Conference 7.286::home_work

    I had the same problem several years ago. I used to have a house
    in a lightly populated area. One winter mice came into the cellar
    and worked their way into the house. From your note I can see that
    you already learned that traps will only catch a few strays.
    
    I used De-con(sp?) bait traps (rat poison). I placed them in the cellar
    and strategic locations throughout the house. They were gone in a week.
    I never had a problem with mice getting caught in the walls. After the
    first season one trap in the cellar will rid the house of them
    permanently. 
    
    When I asked advice on what to do everyone told me the "mice in the
    wall" story. However, no one I spoke to experienced the problem
    personally. I'm sure there are a few exceptions where an occasional
    mouse will die in the house. 

    
    				Fred
    

    I had mice when I was living in a flat in Edinburgh.  I got some
    mouse traps and used peanut butter for bait.  I caught a few, but
    many times I'd wake up to find the peanut butter gone and the trap
    still set.  Then I got wise and stuck a raison onto the trap and
    covered that with peanut butter.  Every morning would find one or
    even two mice in the trap.  I think the traps were working well
    because they were in the kitchen which is where the mice were going
    for food.
    
    One or the neighbors used poison.  One of the poisoned mice turned
    up in our living room, barely able to move.  Shortly thereafter,
    the mice problem went away.  Whether it was because of the poison,
    or because I blocked off all their entrance holes to the flat, I
    don't know.
    
                                        August G. Reinig

    I've had the dead-mouse-in-the-wall problem.  Actually, it was a
    dead-mouse-in-the-floor problem, but it smelled just as bad.  I'm
    a big fan of traps.  As pointed out, you need to attach the bait
    to the trigger, so the mouse has to pull on it.  Also experiment
    with trap placement.
    
    Steve

    I've always had good luck with a good mousing cat. It seems
    like I've always moved into mouse infested quarters only
    to have the mouse problems go away within a month. Of course,
    there is a slight weight management problem with the cats
    just after such a move ;^).

    decon works great if there is no water available in the house to
    get to.  They go outside.  but if you have a leaky pipe like my
    folks do then they will defently die in the walls.

    Had a friend who used to set out a pan of D-CON and a pan of beer
    next to it.  Turned the lights down low at night.  See mouse come
    in through hole in wall, eat D-CON, drink beer, get drunk.  Claimed
    it was a lot more entertaining than TV. ;^)  Didn't kill many mice
    though because they didn't dehydrate.  

    The easiest thing is to keep them out in the first place.  Get some
    of that insulating foam that comes in a pressurized can and expands
    as you expel it.  Put this in all the holes that they might be comming
    in like around pipes, etc.  It also makes your house warmer, how
    can you miss?
    

    re: plugging the holes
    
    You should really do this only AFTER you get the meese out of the
    house.
    
    -joet 

    use steel wool first in the holes they don't like to chew on it.

    RE: plugging mouse holes.  Steel wool is excellent to use to plug
    up mouse holes.

    I Have on ocassion a visit from a mr. mouse and sometimes he brings
    the whole dam family... I have tried peanut butter in traps... usually
    works for the first two nights... if I don't catch them right away
    the trap is useless... the second kind of trap is a glue board..
    watch where they leave their dropping and place the glue board in
    the path they frequent... the idea is that their feet get stuck
    and then use their nose to push themselves away and sufficate (sp.)...
    this doesn't always work... onetime mr. mouse covered everything
    but his nose... it was awful..
    
    My third option is bait... and yes i have had them die in the walls...
    god awful smell... but it does go away in a day or so.... My last
    suggestion is to borrow if not adopt a large tom cat... this does
    not work for me because i have three dogs and i work have bigger
    problems than little ole' mr. mouse.
                                        
    
    there has been a couple of times when mr. mouse got himself into
    the garbage when i was able to run it out the door and let him go...
    i figure i would give him a chance of freedom, when possible.
    
    hope it helps...
    
    donna
    
    

    I saw a interesting trap at the Nashua Blue Seal store that looked
    like it would work pretty well for high population problems. This
    trap has a spring loaded rotating door which when entered throws
    the mouse up and over a small barricaded wall where he (she) calls
    out to it's friends for help - in mouse talk of course. When a would
    be hero mouse enters the trap to assist his friend in the escape,
    he to is flipped up and over the wall, only to be confined to the
    same jail cell as his screaming buddy. Now they both start yelling
    for help and the whole thing starts over again until the entire
    family is caught in the jail cell. You then dispose of them as you
    see fit. The trap must be baited for the 1st mouse and the rest
    just come in on their own. I've only seen the trap and don't know
    if it really works but it seems like a pretty good concept.

re: plugging up all the holes

I was once told by a furnace man that it is NOT good to have an airtight cellar
because that would restrict the amount of oxygen available to the furnace (can't
replace what gets used) and it woul dburn less efficiently.  in fact, he went on
to say that in some furnace installations one takes a pipe and runs it from the
outside to directly inside the firebox, insuring a clearer burn.  sounds
interesting...

anyhow, since mice can get into even the smallest hole, I've just resolved into
letting the cat take care of the problems.

