A mouse in the house

fuck just a month ago i'm getting frustrated cos possums are fucking in our ceiling (ever heard possums fuck? its all screeching and running around and hissing - bad b&d) and i got up to move to another room and i'm about to go into the kitchen and in the half light of 2am i spy this fucking rat on the kitchen floor!!! so i creep back out and get a spade and creep back up behind the fucka and WHACK WHACK WHACK. blood and guts everywhere.

i figure he was stoned on the rat bait cos he never moved too fast.

It must say something terrible about me that when I read this exchange I initially assumed you were discussing a Big Brother contestant's opinion on such matters.

I couldn't bring myself to kill them, particularly not in such a blood'n'guts way - I think I have as much of a problem with dealing with the lifeless body of one as I do with a scurrying scampering one. So, ha, I make someone else do my dirty work for me.

they used to run around in the attic and the first night it happened it sounded like someone was walking around upstairs, very fucking scary.

fuck ronan they sound like BIG rats!

it's funny actually we had to change the setting on it because me and my brother (but not my parents) could hear its barely audible high pitched whirring all around the house.

When I first moved to Denver I was startled by a mouse ambling slowly out into the middle of my empty living room, but more because of the sudden realization that I wasn't alone. It tried to hide in a pile of curtains but I caught it in a shoebox and put it outside. I never saw another one in that apartment. I figured it was lost because in other houses I've lived in that were genuinely infested, the mice would stick to the walls or hidden spots and scurry very quickly, not just stroll out into the middle of rooms.

The mouse left of it's own accord, probably to squeak to all his mousemates about the idiot human who watched too many cartoons.

wow. for a horrible minute i thought my mate jon's electric mousetrap (as discussed, oddly enough, at the glasgow FAP on tuesday) had passed into popular existence.

this is how it worked (or didn't):

- you chop the electrical flex off something, eg a kettle
- you tape the neutral wire to a piece of tinfoil
- you tape the live wire to another piece of tinfoil
- you place the two bits of tinfoil on the floor, near enough that a mouse walking across them would complete the circuit
- you plug this death-trap contraption into the mains
- there's a bang and all your lights go out

mind you: he was driven to desperate measures after finding a mouse in his toaster one morning. after he'd turned the toaster on.

Im wondering about the ethics of mouse traps but just want the buggers OUT. Il try the sonar thing however other (possibly more scientific) posts on the internet indicate they dont actually work at all. But its worth the try...

We just put ALL foods in the fridge or in tupperware or metal containers, and they disappeared on their own after a couple of weeks. Also used some of the steel wool to close up spaces under the sink but I don't think that's what drove them out, there were still openings for the determined rodent. Can only assume they found their way in by accident and out just the same.

'Course, one of the dangers of using poison (besides that it's a slow, cruel death) is that mice have a tendency to expire under your floors & behind your walls, and then DECOMPOSE and SMELL.

They eventually got rid of the rats and used the pellet gun to shoot at tins of baked beans.

We have two cats and two dogs in our house and consequently do not have mice or rats, ever.

Uh, we have (or rather had) two dogs and also a mouse. I remember my mother seeing the mouse and saying:"He stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked at me with an expression of total arrogance. He then proceeded to crawl under the cupboard." hahahaha

I love cats, but my Other Half does not. I'd been on at him for ages, saying how much I'd like to have a cat (or two), but he was always staunchy opposed to them, until the night of THE MOUSE INCIDENT several years ago.

I awoke in the middle of the night, to the sound of something gnawing furiously on the skirting board in the bedroom. Every time I flicked the bedroom light on - there was nothing there. It was baffling. I thought I was going mad.

The constant light-flicking-on-and-off plus me-grumbling-noises woke my Bloke up, "There's a mouse in here! Do something! I can't sleep with that in here! What if if runs up onto the bed and bites me?! Get rid of it!" I wailed.

"Well", he muttered, "there's a mousetrap down in the garden shed, but I'm not going out there at this time of night"

"Do something else then! Anything! Just get rid of it!" I pleaded

"What do you expect me to do? Shoot it?" He was becoming quite bad tempered.

"Yes, if you must"

"Okay then, I will"

And so he rummaged in the wardrobe and pulled out a .22 air rifle and a box of pellets. I held the torch. We laid down, side by side, army commando style, on our stomachs, sideways across the bed, peering into the darkness at the section of skirting board where I had heard the mouse sounds. We pulled the duvet over us as camouflage, because The Bloke said that mice can see in the dark and would be able to spot the gun. I believed this. It seemed feasible.

"Right". he whispered. "Point the torch towards the corner where the gnawing was, and as soon as you hear it, switch the torch on and I'll shoot the little fucker - okay?"

The torch was one of those huge Maglites, regulation Police issue with an intense halogen beam. I think they use them to illuminate whole streets from the police helicopter.

The gnawing started up again, I switched on the torch, which instantly dazzled The Bloke who fired blindly in the general direction of the door. We did this sniper exercise several times, air gun pellets ricochetting off the walls, the wardrobes, the bedside clock. Everywhere, except the vicinity of the mouse.

