Advice on mice

Found out tonight that I have at least one mouse in my house. Ran out to the store and they had 1 lethal trap left and a ton of non-lethal traps. Bought the one lethal trap and two of the non-lethal ones along with some poison.

I never thought the non-lethal ones would work, I only set them up because I didn't want to rely on only one trap, but apparently they do as I already caught one mouse.

My problem now is what to do with the mouse. Not having a heart of gold, I want to kill the thing so it doesn't come back into the house. I do feel a tinge of guilt when I think about just leaving it in the trap until it starves or dehydrates.

I thought of using a chemical spray to kill it, but I get the feeling that other mice would probably avoid the trap in the future. I also thought about trying to get some of the poison pellets into the trap, but can't think of a good way without also giving the mouse a good chance to escape.

Any advice on how to kill the damned thing?

get the glue traps.
put a dab of peanut butter in the center.
when you get a mouse or rat on the trap, then turn it upside down in the toilet. it will drown in a minute.

i lived in NYC my whole life. mice and rats are a part of life in many neighborhoods, and i have drowned my fair share

soup......?

Get a cat. Never saw a mouse in my place...

I do feel a tinge of guilt when I think about just leaving it in the trap until it starves or dehydrates.

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Take it to a pet shop that sells live snake food, then someone else will kill it for you and you can relieve your guilt convincing yourself they sold it as a pet.

budbo said:

Take it to a pet shop that sells live snake food, then someone else will kill it for you and you can relieve your guilt convincing yourself they sold it as a pet.

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+1 I like that idea... Will they take "wild" mice?

Otherwise find someone who hates homebrew and release it near their house

My home was invaded by a mouse several years ago. I kept seeing it in unexpected places - drinking out of the toilet when I'd wake in the middle of the night, on my kitchen counter before breakfast. I finally had enough and, in the true spirit of the American West, I took it as a personal challenge. Man against mouse (well, man and his Crossman .177 cal pellet gun). The mouse lost.

Drown it, perhaps?
If you see a mouse in your home, chances are there a lot more than one.

Bucket of water. If you are wanting to make it quicker, bucket of icewater.

Get more traps at some other store. Have traps set all the time - that way you get early notice of the problem and the first one doesn't get to tell his friends about your house.

Look around for evidence of there they are getting in, and seal those holes (spray foam and wire-mesh in combination). The rubber seals under garage doors are a popular gnaw through and gain access point, IME. Set traps around any such hole.

Look to your grain storage - it needs to be tight and gnaw-proof - grains are mousy heaven.

If you see one, you probably have at least 10, and they breed faster than rabbits.

summersolstice said:

My home was invaded by a mouse several years ago. I kept seeing it in unexpected places - drinking out of the toilet when I'd wake in the middle of the night, on my kitchen counter before breakfast. I finally had enough and, in the true spirit of the American West, I took it as a personal challenge. Man against mouse (well, man and his Crossman .177 cal pellet gun). The mouse lost.

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Nice shot!

BoxofRain said:

Get a cat. Never saw a mouse in my place...

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Have a cat, she was the one that alerted us to the problem.

Not sure I want to set up glue traps because where the mice appear to be hiding out is pretty easily accessible by our cat and don't want her to get stuck on one.

caught a grand total of 4 over night (one with help from the cat,) set up the lethal trap in the run where I had caught the previous 4 in the live traps but didn't catch any more by morning.

Think I'll go with drowning them which isn't ideal, but better than dehydrating or starving to death IMO.

+1 for drowning. Make sure that you leave them under water for a while as they will cough the water out and make like Jesus. It's for this reason that I would not use ice water as they will last a little longer even if they appear to be dead. If your cat is a real hunter, release them in front of it. This will hone it's hunting skills and give it a "taste" for mice.

I've bought some lethal traps that use a clamshell design. You simply pinch the back end, and the front end opens up. Place some Peanut Butter on the action and set it down. Snap! Then pinch the back end and it opens and drop the mouse in the trash. Place some peanut butter on the action and set it down.

No fiddling. No risk of snapping your fingers. Mostly sanitary. And super easy!

You can also rig up a small bucket of water and place a ramp up to it. A bit of food to entice them along. They will smell the water and go for a drink. They fall in and can't climb out and drown. I once saw 5 mice in my friend's de-humidifier. No baiting or anything. They just wanted a drink and fell in.


Shop at Victorpest.com

budbo said:

Take it to a pet shop that sells live snake food, then someone else will kill it for you and you can relieve your guilt convincing yourself they sold it as a pet.

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I have had pet snakes in the past and 'wild mice' aren't the best food for captive snakes.

You can borrow my cats if you'd like... nothing escapes my house alive...

I tell everyone the same thing ... build a repeater.

get a 5gal. bucket; take a long wire (usually the long end of a wire coathanger) and string it through a tin soup can or soda can - make certain is rotates smoothly on the wire; secure the wire/can to the top of the 5gal bucket; put a few inches of water in the bucket; move the can towards the center of the bucket and coat with a bit of peanut butter; place in a location where a mouse can get to the wire.

the mouse climbs out the the can to get the peanut butter, steps on the can, the can rolls dropping the mouse in the water, the mouse drowns and the trap is ready to catch another mouse.