-mark

    Gee, Mez, we're going on vaca in October.  Want to borrow our kitties
    for two weeks?  Amir and Indy come with a guarantee, I swear.  Just
    cover your head at night if you hear growling, purring and crunchy
    noises.
    
    Marcia

    RE: .14
    
    We did borrow a cat from a friend and haven't had mice since.
    

I traps because because I can keep score. I get a point if I a catch one
and they get a point if they can steal the trap (believe me, it has happened).

Of course, I got wise to it and started tying (sp?) the traps to a pipe.

    Steve, you have mice that steel you traps.....Wow, big suckers huh?
    
    Before I got my cat I had to tie the bate to the tongue on the traps.
    Now I just remove the non-breathing mice from the step. My cat thinks
    she is too good to eat them, just kill them and leave them to scare
    the hell out of the owner's wife and daughters.
    
    Living in the country has it's rewards but mice are not part of
    them.
    
    Jim

    <you have mice that steal traps>
    
    I set a trap along the dining room wall one late evening after seeing
    a mouse sprint by. The following morning the trap wasn't there!
    I looked, and looked, getting more anxious by the minute.
    
    Finally, I found it about 10 feet away, in front of the-closed- closet
    door AND around a corner, so it was clear that the force of the
    spring had not thrown it there. 
    The trap had caught the mouse by one of his legs rather than the way
    one would like. The mouse had evidently crawled to the closet -which
    sits partially over the cellar and partially over the foundation
    for the front entrance- to escape. The cracks were not big enuf
    to admit the trap. 
    The mouse was still alive, which condition was promptly corrected.
    

    I was told that peanut butter made excellent bait in a mousetrap
    - it does.
    
    Howvever, after loading it, ever so gingerly I set out the trap.
    It had a hair trigger and several times I almost caught myself.
    I was very suprised to find the trap cleaned twice without springing
    it.  Third time I got 'im.
    

    re .19:
    
    I've also had good luck with peanut butter.  Inspection of the first
    successful trap showed only a tiny amout of peanut butter left in
    the very middle of the bait area.  I made sure to really pack it
    in good (greed is their downfall; kinda like people ;^) ) so they
    have to exert themselves to get it all.
    
    Bob

    
       Speaking of the mouse that got away, isn't it amazing that we
    can go through so much trouble to make sure the cheese /peanut-butter
    /bait is secure in the trap, and then set it so that a slight breeze
    will set the thing off, and yet the next morning the bait can be
    gone but the trap was not triggered!   :-)
    
    
    Frank
    

The sure-fire method passed down through the family is to tie a loop of
string around the trap trigger and *then* smear the peanut butter on. 
If the little ratlet doesn't set off the trap licking off the pb, he 
will when he bites down on the string.
					>>>==>PStJTT

re. all replies 


All excellent info- I've got a few mice that I need to get rid of.

We first heard them in walls, but really decided that we better act when
we noticed that they had eaten a plate full of Hersheys Kisses (about 15 pcs)

we found little pieces of aluminum foil from the kisses piled up behind
the sofa!!!!!

Will go with the trap/peanut butter method, with string, and post results.

Steve

    Several weeks ago, I set a trap three nights running.  I'm sure
    I fed the same mouse three generous servings of peanut butter - the trap
    was clean each morning.  
    
    One-half inch of string later ...
    
    

   Have nailed 2 mice so far with PB, No "escapes".  

   They were no-shows last night, so maybe it was only a mom and pop team. 

   Steve

    Yesterday when my husband took out the air filter in his car, he
    found a pile of fuzz. Suspicious of the source, he checked the 
    filter in my car, and found a similar pile. With the fuzz in my
    car, he found two mice! Yes, these little guys have built a nest
    in both cars' air filters. 
                                                          
    How can I get rid of these critters? Not just from the cars, but
    from the garage where they are kept?  These cars are both driven 
    daily (an hour for my car), so it's not from being left in storage.
    We put out traps with peanut butter last night - they were empty
    this morning. What else can we do?
    
    Kelly

RE: .26

>    We put out traps with peanut butter last night - they were empty
>    this morning. What else can we do?

	I usually do the traps. When you stated that they were empty. was
the trap sprung? did the mouse walk off with the trap? If the trap is missing
it could mean BIG mice (rats) or a chipmunk.... You could try bigger traps or
use a mice/rat poison.... Be carefull not to let any pets get into the poison.

	I would also look for there hole on how they are getting in.... Is the
door of the garage left open a lot? 


Another solution...

	By a Mouser..... A good cat.....
		Don't blame the cat if you find the mice piled up at the
door. It their way of showing you they are doing a good job.....

			Bill
    

    Well, one mouse got caught in the trap. We found another dead on
    the floor undre the car (lucky it didn't die in the car!). The other
    traps are untouched. However, we've found another mouse nest in
    the bulkhead from the cellar to the back-yard. Besides the traps,
    we are going to put out D-Con's boxed bait called Mouse-B-Gone.
    Both of these locations are relatively safe for use of poison, since
    we don't have pets and the garage and bulkhead are not left open.
    As far as how they are getting in, although we don't leave the
    garage open, these field mice are small enought to squeeze through
    under the door or something. There are no obvious openings to let them
    in. The bulk head doesn't seal up at all. 
    
