Mouses in Your Houses

[Anja]

Yeah, I hear that. I dunno. I was thinking if a mouse were pregnant and got away you'd definitely have a problem. For one thing, the little rascals GNAW!

Do try your Extension Agent. They can be really helpful for matters of household.

I was watching "Red Green" with my husband the other night and a mouse ran up someone's trousers. Do they really do that? If so, maybe I'll start using the chair method too. Just got a real woozy feeling about that one. . .

 

[nottaprettygal]

I was watching "Red Green" with my husband the other night and a mouse ran up someone's trousers. Do they really do that? If so, maybe I'll start using the chair method too. Just got a real woozy feeling about that one. . .

Hrm. A mouse up the pants could be oddly enjoyable.

 

[Salomé]

Do those actually work? I've always wondered about those.
.

I don't know about you, but this thread is giving me the heebies.
They call you evil?
you're f-ing compared to these girls.

Re: ultrasonics - not so much, but at least you feel you made an effort to be vermin free without all the bloodythirsty decapitation and stuff

 

[Ivy]

Hrm. A mouse up the pants could be oddly enjoyable.

One word: claws. We had a flying squirrel for a pet a few years ago and she would run up under your clothes if you let her. I hated it. She was a sweetie and as long as I had a shirt with tight cuffs and a tightly buttoned-neck on I was fine to hold her.

 

[Martoon]

*trying to relate*

We have these huntsman spiders (the non-fake spiders from Arachnophobia) where I live which are apparently attracted to light. Which sucks when you wear a head-torch to bed as I do for reading purposes. The little fuckers have dropped onto my pillow a few times and then chased me down the bed and across the room. They run fast and can jump a bit too. It's a bit like the scene from Aliens in the med-lab.

J, the Australian tourism board has gotta love you. I had already decided I'm never setting foot in Australia. Now, I think I'm just going to avoid that entire hemisphere.

They call you evil?
you're f-ing compared to these girls.

Well, I try, but yeah, these ladies are tough competition in the whole evil game. (And I really hope that's an adjective you were using there.)

Re: ultrasonics - not so much, but at least you feel you made an effort to be vermin free without all the bloodythirsty decapitation and stuff

Ah, too bad.

One word: claws. We had a flying squirrel for a pet a few years ago and she would run up under your clothes if you let her. I hated it. She was a sweetie and as long as I had a shirt with tight cuffs and a tightly buttoned-neck on I was fine to hold her.

Heh. I've had a few pet rats over the years. Though they tend to prefer climbing up the outside of your pant leg, just for the traction.



When I was younger I worked in a bakery for a while. We had a resident mouse, which was a bit of a problem for health regulations. One time it ran across the floor, and Mr. Hunt, the manager (who was this large dude) grabbed a dinner roll off a nearby cooling rack and chucked it at the mouse. He narrowly missed, and the mouse darted under some shelving against the wall. It then immediately ran back out, grabbed the dinner roll, and dragged it back under the shelf with it. Mr. Hunt was enraged. I was laughing so hard I had to sit down on the floor.

 

[Anja]

That's funny!

 

[Noel]

When I used to live in San Ramon, California, due to construction of new surburban developments, mice flocked over from the fields into nearby residents' homes. I'm quite familiar with how to dispose of them swiftly.

As others have mentioned, peanut butter works miraculously. Especially paired in conjunction with sticky-glue-board traps. Place some peanut butter in the center and walk away. Granted, the sticky traps are terribly inhumane but they effectively get the job done. Better yet, it's like killing five mice with one stone so to say. What's key is too regularly change them everyday, maybe sooner if it's a pandemic. I've seen mice that have crawled over their fallen comrades to get their super chunk fix only to step on a part of the sticky surface and chew through their arm to break free.

Good luck!

 

[Anja]

I just heard something so bizarre on NPR. This guy was talking about a moustrap that doesn't cause physical harm to the mouse. Once the creature gets in the box a pellet drops into a container of water which creates carbon monoxide and kills the mouse. The narrator expressed doubt but the person she was interviewing insisted that such a device did exist.

"Where?" she questioned.

"Germany." he answered.

I thought to laugh but he insisted this was true. Too lazy to pursue a search.

Save for the grim irony, it sounds like a good idea.

 

[Oberon]

Myself, I completely fail to see what the problem is.

 

[bluebell]

I'm fine with domesticated rodents and I used to let my pet rats crawl all over me. But I freak out with wild mice in my house. Not entirely sure why.

We used mousetraps in our old place (again, recommend peanut butter). My only advice is to get the old fashioned metal and wood ones, NOT the new plastic versions. One morning, I could hear this weird sound coming from the kitchen. I got up and a mouse was limping round the kitchen dragging one of the new plastic traps behind it. I did the only thing that was possible in the circumstances - I burst into tears and went back to bed, and let my partner deal with it. Unfortunately, he is not a morning person. When he took the mouse outside (he was too squeamish to kill it by hand and I don't blame him), he didn't take it far enough away from the back door. It came back inside with minutes. We caught it properly a few days later with one of the old fashioned traps.

YouTube - Huntsman Spider

I started to cope a lot better with huntsman spider removal when I realised that if their legs were too long to fit under a plastic cup, I could just use a rice strainer to catch them.

 

[millerm277]

I use the "trap-door" kind. Bait at the end. When the mouse walks in, it's trapped in the little box. Release it into the sewer, and problem solved. (I personally would prefer to use the old style traps and kill them, but squeamish family members disagree).