The trap is low maintenance, cheap and easy to use. And, it's pet friendly.

wild mice will chew a caged snakes head off...

general rule is if you see one, count on ten more being around.

secure the grains!

If you found one mouse, chances are there are others. Good pest management practices don't just focus on killing or capturing the pests. Traps are more a monitoring device than a helpful solution to the problem. They more tell you what kind of population you have vs. significantly decimating the population. You'll need to get rid of food sources, so a thorough house cleaning is in order (not implying you live dirty!). Use wet cleaning methods (spray bottle of bleach solution is best) because mice can carry Hanta Virus, which can kill you (yeah, you probably have a better chance of getting struck by lightning, but hey it can happen). The virus is in their saliva and waste. And keep in mind that it's not just the little pellets of feces you see... mice indiscriminantly urinate as they move around. If you use dry cleaning methods, the virus can become aerosolized and you could inhale it.

Preventing access is the next step. Mice can crawl through a hole the size of a dime by scrunching up their bodies. So it would be good to do an inspection of your house to find potential accesses and seal them up.

EDIT: One more thing on Hanta Virus... it is quickly destroyed by ultraviolet light. So areas without natural light are of most concern for wet cleaning methods.

One thing I have going for me is that they are coming from an oddly isolated area of the house. How do I know they're coming from there? Easy, if they were to leave that area, they couldn't get back from any other area of the house, it's just not accessible unless they can find a way to jump about 4 feet straight up (the material on the wall is too smooth for them to be able to climb and there isn't any other form of access except what must be a hole from outside,) and so far, that's where I've been finding them.

Like I said, I caught 4 so far 2 adult, 2 smaller ones, still have traps set, and my cat is no longer freaking out (once she found out where they were she would not leave the area.)

I caught those 4 in about a 4 or 5 hour span, and haven't seen any activity since and it's been about 8 hours at this point.

I'm not counting on them all being gone and am going to continue trying to catch them, as only having 4 seems unlikely to me, but maybe I'm lucky.

Unfortunately, this is the time of year in Minnesota that mice will try to get into houses.

I actually have had some experience is dealing with mice problems, but I've always had traps of the lethal variety and have never had to deal with catching them live.

Live traps. Then release them in the garages of people you don't like.

I caught a mouse once in my garage, but it was only snagged by one foot, so I took it to the end of the driveway and it go in front of my cat. The cat and I both stood there and watched the mouse run right back into the garage. I looked at the cat looking at the mouse as if to say, "Man, look at that thing RUN!" Stupid cat.

I KNOW that thing was a mouser because nearly every day it hunted in the open lot across the street, and little mouse stomachs would turn up frequently in the garage, but that one he had to go an a mouse-free diet!

Get a cat - your mice problem will be gone in no time.

Get a snake.

If you can't bring yourself to bash their heads in with a hammer, put any you catch in a box, drive to the nearest wooded area (at least 5 miles away) and release. Stuck to a glue trap, they won't live for much longer. As far as taking them to a pet store as snake food, the mice most likely has some form of disease that would make it more harmful than good.

Special Hops said:

Get a cat - your mice problem will be gone in no time.

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Got a cat, think I mentioned that. She found the first mouse for us.

Brewin_Bob said:

If you can't bring yourself to bash their heads in with a hammer, put any you catch in a box, drive to the nearest wooded area (at least 5 miles away) and release. Stuck to a glue trap, they won't live for much longer. As far as taking them to a pet store as snake food, the mice most likely has some form of disease that would make it more harmful than good.

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Wouldn't mind bashing in their heads, that would be quick at least. The problem with the traps that I have is that the mice are actually hard to release from them unless I plan to actually let them go, which I don't want to do.

For now I'm throwing the whole trap in a bucket of water, once the mouse has stopped moving for a while I just dump the water and mouse out of the trap and let the trap dry out. I've got 4 mice floating in water at the moment and one that got away from me while I was experimenting with getting the mouse out of the trap found the poison I left out for it (I was experimenting with trying to get it out of the trap in my garage, figured it wouldn't hurt if it was in my garage as that's not exactly rodent-proof at the moment anyway, it ran under a cabinet out there, I put poison next to the cabinet, in the morning the mouse was dead next to the poison. It had very distinctive markings, so I'm sure it's the same one.)

One plus is that I'm pretty sure I know where they got in and have since filled it in and sealed it.

I also found 2 other places where rodents could conceivable have gotten in, but it was the wrong part of the house for where the mice were hanging out, but I filled those holes in too.

OH MY GOD...Serious?

Really...step on the damn thing and throw it outside.

Note To SWMBO....I'm not the only retard that's shot a mouse in the house with a BB gun!

HWMBO's dad shot a mouse in their cabin with a bb gun too. One shot and that sucker was dead.