    Any experience with Mouse-B-Gone? 

    What time of year are mice active? I've only ever had mice (at our
    camp in Maine) during the fall, when the weather is cold, and they
    begin to look for a warm place to hole up until snow. THen they
    can move outside, with the snow as insulation, and be warmer than
    in my unheated place. This is the first time I've heard of mice
    moving in during the spring, looking for nesting areas. Is this common? 

I recommend against poisons such as D-Con.  They claim that the mice go outside
to die, but they often don't.  If they decide to hole up in a wall before
they expire, you'll be contending with an awful smell for a VERY long time.

			Steve

I couldn't help myself. I had to degress here a little... I can remember
helping my cousin once with removal of some old plaster walls. When we
pulled it down, we found a 10" rat with about 20 ears of corn behind it..


	I wonder if the corn had D-con in it...

			Bill

Other answers to questions.

	- In my case we have only had the mioce want to get in the winter... 

	- I have used the decon stuff before for the mice in my garage. It
	  worked ok. No more mice. I don't even remember a smell... (the rat
	  above didn't smell either, but it was there at least 10 years)

	- You don't need a big hole for them to get into....

	- Since the traps are working... keep them going too...

    The safest way to get rid of a mouse is;
    
    	A CAT!
    
    The scent of a cat around the place is enough to keep the mice away. 
    Know anyone that is looking for someone to watch their cat?  Think
    about starting a cat-sitting business?  It sounds like there's plenty 
    of mice around, you could get a barn cat and then everyone would be 
    happy.  Plus, it's cheap!

>    The scent of a cat around the place is enough to keep the mice away. 
 
Someone should tell the mice in Pepperell.  Our two cats have excellent
records as mousers, but we still occasionally have a mouse set up housekeeping
in the walls.
					>>>==>PStJTT

The only mouse I ever had in the house was a present brought to me by my cat.
It was alive and kicking.  When I tried to get it away from the cat, it let it
go.  The mouse ran into a space between the stove and the corner cabinet.  It 
lived there for a while and would climb up the gas line, out from around the 
burner jets and run around leaving tiny turds on my counters.  As for the cat,
it would sit in front of the stove for hours staring at the hole.  

I finally set a trap with peanut butter, and caught the bugger in a day.

I've found (past houses, lots more mouses) the peanut butter works best on the 
traps, since it doesn't come off in a lump.  They end up working at it for a 
while until "the big suprise" happens.

    Smelly cats keep the mice away???  Hah!!  Smatta you guys, you never
    watch Tom and Jerry cartoons or sumptin.
    
    					- Vick

    We've got two cats...and mice running up and down inside the walls
    and through the basement and garage, any place the cats can't get
    to.  In my experience, cat smell doesn't do much to repell mice.
    
    Cats aren't all that great at catching mice, either, in general.
    I recall reading in some old book about sailing ships that ships
    claimed to be "rat-free because we have such excellent cats on
    board" would be gassed to kill the non-existent rats...and upon
    reboarding the ship, dead rats would be found in abundance.

    Hmmmmmm ..... I guess maybe I don't need to keep my cat after all, huh?
    And I thought he was 'earning his keep' (-:   Honestly, it's always
    worked for me.  I will agree that cats aren't very good at
    catching/killing mice - the times I've ever seen this in progress, the
    cat was more interested in playing with the mouse.
    
    3:00 a.m., and all of a sudden the cat is going spastic in my bedroom. 
    Turn on the light, and the cat has a mouse in his mouth - gently.  Puts
    it down, lets it run a bit, catches it with his paws, bats it around a
    little, lets it start to get away and goes on like this for about 15
    minutes.  Then, of course there was a distinct crunch and no more
    mouse. (tail and all!)  It was pretty funny to watch - but I started
    to feel bad for the mouse too.
    
    (of course in thinking about this, if there was a mouse around in the
    first place, I guess my initial comment was wrong - sorry!)
    
    ...I guess you're back to PB and traps.!
                                            

    
    Cats have always worked for me. Maybe you should get another cat. 
    
    Mike

    	Some breeds of cat are good mousers, others poor. The Maine Coon
    cat is known for being a good mouser, and mine have been! Mice, moles,
    even squirrels! But the cat has to be able to get at the mice/whatever.
    If the little guy is sneaky and stays under cover/in walls, etc, you
    may have to live with them or use the trap.
    	- Chris

    Actually, I haven't seen one living mouse in my house since we acquired
    our stray cat.  There are few places in our basement/garage, where said cat
    lives, where a mouse could hide.  Haven't seen ANY chipmunks in our
    stone walls since she moved in either.  Though hunting is supposedly
    instinctive in cats, I think that strays, who have had to hunt for
    survival, probably have keener hunting skills.  We feed our basement
    cat, but not as much as she thinks she needs.
    
