Mouse in the House

[Hinotori]

I use peanut butter and bacon grease to bait traps. Yes on baiting under the trigger tab. I use the Victor traps because the others I'd gotten didn't work right.

I did get one of the plastic ones they make to try. It has a little cup to hold the bait and the peanut butter worked as well as normal in it. I think I'm going to drop a piece of cat food in there next. I'm not sure that it snaps as hard as the traditional trap. It does catch them even if it's a bit too light and easy for partially caught ones to drag it off. Bat ears heard and finished it off. She really hates rodents.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

I've given up on the plastic traps. They used to work well, but the ones I've bought recently won't even snap after the first or second snap.

@CrealCritter Have you figured out where the mice are getting in?

 

[CrealCritter]

I use peanut butter and bacon grease to bait traps. Yes on baiting under the trigger tab. I use the Victor traps because the others I'd gotten didn't work right.

I did get one of the plastic ones they make to try. It has a little cup to hold the bait and the peanut butter worked as well as normal in it. I think I'm going to drop a piece of cat food in there next. I'm not sure that it snaps as hard as the traditional trap. It does catch them even if it's a bit too light and easy for partially caught ones to drag it off. Bat ears heard and finished it off. She really hates rodents.

Yeah I would have preferred Victor traps (made in the USA) but all they had were PIC (made in China) junk. But they were fixed by an American (me), as is the case with most Chinese junk I buy. I think they were like 12 traps for $12.00 and hardly worth that, with all the work they needed to function correctly.

 

[CrealCritter]

I've given up on the plastic traps. They used to work well, but the ones I've bought recently won't even snap after the first or second snap.

@CrealCritter Have you figured out where the mice are getting in?

Its a old farm house on a boulder foundation that I live in, so I'm sure there are lots of places for them to get it. They can get in through the tiniest crack. The house is build well though, it survived the New Madrid earth quake in 1811.

 

[flowerbug]

i've never had mice in the house for long enough for them to become friendly. how long did it take to get them all out of the house?

my worst trial with mice was them getting in my car. i could not ever figure out where they were getting in. they made a smelly mess of it. i had to pull the trunk lining out to find their nests and i still didn't get them all. finally i sold it. i warned the guy that it would need more work to figure out where the mice were getting and and that i could not get the cabin filter for the inside of the car replaced. so perhaps they were in there... i couldn't tell. before i sold it i washed the entire car inside with bleach and water.

i hate mice even if i think they are cute and wished they didn't poo and pee inside. if they didn't i wouldn't mind them so much.

here i have trapped many hundreds from the walls and around the house.

last year the AC stopped working well and it turned out they'd chewed through the wires in the control box where they'd built a nest.

i just trapped three from around the AC again. it's something i will probably have to do all winter again and then next year i can take another look at the AC and see if i can plug up where they may be getting into that control box if it looks like they've started nesting in there again.

the house and foundation are sealed up well now, but it has taken me 22+yrs to get to this point.

one last gap i need to find somewhere and it isn't being used often, but i will need a boroscope to do it... snow is a big help. i can see what is going on when it starts snowing.

 

[flowerbug]

uhg, chewing in the wall a few minutes ago. an interior wall. they've done this before and i've trapped them outside to get rid of them but it may take some time.

when the snows come on at least i can see their tracks and put traps out for them. i've caught three mice outside so far, but obviously not the right one yet.

here i was just hoping they'd not be back this season.

will need a scope and perhaps to drill some holes in the walls to figure this out so you can see why i don't want to do that. the outside foundation is sealed up to my visual inspection but there is the AC unit along that wall and there is always a lot of mouse tracks from the berm to that unit and the wall in between. i'm suspecting that either they can get to the wall by going underneath the AC unit or one other place, but i don't really know for sure where they are coming in. they could be getting access to the eaves and running along there from a ways away until they've found this gap into the house/interior wall.

as of yet they haven't gotten out of the wall and into the house or the crawlspace, but it is annoying to hear them chewing in there. too bad i can't track them by the noise they make in the wall, but they are quiet when the move enough that i can't hear them other than when they're chewing.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

We had a "chewie" inside the wall downstairs. Drove the dog absolutely ape. Every night, and some during the day, we'd hear it thrashing around inside that wall, a lot of jumping. I waited until "the wall" got quiet for more than 24 hours. Then, we drilled holes where we thought it was, had to drill 3 holes with a 2" hole saw before we found the body. I extracted a tiny little ermine. A piece of baseboard covered the holes very nicely, and hubby stapled a sheet of cardboard over the vent hole where it had entered.

 

[flowerbug]

that's a pretty big creature! i'd know if it were something like that and i'd also see the entrance somewhere if it were that big.

here is the front view of the house, there are no gaps a mouse can get through on these three sides. i can visually inspect all of the edges and i rarely see tracks in the snow, nor do i catch mice in traps on that side of the house very often when i put them out.

the back side of the house is also mulched in a similar manner. the complexity and spaces i can't visually inspect easily are around the AC unit and under a step where i have already installed wire mesh, but they may be coming in from a neighboring pile of rocks and trees berm which i'd love to remove as that is where all the mice tracks come from and they always hang around the AC unit because it is on their main paths to the North garden (along the edge of the house and then a dash across the limestone).

in this picture you can see most of the back edge not shown in the previous picture is also pretty clear of habitat for any creature, but that green pine tree growing near the house is where the berm is at and the source of many troubles... *sigh*

 

[Lazy Gardener]

The ermine was smaller than a rat. They can pass through a hole the size of a quarter. He came in through the garage or pass door, then went exploring. May have smelled mouse, and gone looking. there was a hole that hubby cut in an interior wall to install a dark room vent, but never finished building the dark room, so the vent never got installed in the wall. His body was about 6" long.

Nice looking house. I like the stone work.

 

[flowerbug]

thanks! i helped on it, but didn't do it, i also helped with the interior fireplace rock work. the ex-step-dad buit the place and split the stone with a sledge hammer, with help from all of us we got it done. it was only meant as a summer place. the whole house was mainly built as his artist studio and that is why the arrangement is bass-ackwards from what you'd expect of a house in the north.

i know how tiny some mice can make themselves. when i was trying to figure out what was going on last year i started watching a bunch of vidoes on youtube which showed what mice could fit through and various methods of trapping them. it was interesting to watch various vids of them on night cameras and such to see their behaviors.