You may want to be careful with mouse poison if you have a cat. If the mouse eats a lethal dose of poison and then the cat catches it and eats it, you may have a mighty sick kitty on your hands.

BigKahuna said:

Note To SWMBO....I'm not the only retard that's shot a mouse in the house with a BB gun!

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Not such a retard - at least I had enough self restraint to not use my S&W K-22!

Forget big game hunting. If you really want a challenge, go one on one with a mouse in the wilds of a darkened house - barefoot of course for the stealth factor and armed only with an airgun!

Laurel said:

HWMBO's dad shot a mouse in their cabin with a bb gun too. One shot and that sucker was dead.

You may want to be careful with mouse poison if you have a cat. If the mouse eats a lethal dose of poison and then the cat catches it and eats it, you may have a mighty sick kitty on your hands.

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Thanks for the tip, don't want no sick kitty. I've got the poison where it shouldn't be a problem though.

My apartment has a REALLY bad rat problem by the dumpsters that the management refuses to do anything about. They always say they're "working on it". One of my friends that lived here went to the office and complained, and the lady told him "yeah I'll write it down for maintenance" and started "writing" but wasn't touching her pen to the paper. I complained before and one of the guys in the office told me they get mice activity when its "really hot, really cold, or raining". Sweet man, that's only ALL THE TIME. A friend and I are going to get a pellet gun this weekend and take care of the problem ourselves. There are some feral cats that live in and around the complex that don't bother anyone and eat the mice sometimes, so I don't to use poison. Btw....if I shot a steel girder with a pellet gun (lead pellets), would the pellets flatten and drop, or would they come back and hit me? The mice are up in the rafters.

phissionkorps said:

Btw....if I shot a steel girder with a pellet gun (lead pellets), would the pellets flatten and drop, or would they come back and hit me? The mice are up in the rafters.

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You should be fine with pellets, don't use bb's!

phissionkorps said:

My apartment has a REALLY bad rat problem by the dumpsters that the management refuses to do anything about. They always say they're "working on it". One of my friends that lived here went to the office and complained, and the lady told him "yeah I'll write it down for maintenance" and started "writing" but wasn't touching her pen to the paper. I complained before and one of the guys in the office told me they get mice activity when its "really hot, really cold, or raining". Sweet man, that's only ALL THE TIME. A friend and I are going to get a pellet gun this weekend and take care of the problem ourselves. There are some feral cats that live in and around the complex that don't bother anyone and eat the mice sometimes, so I don't to use poison. Btw....if I shot a steel girder with a pellet gun (lead pellets), would the pellets flatten and drop, or would they come back and hit me? The mice are up in the rafters.

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Call the health department and try to file a complaint (anonymous, if you like). I'm not sure they would have regulation over an apartment complex's dumpster area, but it's quite possible.

I remember someone mentioning setting up a bucket with some beer in it. Build a ramp-like device to the bucket. The beer will attract the mice and they will fall in, but can't get out.

Many, many years ago I had a mouse get into one of my 5 liter kegs in the garage...couldn't get out either...

homebrewer_99 said:

I remember someone mentioning setting up a bucket with some beer in it. Build a ramp-like device to the bucket. The beer will attract the mice and they will fall in, but can't get out.

Many, many years ago I had a mouse get into one of my 5 liter kegs in the garage...couldn't get out either...

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Couldn't? Or wouldn't?

Putting the trap & mouse in a closed container and filling it with CO2 is a fairly merciful way of killing them.

I use lethal traps exclusively and my personal record is 18 in a week. My house is surrounded by fields and forest.

The cleverest trap I've seen is a two-gallon bucket with some water in it. There was a ramp for easy access. After cutting the ends off of a beer can, the builder threaded a pipe through it and put some peanut butter on the outside of the can. The pipe lay across the top of the bucket.

Worked like this: Mouse climbs ramp and tried to walk the pipe to the peanut butter. The can rotates, they fall off and drown.

david_42 said:

Putting the trap & mouse in a closed container and filling it with CO2 is a fairly merciful way of killing them.

I use lethal traps exclusively and my personal record is 18 in a week. My house is surrounded by fields and forest.

The cleverest trap I've seen is a two-gallon bucket with some water in it. There was a ramp for easy access. After cutting the ends off of a beer can, the builder threaded a pipe through it and put some peanut butter on the outside of the can. The pipe lay across the top of the bucket.

Worked like this: Mouse climbs ramp and tried to walk the pipe to the peanut butter. The can rotates, they fall off and drown.

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That is probably the most clever trap I've heard of as well..

To the OP, I don't know your living situation, but I've had my cats bring mice and BIG (seriously huge) rats into my home. A tiny mouse is easy to kill, but a giant rat and leave quite a mess. I just caught it in a bucket and did the neighborly thing, walked down the street about 200 feet from my house, and let it go in the gutter. Problem solved (For me)!

srm775 said:

Couldn't? Or wouldn't?

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We'll never know...



Actually, it was upright and empty so I think I know the answer for sure.