    					- Vick

    
    My cat's keep all mice and any other small animal away. They get their
    training by eating bugs. I don't know what it is, but they love bugs.
    We also have small frogs/toads near my house, and every once in awhile
    they'll catch one, and play with it. They even caught a snake once and
    were playing catch with it. I had to rescue the snake and gave it to my
    neighbors kid.
    
    Mike

    Nothing but cats for me!!! I have 3 barn cats that live off the land..
    I have not seen or heard a mouse since the cats moved in 4 years ago.
    They must find enough mice in the area since I don't feed them...

    After my neighbor built a big addition onto his house a whole squadron
    of mice moved into MY house.  I had sporadic luck with traps but the
    mice were clearly gaining until two winters ago when my wife brought
    home a stray cat.  The poor cat was almost dead and eventually had to
    have most of its tail amputated due to frostbite damage.  
    
    Well that cat sure made up for all the Vet's bills.  Within a month the
    tide was clearly turning in our favor and within three months no trace
    of any more mice.  Since the cat ran out of indoor mice she has
    turned to squirels, birds, toads and an occasional field mouse.  All
    this in spite of the fact that she eats a ton of cat food every day.

    By the way, cats that eat wild critters often get tapeworms.  This
    isn't a problem as long as they get enough food for themselves and the
    worms.  If you notice a marked loss of weight, bring the cat and a
    stool sample to the vet for worming medicine.  
    
    						-jp
    
    ps: although it's not a big problem, it can get gross when you find
    some worm segments stuck to the cat's fur, or the couch...

    
    how about dogs !!??  I have two dogs that keep the squirrels and
    chipmunks (even birds) in good shape ! Granted they don't catch
    much but they run 'em off. My mutt (dashund/scotty) caught a chippy
    last week. My Golden saw a mouse/mole scamper into a tiny hole near
    the bird feeder, well, I needed a shovel to fill the hole she dug
    trying to get the little critter ! It was a riot watching her dig
    and stick her head in the hole !
    
    Ace
    

    	Welll I just found out that I've got a family of meece living in the
    insulation between the floor joists in the ceiling of my garage (the
    floor of my family room) of course I had made it easier for them by
    stapeling sheet poly across the under side of the joists!!   I bought
    some D-Con and was gonna slit the poly and push some in.  Whaddya
    think, will it work, will they die up in there and smell up the
    place?????   Got any suggestions, I've read all the replies so far and
    yes I understand that the D-Con makes em REAL thirsty, but what if they
    go out and have a few drinks and come home to sleep it off???? 
          

    They will come back and die inside the floor and walls, just to
    annoy you.  Don't worry though, the smell lasts for only a couple 
    of weeks...  ;-)   I think the "go outside to get water" line is
    propaganda to make you think they won't die in the house.  Believe
    me, they do - at least some of them!
    
    Personally, I tend to favor the old spring traps.  You know when you
    get one, and you know the cadaver is not stuck off in a corner of a 
    wall next to a heating pipe.  I nail the trap to a small board, so
    the mouse can't pull it around, and put the whole thing under a small
    box with a couple of notches cut in the top edges of the box (which
    end up being against the floor) so the mice can get in.  If you
    don't have pets or small children, you won't need to do this.

    Maybe you could borrow someones cat for a few months.  We haven't had
    a single mouse in our basement since we adopted a stray cat (who lives
    outside and in the basement) except for dead mice that she brings in
    from outside.  (And yes, we feed her well, but she loves to hunt).
    Before she came we had a family of mice living in the insulation
    above our garage.
    					- Vick

    
    
    
    	If you go the trap route. I've found peanut butter works the best.
    
    
    						Mike
    						----

We've had good luck with the spring traps.

Of course, I wanted to close the garage doors and let the cats fun, but I got
overruled on that -- too many chemicals in the garage, especially the chance
of spilled antifreeze.  We've never seen signs of mice inside the house since we
moved in with the cats, although the previous owner did.  (Now squirrels in the
house are another story.)

   Gary

    Now what are those mice actually doing to warrant a death contract
    on them?  I had mice in my basement for three months and never had
    a problem.  The best tenants I ever had!
    
    Then I let my three cats down in the basement.  I haven't seen the
    mice since.  I guess they didn't like their new neighbors and moved
    out.  :-)
    
    Kevin

    	Thanx for all the advice, guys & gals.  I think I'm gonna go the
    mechanical trap route, mainly cuz I'm afraid they might die up in the
    insulation if I use the D-Con and as someone said, although its not
    pretty you sure know its final and you can keep count.
    

re:Note 331.51 by LVSB::GAGNON 

>    Now what are those mice actually doing to warrant a death contract
>    on them?  I had mice in my basement for three months and never had
>    a problem.  The best tenants I ever had!
      
      Are you serious?  On the chance that you are, some of the problems
      that mice can cause include:
          
          They will destroy the insulation.
          They may chew electic  wires,  cuasing  shorts  and  portntial
          fires. 
          They and their dropings may spread disease.
      
      Gas  'em, poison 'em, trap 'em, or set the cats on 'em, but do get
      rid of them ASAP.

    
    In my old house I always had mice, and the traps worked.  Since
    I built my new house and moved into it last October I figured no
    more mice.
    