Next day, he capitulated and said I could have a cat.

The cat's the most prolific hunter, and we've never had any mice in the house (or had to shoot any more furniture) since.

so, in a fit of rage, i bought some poison bait which was an effective but not entirely wise move. i killed a bunch of mice that way, but the corpses would turn up everywhere and if not found and disposed of immediately would stink. after a brief lull in rodent activity i thought the problem had been taken care of, but no. the mice came back and i moved on to the covered spring traps, which short of a getting a cat or a thorough professional treatment is what i would recommend using. they're quick and efficient, with an opaque slip cover so you don't have to see the body (though the tail sticks out rather pathetically).

i managed to corner it on the worktop and then put a pint glass over it (being careful of the tail) and a book underneath it and chucked it out the back door.

Finally, I caught it by slamming a plastic container over it and sliding the lid underneath. When I opened the tent door and released it, it ran off like a shot. During the daylight hours, my wife repaired the hole the mouse had chewed.

The next night as we went to bed we heard similar chewing noises. The same mouse (we are sure of this) was busily chewing a hole about 3 cm from the first hole and was on the point of entering the tent again when we caused it to flee. It made me sorry I had let it go the night before instead of killing it, the rotter.

Then, of course, there were the various animal parts that were left all over the house.

it's a cruel world, don't let nobody tell you otherwise.

i wish i could find the other one though. i just threw out whatever was under my bed so there's no more hiding places. waiting for maintenance to come seal up the hole, wherever it is.

I'd like to read Tracer's great-grandmother's book.

i just got a humane trap and they haven't even gone near it

Can you stuff it full of steel wool or something?

I'm sure this has been covered upthread but I learned this week that you are not supposed to use a vacuum to get rid of mouse poop

Why

Yeah why bcs that is what I was planning on doing :/

so apparently it stirs up dust and is one of the main reasons people contract the hantavirus (and various other illnesses). There is also an exhaust on a vacuum which shoots the nasty stuff into the air, especially in rooms that are not ventilated. I know there are a lot of alarmists online, so after I read some very scary things I spoke to a few smarter-than-me real life friends about this and they confirmed that the consensus is to never sweep or vacuum mouse poop, but to spray disinfectant on it and then (yikes) wipe it up with a cloth, wearing a mask at all times. Mouse poop is serious business, I guess. Things you were shockingly old when you learned! I've used a small hand vacuum thing on mice droppings in the past, guess I dodged a bullet. Also FYI it's not only the poop that you can see that is dangerous but also the invisible urine and saliva that accompanies it

It is but hantavirus isn't everywhere. I believe it's only a N/S America thing and in the US the overwhelming majority of cases are west of the Mississippi. There's a good map here - https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/data-research/cases/index.html. Still wouldn't fuck with mouse poop but wouldn't worry too much unless you're in the Western US. The dude I dated during uni moved to Gallup NM the year there was a huge outbreak (which weirdly was a result of the santa ana winds because the winds meant more pinon nuts which meant more mice) of hantavirus. I did a lot of reading on the topic that summer lol.

> I've used a small hand vacuum thing on mice droppings in the past

I've used a small hand vacuum thing on mice droppings in the past week!

there was a guy on uk programme Car SOS who contracted something from rat dropping that fucked his liver. in fact, here you go

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/hantaviruses

talks about 'Old World hantavirus'

Yeah, there are similar viruses in Europe but they're not respiratory and I think usually milder but maybe not. Good practice not to vacuum or sweep mouse droppings in general. Was just saying I wouldn't get too freaked out about it because it's still pretty rare overall.

I hadn’t moved the washing machine from its spot for awhile, so when the pestie showed up last week, we had to move it, check for droppings, and remove the droppings. Pro tip: use dilute biological laundry detergent in a spray bottle - it breaks down animal wee of any kind, and said animals tend not to return to places that have been cleaned with bio liquid.

had a mouse in the bin bag earlier. was sat on the sofa and could hear it rustling. there's nothing approaching food in there, just plastic packaging so i laid it on its side and kicked it a bit and he ran out and under the skirting board.

i also notice the humane trap is closed. but did i close it when I'd not seen anything for a couple of weeks or is it full of starved mouse?

in the last 30 minutes the mouse has eaten the two pumpkin seeds at the mouth of the trap whilst resisting the temptation of the seeds and nuts within the tap. i didn't hear a thing, despite being 10ft away.

it was as quiet as a _____.

This fucker's been eating my organic tomato for the last three nights. Yesterday I placed a sticky trap under the tomato, thinking I'd done him in, but this morning I discovered more of the tomato had been eaten, and he even left some discarded tomato fiber on the trap, as if to taunt me. He must be a clever fellow, or else all the vitamins from the tomato have provided him with the strength to resist the adhesive.

my remedy has been owning cats.

since you've committed to death, electric traps are very effective

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61gJP6mSBQL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

Update: my whippet now catches mice.