baymule
Sustainability Master
Weiner dogs are great for mice and rats. And they are wonderful pets too!
Mouse in the House
- Thread starter CrealCritter
- Start date
Lazy Gardener
Super Self-Sufficient
Dogs generally do make great mousers, at least that has been my experience.
frustratedearthmother
Sustainability Master
My Westies were better mousers than any cat! Gracie, the English Shepherd, is awesome too - but a 50lb dog tearing after a mouse in the house doesn't let much stand in her way. She's better left to outside critters. She also doesn't stop at mice - she' get rats, snakes, and the occasional possum. Love that dog!!
flowerbug
Sustainability Master
it took three nights with the refreshed peanut butter on the trap to have a confirmed miscreant trapped. the same trap was set off two nights ago but i didn't know if it caught anything (sometimes the raccoons will get the mouse before i do). this morning when i checked there was frozen mouse. reset trap. not too likely i got the mouse from the wall i want to get but at least one down means if they are a family i've made a dent in their kingdom.
still not enough snow to do any tracking.
no other traps are being disturbed or having any peanut butter removed from them.
i have continued my knocking on the walls at various times to disturb the mouses slumbers and to encourage them to move out.
x-ray glasses would make this so much easier... *sigh*
still not enough snow to do any tracking.
no other traps are being disturbed or having any peanut butter removed from them.
i have continued my knocking on the walls at various times to disturb the mouses slumbers and to encourage them to move out.
x-ray glasses would make this so much easier... *sigh*
Hinotori
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Rats drive out all other rodents. Even moles. I can judge how under control I have them by the rodents I see. I have a ton of moles right now so Im actually happy about the hills all over the yard. Those are townsend moles I think. We also have shrew moles.
I even saw a townsend vole the other day. They are slow enough even my fat rear can run them down over grass and catch them. The dogs and cats love those for eating and go nuts if they see one.
Cats have been catching a lot of shrews lately. They like to eat the heads off them. I toss the rest to the chickens.
I know we have pacific jumping mice as the cats have gotten a couple in the last 8 years.
I like rodent diversity since it means the rats are gone. Of the natives, only the shrews get in the house.
I even saw a townsend vole the other day. They are slow enough even my fat rear can run them down over grass and catch them. The dogs and cats love those for eating and go nuts if they see one.
Cats have been catching a lot of shrews lately. They like to eat the heads off them. I toss the rest to the chickens.
I know we have pacific jumping mice as the cats have gotten a couple in the last 8 years.
I like rodent diversity since it means the rats are gone. Of the natives, only the shrews get in the house.
Hinotori
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Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan is a good book. I like reading nonfic like that.
flowerbug
Sustainability Master
flowerbug
Sustainability Master
i caught one shrew last year. i'd never caught one of those before in a mouse trap so i had to look it up and read up on it to see what it was. more often we have various mice and voles. a few of the mice i've caught looked very different than others, they were not rats, i'm still not sure what they were, perhaps just field mice that looked odd because they were starving and rained on too much is my guess, but they were longer than i'd noticed before. sometimes when we get really heavy rains the mice will get flooded out of the low lying areas and come to higher ground.
one time after a really super vicious downpour and storm i had a mouse in the garage that was drenched and squeaking from the trauma of it all. sad as i felt for the little guy i did put it out of its misery.
wyoDreamer
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We had another bat in the house on Sunday. We cannot figure out where they are getting into the house. They should be hibernating for goodness sake! We are going to have a thaw this weekend, I guess I will need to see if I can find where they are getting into the house.
flowerbug
Sustainability Master
they seem pretty well able to get in some tiny spaces like mice they can flatten themselves out.
i've had a bat think it could hibernate behind a piece of wood i'd put above my patio door to keep the the birds from building nests up there. it was living there all season and towards evening i would see it falling off the ledge to fly away and feed. never any complaints from me about it being there except i knew that i'd be taking that wood down and that it should find some other spot to hide in for the winter so one warm later summer day i took the wood down and encouraged it to go find some other home for the winter. not sure it did.
