BS: Mouse in the House!

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: GUEST,Bizibod
Date: 03 Jul 09 - 06:57 PM

We've used, with great success ,on several occasions ,the tilting humane trap baited with a square of chocolate. They cannot resist! Situate it running alongside a wall. As they enter the square tube, their own weight tilts the trap so that the little door closes securely and they are face to face with the chocolate as consolation.
House mice, field mice - but not the young rat who obviously couldn't fit into it! I had to flush him out by taking the kickboards off the kitchen units and channel him using sheets of chipboard towards and out of the back door.I don't know who was squealing the loudest!

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: gnu
Date: 03 Jul 09 - 07:00 PM

Plastic bucket. If they can jump that high... you need a very big cat. It they can climb it, you need a shotgun to protect the cat.

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: Genie
Date: 03 Jul 09 - 10:02 PM

I'm going to try to rig some sort of trap using a 5-gallon bucket and another using a gallon-size wide-mouth jar.

The monkey wrench I suspect might get thrown into the mix would be a feline one.   I can just picture the meeses falling for my traps and ending up at the bottom of a bucket or jar in the middle of the night -- and then Grisabella taking this caged-beast phenomenon as some sort of new cat toy I've provided for her, playing with it, and in the process setting the meeses free.   Now the meeses might regret it if she freed them only to then have them as a snack. But, as cats do love to play with their food, they might also escape again -- with or without serious injuries.

Genie

PS

As for the poison and snap traps, not good ideas for my situation even if I could accept the cruelty involved.   (I can accept the cruelty of a cat killing the mouse if she does it quickly and then eats the critter, but I also don't want her just tormenting and torturing the poor critters.)   If a mouse gets away and then dies, say, inside my walls, I have to put up with the dead mouse smell for maybe weeks.   And if a poisoned mouse should be eaten my my cat or some other neighborhood cat or dog, that would be bad.   The snap traps pose a risk of catching my cat's paws or my own fingers -- not to mention the prospect of a very slow, painful death for a mouse that didn't get snapped properly (and maybe just got a foot caught).

We have some wooded areas a mile or two from where I live, where I think I could release meese and they'd maybe be happier than in my pantry.

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 08:05 AM

Well, Teji brought a new candidate in for show and tell last evening, releasing it in the kitchen. This little mouse is more agile or more experienced than the previous one or perhaps we were more impaired by the bottle of wine we'd consumed. We began with mouse trapped behind baseboard heating unit which it successfully escaped to pile of shopping bags in corner. Next it escaped across the room to between the refrigerator and the stove where there is a portable storage unit/cutting board. When we rolled the storage unit out the mouse fled behind refrigerator. When we moved refrigerator out he successfully eluded capture and scooted under the stove, and then disappeared somewhere inside.

We gave up.

Maybe Teji or Tilahun will catch it today and eat it!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: gnu
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 09:36 AM

Told ya! He was able to use the intel from the recon to elude and evade.

Check your keys for signs of soap.

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 01:32 PM

Most people don't realize that the refrigerator and the stove were originally designed primarily to provide shelter for escaping mice.

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 04:41 PM

Grumble, grumble!

I almost caught by his long tail but my claws (nails) weren't sharp enough to hold him.

Maybe we'll set him out a dish of Cheerios. Our pet mouse used to love them.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Mouse in the House!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Jul 09 - 05:45 PM

There's one surefire way. suspend all the furniture in the house from the ceiling by ropes and pulleys. Erect scaffolding if necessary, but the feet of the scaffolding must be sitting inside buckets of kerosene, gasoline, or naptha. The mouse will not enter the buckets. This will basically clear the whole floor, but the spaces on the scaffolding must be wide enough apart that you can run through them to any part of the cleared floor.

Now shut all the doors.

Now plug all small openings...except ONE...in the floor or at floor level and empty all closets and cupboards. Stuff taken out of closets and cupboards must be thrown outside through an open window.

Now shut window.

Place bait in middle of floor. Peanut butter and bacon bits work great.

Wait till after dark. Mice get active after about 10PM or midnight.

The mouse will soon emerge through the one opening you left and head for the bait. IMMEDIATELY plug the opening from which the mouse emerged!!!

You now have the little rascal where you want him...trapped on a bare floor with nothing to hide under. Heh! Heh!

Now destroy that mouse! Armed with your trusty sledgehammer, shotgun or flamethrower, you can pursue the vile rodent around through the house and hound him to his doom.

Be careful not to strike any of the scaffolding or buckets while swinging the hammer at the mouse, firing the shotgun or activating the flamethrower. I know one guy who did that, he broke a section of scaffolding in his living room, and was he crushed under a china cabinet full of Royal Doulton that he'd been collecting since 1932.

Not good.

And the mouse escaped too!