    Wrong..
    
    Friday night my wife was sitting in the kitchen and heard a noise
    at the celler door.  Upon opening the door, yep there he was!  She
    screamed and slammed the door..  Ha Ha!
    
    Anyway Saturday morning I also heard a noise at the door and opened
    it.  there was the mouse just looking at me.  He moved down on step
    and sat there watching me.  I shut the door looking for something
    to catch him with and settled on a paper bag.
    
    when I opened the door he was still there, bold as ever.  When I
    tried to corner him he just moved around some and finally decided
    to go down the steps.  He went down the 15 steps as casually as
    a house pet.
    
    I had a weather strip at the bottom of the cellar door to keep drafts
    out, he ate that.
    
    After I went upstairs my sons came down for breakfast and the mouse
    came up too.  They chased him around the house but couldn't catch
    him.  
    
    Then my wife and sons chased him around.  He'd run up and sit on
    the window sill looking at them.  This mouse didn't care who was
    chasing him or what time of the day it was.
                   
    I finally located one trap that I forgot to throw out, loaded it
    with peanut butter and left for Canobie Lake.
    
    I came back and no mouse.  Still no mouse this morning.  It doesn't
    look as though he touched the peanut butter either.
    
    So he decided to leave the house or is one smart creature!
    
    I still can't figure how he got into the house?  I don't have any
    openings??
    
    Cal.
    
    

    For real family fun buy some cheap darts and have a safari...

    George

I've used the "Havahart"(sp) traps with good success, caught 3 in
2 days.  All 3 mice got a ride to a field across town.

/F

    
    
    WHen they get tired of Peanut Butter try Cheez-Wiz, and yes nail the
    trap to a board. I tied a string to a trap 3 times at my mother-in-laws
    house and each time when I went to pull on the string all I got was
    the string, no trap. 

    Can a cat with no claws still catch mice. if not do you think she can
    at least scare them away?

    Speaking from personal experience, a cat with no front claws can catch
    mice and kill them, leaving a donation on the back porch. She can also 
    catch mice and bring them into the house (still alive) to play with.  
    On occasion she will get a blue jay.  Cats that regularly supplement 
    their diets with wild animals regularly get tapeworms.
    
    If you have a modern well-sealed house, as we do now, a hunting cat is
    a nuisance due to the above mentioned donations and tapeworns. 
    However, when I lived in a mouse-infested 100-year-old house, the cat
    was very effective at reducing the population.  Much more so than
    traps.

    re 58 ditto 59
    
    
    My cat has no front claws, and reularly brings home mice, and chipmunks
    from the "woods". They are brought home w/ and w/o heads.
    
    
    fwiw/Bob

I'll bet it is easier for a cat without claws to catch the chipmunks without 
heads than the ones with heads.

Our (from my childhood) cat used to like to (partially) devour her kills in the
basement stall shower.  (can you say yecccccccchhhh!  I knew you could)

Stan

    re.61
    
    You would be surprised. The headless chipmunks (like the headless
    horseman), are ghosts of chipmunks past. The hover above the ground 
    anywher from 10 to 30 inches depending on the weather. For a cat to
    catch the hedless variety she needs great jumping ability.
    
    /bd

30 inches is child's play for a healthy cat.  One of ours can effortlessly
levitate to the middle block of our cat tree - about four feet.

Even the most out of shape cat can make it to countertops, generally when you
turn your back on the meat you're preparing.

   Gary

    I was checking my pool cover last night and found a half a mouse
    floating on the cover...........our cat loves to sit on the pool edge
    and watch for fresh food from a 4' high vantage point.......NOW, she 
    thinks it's a great place to dine............ At first we thought it 
    was funny to watch her as she would spot something on the ground and her
    tail would wave........in the pool water........now I hope she doesn't 
    make it a habit during the summer, when the cover is off...
    
    Jim

                re. Jumping cats, etc.
                
                I've seen a cat jump to the top of a standard door from
        a siting start, no run and very little crouch! I've also known
        of a cat to catch things like squirrels and birds while staked
        out on a leash (about 8 foot long).
                
                /s/     Bob

    
    
     The sticky paper/traps work great. My catch ratio with spring type
    traps is about .250 . With the sticky paper I'm batting 1000.  Course
    if you're more the 'challange' type person, I.E. Bill Murray in Caddy
    Shack, you may prefer the spring traps, or gas, or explosives......
    
    
     Am also testing out the 'havahart' traps. Friend of mine catches mice
    in them without even having to put bait in them !
    
    
     happy mousing !
    
     Bob
    

	Could you folks do me a favor?

	Run up to your attic and count the mice.

	I'm wondering how many individuals constitute a typical attic
	mouse population.  100?  1000?

	I figure I've lugged 250 of the tiny hellions out of my attic and
	into the woods, at the average rate of 1.4 per day for 6 months.

	Am I gaining?  Should I set more Havaharts?  Should I turn myself
	into a bloodthirsty killer and exterminate the brutes?

	By the way, do those ultrasonic gewgaws they advertise in the
	Sunday supplements really work?  You know, the ones that drive
	mice away by making a high-pitched noise, beyond human hearing?

