The Mouse House, Part 2
10 May
Terry said no to the Habitrail idea. Instead, he went downstairs and pretty much ripped apart the kitchen in his bid to hermetically seal it against Clive and his little buddies – for yes, it seems that there is MORE THAN ONE OF THEM.
"They’ve been crapping all over the place," Terry told me, his face pale as he emerged from under the sink. "It’s hard to imagine how one mouse could crap so much."
We looked at each other, light beginning to dawn. CLIVE IS NOT WORKING ALONE. The mice, they are taking over the world, folks, and they’re starting with our house, in much the same way that when the neighbourhood kids start destroying the neighbourhood, they’re always sure to do our garden first. Be good if we could maybe be first in line for something nice once in a while, hmmm?
So, knowing that what we’re dealing with here is not one solitary, timid little mouse looking for a warm place to lay his head, but actually a whole hell-raisin’ gang of them – probably on motorbikes – makes me feel a little bit less sympathetic towards them. Even more so given that, in order to try and deal with them, Terry has sawed up wood INSIDE THE KITCHEN, and it was just last night that I doused that place with bleach and picked up all the crumbs one by one. Now I’ll have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN, and it’s like, "Get out of my house, Clive, you little b*****d, ok?" These are some bad-ass mice we’re dealing with here, and also, they ate Terry’s cornflakes again, so we’re really not happy.
Now that the mouse entrance (the bit under the sink where the pipes come up into the cupboard) has been sealed up, we’re hoping Clive and the gang won’t come back. As a test of their cunning, though, Terry has laid some sunflower seeds down inside the (now empty) cupboards, so that we’ll know if they do make it over the top. As if, you know, the mouse droppings aren’t enough of a clue. He’s laid these seeds (do mice even like sunflower seeds?) out in the shape of a giant ‘T’. Now, what would be really cool would be if, when we went back to check on them, Clive had changed them into the shape of a giant ‘C’, no? And if Clive does that? He is SO getting the Habitrail…
Terry’s got to stop eating cornflakes – it’s obviously what they’re after…
Yes! They are clearly complete cornflake fiends!
*laughs*
At least you don’t have rats. We’re in the middle of an awful drought and, as such, we’ve developed a rat problem at my family’s home. (They don’t like the ‘nothing to eat out here’, so they come inside)
The best cure? A few boxes of rat bait (poison) about the place. They eat it up. They die. We find them, once the stink sets in. They’re big. But we win!
Maybe you should try mouse bait instead of traps… or alphabetically-laid sunflower seeds.
We use lots of traditional mouse traps. You see what you are getting, and the mice get killed. Very effective.
But you also need to sort out where they are getting in. A mouse can apparently get through a pencil sized gap!
(originally posted in the other place but see it didn’t transfer here (as I now recall you warned it wouldn’t.)
Years ago I had a problem with one mouse. i knew it existed because every morning while I was still in bed I would hear it mull about in a section of my studio apartment and one time i spotted it as it darted behind a cabinet. Strangely, it never went into the kitchen and I had no idea what it lived on. Not knowing much about mice at the time, I was concerned the mouse might crawl on me when I slept and give me some nasty disease, so I set out to trap the mouse. I got one of those cartoon acme-esque mousetraps. I placed a tiny piece of of paper towel with a dab of peanut butter on it that sat on the “bait” section and set the snapping metal thing so the mouse would be crushed by the metal once he or she triggered the trap. I felt bad, but I considered it a health issue.
The next morning i heared the mouse. Strangely I didn’t hear the trap snap and the mouse seemed to go away. I looked at the trap and noticed the paper towel was totally gone, but the trap was still un-triggered. It foiled me!
So then I visited a hardware supply store that sold mousetraps and noticed a trap called the “have-a heart” trap which promised effectiveness and won’t kill the mouse. It was basically a small container that’s placed at a certain angle so the mouse can easily enter it and then sort-of turns over and traps the mouse. $5 later, I placed it in the same spot as the cartoon mousetrap was. The next morning I was awoken to a “clunk” sound. I got up and saw the trap was activated. The container had tiny holes and I saw a little nose occasionally poke through the holes. It was kind of cute, actually. Not knowing any better way to dispose of this live mouse (I was not about to try to kill it and didn’t want to fathom methods in doing so), I walked to a nearby park and opened the trap and the mouse immediately darted out and into some ivy to never be seen by me again. Interestingly, there was never a mouse issue in the apartment again. I figured if I ever saw any more, I’d spring about $15 for this trap. (it sounds like this one is best suited for Clive and his pals.)
About a year ago I listened to a radio program that briefly profiled a mouse exterminator and learned that catching a mouse is very easy. I learned that mice rarely move beyond a 10 feet radius in their lifetime. (You can listen to it here).