very much affraid of them! :) We too tried everything, but the always seemed to come back. When I saw one run across my living room floor, well, that was it for me. Everyone told us to get a cat. I was DEAD set I was NOT going to do that! Was not a fan of cats, loved dogs, but not cats. Well, needless to say we got a cat, and then another cat, and have not seen a mouse since! And turns out that my cats are the most coolest pets ever!
So my suggestion.....Get a cat!
Love, L.
We got a cat - she earns her keep.
Check your house facade. We were getting them in between the brick facade and into the 'skeleton' of the house. You could hear them behind the walls once in a while. And when we tore down some walls to renovate, you could see their tunnels even in the insulation!
But we checked the brick facade of the house and found a few places they were getting in, sealed them up, and bingo! no more mousies!
There are also those commercials out now for Riddex plug in pest controls (Bell and Howell also make one) or mouse traps that are a lot more possible to deal with catching mice. And it isn't the flat, nasty mousetraps either. Check your hardware store.
What kind of trap are you using S.? I find that matters
I also don't like using the poison available in the store...it's not strong enough and so the mice get "used" to it or if they did get enough they crawl in a wall and die and smell bad.
blessings!
M.
Hi S.,
My husband left the basement windows open all night and next thing I knew we had little mice in our basement...always a great joy.Not. They have these sticky mouse pads. It's a little try that is about as big as a mouse trap but is really just a pile of glue. They work. It cought spiders and the mice. My dog also stepped on one once and wasn't easy getting it off of her. But if can put them some place animals or kids wont get to them, the mouse will just run over it and get stuck. Then you (or your husband) can just pick it up and toss it out.
Good luck gettin rid of them!
Our house is surrounded by farm land. We have lived here for 10 1/2 years now. The only thing that we have found is to have cats. We have a full grown male and two kittens at the moment and they keep the mice out.
You can also get this stuff I can't remember the name but the mice eat it and it kills them. We just used a mouse trap and it barely caught the mouse. It got it's leg and was dragging the trap around the floor so hubby had to take it outside and smash it's head. He felt bad, but he also didn't want to get bit freeing it somewhere else. I have however notice I have more coming in so I am going out to purchase the stuff they eat and it kills them.
Hi Stacey:
I concur with the idea of having a cat. I have one you can 'borrow' to handle the mice problem. (Boy is he a good mouser!) lol L.
Hi S. -
We bought a ton of the ultrasonic pest repellers made by Black & Decker. You can get them at Target or hardware stores. They come in a 3-pack for $20, and I think we've bought 3 packages...we have a lot of rooms, and since the ultrasonic waves don't go through walls, you need them in every room. We have 2 in our basement and 2 in the living room. They are simple little plug-in things that emit waves that we can't hear, but that disrupt the nervous systems of bugs/small rodents so that they leave your house (supposedly).
We had a few plugged in and saw 2 mice come up through the heating vent one night in our living room, so we bought a bunch more and also have some traps set in the basement. So far we've only had to take care of 2 mice in the traps. I love these because they are humane and they keep away bugs as well. We stopped seeing earwigs and I have no spiders now - at least visibly, LOL.
I can't say they would work for you (we started using them just as the mice began sneaking in) but I think they're worth a try! The package says the waves will not travel into walls, etc. But I would at least plug a couple into your kitchen and see if that gets them away from your food, and if they can't get to the food perhaps they'll move on.
You can't use these if you have small pets like hamsters, though.
Good luck!
Move............ or I seen at home depot the other day that they had newer mouse traps that you don't set you just open them and set them out. The only thing i don't know if they like moth balls you could try those around the house.
Get a spayed female cat from the local shelter. From my experience as a cat owner forever, female's make the best mousers. Maybe even consider 2 rescue cats. Keep them indoors though because house cats live a longer healthier life.
M. in Camden, MI
Lots of traps. I mean lots, if you can, in a spot where you think they are and no one will get hurt. We had about 12 in a corner where we thought they were coming in. And we'd catch them in one of them if they missed another one. And we didn't use any food to lure them at all.
Good luck!
Oh the critters! We have mice too. I have found that they do start coming in when it starts getting cold. We set traps with some success. Try putting the peanut butter towards the back of the trap, not on the very end of the little platform. We use the kind that you can dispose of the dead mouse and reset it...YUK! Once we have caught a few I think the others get the memo that some of their friends didn'e return and they eventually stop coming. We also put some steel wool around the spaces around the pipes under the kitchen sink. They can't chew through that. We had squirrels in our attic. We put moth balls up there. A word of caution about that...we put out too many and our house really smelled terrible for awhile and we had to put a fan in the attic to get rid of the smell. It worked well. We found out later that we should have put the moth balls in something like panty hose so we could retrieve the moth balls after the critters were gone. Critters are SO annoying. We also had a raccoon living in the attic. We had to call critter control for that one. I hope this helps!