	Regards, Robert.

    Yes you are taking them away but are they coming right back?
    
    Have you blocked up the hole they use to get into your attic?  Are you
    catching babies or parents?  If you are catching only babies you are
    fighting a loosing battle.  If you are catching parents you are in
    better shape, assuming you can catch the babies before they can breed.

I was going to ask how far you were toting the little buggers.  If it is not far
enough they may beat you back to the house.

I used to be a nice guy too.  Now I have a new policy.  If it is inside the
four walls it is a pest.  Outside it is wildlife.  (with the possible exception 
of the damn woodchuck that took up residence in my yard last fall - he may get
terminated as soon as he wakes up from his long winters nap)

Stan

    
    Wow, 250.  I'd wait to plug the hole until you've gotten them out.  Have 
    you tried hanging net bags of moth balls in the attic?  I've read somewhere
    that this works.  (Meaning they don't like the smell and they go away.)  I 
    thought it was in this conference; I searched this note and it wasn't this 
    one.
    
    Christine

And I thought we had a lot of mice...  

If you don't want to kill them (and I don't either, I find dead mice more
disgusting than live ones), take them *far* away -- e.g. drop them by the
road on your way to work.  Don't just toss live mice into the woods near 
your house -- they can find their way back. 

The other thing to do (as a long range plan) is to find places they might 
get in and plug them up.  It really can be done!  And the process will make
your house more insect and draft proof, too.

	Best of luck,
	Larry

    re .72, if you dump them by roadside, beware of over zealous
    environmentalists and naturalists. In Mass., there are laws 
    about removing wildlife from their habitat. I don't think
    your home counts as a natural habitat, but distances greater
    than n miles/furlongs/kilometers/etc might be.
    
    I guess you can kill them, but don't remove them live!
    Dump discretely     ;)

    Havahearts HA!
    
    I had a couple mice in my basement this winter, and bought those
    mouse traps ... I was going to be the nice guy and be humane.
    
    So ... I caught two ... one managed to find his way back in ...
    but this little devil was clever.  He had found a way to remove the
    bait from the trap and get back out without tripping it ... no matter
    how much or little bait I put in.  In the end I lost my heart after
    being foiled by this smartie a dozen times!
    
    He's gone now.
    
    Stuart

	Re .68, etc.:  I take them about 150 feet away, across a lightly 
	travelled dirt road, 30 feet into the woods.  I began to suspect they
	were returning when I was pushed aside by two of them shouting "Gangway!"
	as they blurred past me on their way back.  Rude little ruffians.

	The house has vinyl siding, with vertical channels formed by the 
	moldings at the outside corners.  Chipmunks escape my dog by running
	up inside the moldings.  The channels must reach the eaves.

	I'm catching adults.

	I, too, am degenerating toward becoming an assassin, a murderer, an
	enemy of the Earth!  Ha ha hah!  Take _that_, rodent!  So far, the 
	marauding bands confine themselves to the attic, but if they ever
	invade the house...  doom!

	I'll try mothballs.  Some writers here scoff, others support the idea.
	Time for a scientific study.

	Re:  discreet dumping.  I thought I'd dump them in DEC's parking lot.
	They'd feel right at home.

	They've sometimes removed sunflower seeds from the Havahart's without
	tripping them.  Seldom enough not to worry, often enough for me to
	wonder how they do it.  These traps merit some attention to the details
	of how the tray pivots, and how the lock-wires touch.  Judicious 
	bending and tweaking helps.

	When I lived out in the country, the snakes in the attic controlled
	the mice.  The bats helped with the cluster flies.  And the mice 
	controlled the carpenter ants.  Nature is neat.

	Regards, Robert.

re .75:

>	The house has vinyl siding, with vertical channels formed by the 
>	moldings at the outside corners.  Chipmunks escape my dog by running
>	up inside the moldings.  The channels must reach the eaves.

Try some of that 'foam in a can' stuff to plug these entrances (and any other
entrances you can find).

-Mike

    
    Urban mice can be battle hardened. They will chew right through the
    foam in a can. The one thing I've found that works is steel wool packed
    real tight. They can't chew through that.
    
    CdH
    

    The Havaharts I obtained have nothing adjustable apart from the pivot
    ... everything else is pure plastic.  I tried adjusting the balance
    all ways and couldn't catch this smart mouse.  I think he learned the
    trick after being caught once.
    
    When I've got a moose in the hoose, I run out of "heart"!
    
    Stuart

    Wow! I thought I had a major league mouse problem when I snuffed
    20+ this winter...
    
    The best bait I found was peanut butter, smeared real well on to the
    "trigger".
    
    ...but you say the mice will control carpenter ants? Oooo, now here's
    a delemma...
    
    Edd

      Please don't dump live mice in my neighborhood.

One sure-fire effect of hanging moth balls in your attic to drive out the mice..

...will be to force them to take up residence in the house!

Paul

1)  I have a thingee called a "mouse cube" -- Spags used to carry them,
but didn't have them the last time I went, though.  It's just a hollow
plastic thing the size of a mouse coffin, with a plastic door flap
on the front with air holes in it.  The mouse has to push it open to
get in and get the bait that you put in at the back, and it falls 
shut behind them as sure as gravity.  No trigger to fail to go off.
Being plastic is a problem, though -- after about 20 mice, the thing
finally broke -- they actually gouged the plastic.  But they're cheap.

2)  I said "dump them by the highway", not "dump them by the road".
That's as in an interstate highway or some other place far from houses.
Although I did dump one pair in a DEC parking lot.  I doubt if they
survived (it was 10 degrees), but if they didn't, they fed something.  
Nature is tough on mice, but there are still plenty to go around.
Mostly, though, I drop our field mice in remote grassy areas, which is 
more their proper habitat than the interior of my house.

3)  Another advantage of using steel wool to block holes at the bottom
of the siding is that *if* water gets behind the vinyl siding, it will
drain out (leaving rust stains to tell you that there's a problem), 
instead of rotting out your walls in secret.  Also, don't forget to block
as many holes as possible between your basement/attic and your main house.
We don't hear mice in our walls so often, now that I've made it harder
for them to get to where the food is.

	Enjoy,
	Larry

    While I am sensitive to the environment, and have an admiration
    for those using "Have-a-Heart" type devices for "redeployment and
    transition" of underutilized mice, I am also a firm advocate of 
    the "Have-a-Wife" policy. 
    
    Peanut butter on the trigger of a mouse trap has been very 
    successful for me in the past.
    
    The mice never come back, and my wife hasn't left yet.
    
    Frank

	The steel-wool ideas sound good!  I'll try it.

	My Havaharts are the steel kind.  They're 23 years old.  The mesh has
	rectangular holes, not the square holes as in the new traps.  I used
	a new-style trap 8 years ago.  Mice kept getting caught in the mesh
	because they couldn't turn their cute little snoots to free their teeth 
	from around the wire they tried to bite through.

	I have no proof that mice attack carpenter ants.  But in an earlier
	house I once noticed carpenter-ant bedlam in a ceiling at a corner of 
	the building, and I heard a mouse up in the ceiling.  Also, I've seen 
	mouse droppings in ant nests in stacked wood.  Merely circumstantial, 
	but one likes to hope.

	Re 80:  Don't worry, Charlie.  I'll dump them somewhere else.  Maybe
	at the IRS office.  Then the little rodents will _really_ feel right
	at home!

	Re 81:  Indeed, the risk of driving the enemy from the territory they've
	seized into my personal enclave is why I'm moving from tactical thinking 
	to strategic thinking.  Luring them to traps faster than they can invade
	doesn't work.  Smart mouse-seeking weapons would work best, e.g. a cat,
	but the attic has fiberglas everywhere - not good for puddytat.  I'll 
	try the steel-wool/foam barrier-berm scheme to reduce incursion, and hope 
	that constant trapping will attrit remaining intruders.  If things get 
	desperate, I'll resort to moth-ball weapons, and surround the enemy with
	fields of trap mines, and maybe I'll press neighborhood cats into killer 
	patrols around the perimeter to negate retreating enemy units and
	interdict advancing enemy units.
	
	re 82: I like that rusty steel wool idea.  And I'll bet your DEClot
	mice survived.  They probably climbed into somebody's car.  Mine...

	Regards, Robert.

    It's been my experiences that SCUDs (Smart Cats Under Distress) can't
    execute the proper number of sorties to neutralize opposing forces.
    
    Edd

    Even if you can't stand cats, get one.  Seriously.  I was 100% opposed
    to getting a cat until my daughter forced us into it.  Now we have a
    good mouser, and I haven't seen a critter within 100' of the house in
    the last year or so.  Well, not a live one - she deposits her "kills"
    on the front steps so we can see what a good job she's doing.  Mice,
    chipmunks, you name it, she kills it.  And she only needs about 1 can
    of cat food a day to supplement her diet ;-).  

>	                                                         If things get 
>	desperate, I'll resort to moth-ball weapons

Before someone accuses you of threatening first use of chemweaps, let me
point out that the enemy has been using its own chemweaps for years.
Have you ever wondered why mice have that "mousy" smell?  The answer is
lack of bladder control.

    Try stuffing a few mothballs up the channels before you stuff in the
    steelwool??

    Gee, it would seem that a cat falls under the "4-legged critters" rule,
    and should be exterminated as well.  But then I stop breathing around
    cats...
    
    Willie

I mine the approaches along the interior garage walls (an obvious attack 
approach by enemy mousies) with DCON.  Give the little guys lunch before 
they get in the warm walls.  Then I mine the obvious interior approaches 
and goodie areas (pantry) with the Have_absolutely_no_heart_sticky_traps.

I caught 1 mousie so far in a sticky trap.  This prompted the defenses.  
I also caught one guy in my garbage can.  Jumped in of his own accord.
Figure that.  I do have to re-mine the garage on a yearly basis.  The 
DCON seems to disappear.

Actually, it was having to scrape my wife off the ceiling with a putty 
knife after the first visual sighting (with audible alarm) that prompted
the defenses.

Stan

    
    definately get yourself a cat! i had a slight mouse problem..got a
    kitten and once he got his butt beat up a few times by the mice down
    the cellar he learned to fight back..we haven't seen a mouse, dead or
    alive in the house for months..they do work great!
    
    

    .75:
    
    Damn!  I thought I'd told this story, but didn't see it (in this topic,
    at least), so...
    
    Several years ago, when I was working at PK1, I strolled into the
    office of a collegue to upbraid him about something.  He was on the
    phone, so I sat down to wait him out (whatever it was, I was keen on
    finishing with it.)  I should add here that my collegue (nameless, as
    he still works for DEC), is about 6'3", broad-shouldered, kind of a
    lifeguard's build, and in his late 20s at this period...
    
    While waiting for him to get off the phone, I glanced over at a
    burlap-covered office partition -- and noticed a brown field mouse
    climbing up it!  So I said, "Hey, look, XXXX!", and started to reach
    towards it (in retrospect, a stupid thing, as it might have bitten me
    had I managed to grasp it).
    
    My collegue turned and got an eyeful.
    
    He paled a bit, said to the fellow on the phone something like
    "MyGodTalktoyouLaterBye!", and launched himself out of his office
    (almost ballistically), coming to rest in the office of our matronly
    secretary, gibbering.
    
    I gather that she calmed him down, because this flurry of motion and
    noise frightened the mouse;  (s)he rushed down to the floor and
    disappeared (while your reporter got down on his knees to try to see
    which way the mouse went).
    
    
    At lunch, another collegue asked me about the incident, and on learning
    that I was an eye-witness, asked me what the mouse looked like.  Then
    he came clean:
    
    	He'd trapped a field mouse in his attic the preceding night, parked
    	the trap in his car, and forgot all about it until he got to work.
    	So he let the d--ned thing out in the parking lot... and it it 
    	high-tailed it to the nearest warm location...
    
    Dick

    Well, it DOES make a good story, but...
    
    MRO1 used to have mice when I worked over there.  Didn't bother me, but
    did bother some people!  My house even had mice one fall, but my cats
    terrorized them, knocking off a couple and helping us to corner and
    herd outdoors the rest.  They haven't tried to recolonize for several
    years now. Just don't tell my mother, or she'll never come back! - she
    definitely hates mice; we were lucky none of the former population of
    the critters decided to put in an appearance during her visit!

During college I lived in a frat house on Bay State Rd in Boston.  Displayed
in the living room was a baseball bat labelled in black magic marker "RAT BAT".
My friend's mother came to visit him and asked the inevitable question "What
is that bat used for?".  He explained that the pledge whose turn it was to
take out the trash, took that bat as protection against the large Boston sized
rats.

Later as his parents were leaving they went out back to the alley to get in the 
car.  My friend in jest goes over and kicks one of the garbage cans and says
"Back you rats!".  Well, this 10 lb furry monster goes screaming out of the
trash and right over his mother's foot.  She just about had a coronary right
there.  I'll bet she still hasn't forgiven him for that one.

Stan

    Okay, first let me state that I do have a cat - two in fact - and
    if the mice come into the house and/or basement my cats play with
    them until they are dead.  Unfortunately, my cats are strickly 
    indoor cats, when I had outdoor cats we didn't seem to have this
    problem but my cats had a very short life span due to the hazzards
    of the outdoors! But my problem is we have something living/visiting
    in our attic (crawl space more than a true attic) and in the ceiling 
    between the first floor and the second floor.
    
    So how can I get rid of them?  I haven't seen anything only **hear**
    them occasionally.  Now I walked all around the house looking for
    a place of entry and can't find anything - but I [[[know]]] there 
    must be one.  Well I've had it I'm ready to throw money at it....
    
    Can I hire some one - an exterminator? - to [[find]] the point of
    entry [[and]] get rid of the little darlings?  (I keep telling my-
    self that they are mice, the thought of anything else makes my
    skin crawl!)  Do exterminators do this type of things or do they
    only take care of bugs???
    
    Thanks,
    
    Kathy                                    

    	I've had minor problems with mice the last couple of years. So I
    always keep baited traps in the basement along with DCON in both the
    attic and basement. I catch a few in the traps every winter, and
    there's been a little munching going on in the DCON. When I discovered
    lots of droppings in the attic last summer, I spread moth balls around
    everywhere...and no more droppings after that.
    	I haven't seen any evidence of mice for a couple of months now.
    Then we heard one in a second floor wall. Looking around, I think I may
    have found a nest between the basement and first floor, next to an
    outside wall. It's difficult to get to. So I'm not sure yet. I haven't
    been able to find any holes to plug up (there are numerous inaccessible
    places at my house).
    	Now, first of all, don't tell me to get a cat. I've had cats
    before, and one of my kids is allergic to them. So that's not a viable
    option. I have a golden retriever, but he's either too dumb or too lazy
    to do anything about the mice. What I'm wondering is if there's
    anything I could spray up around what looks like the nest to drive them
    out of there. From previous replies, it sounds like I might be able to
    toss some mothballs up there. Would this be the best route? Will they
    just build a nest a few feet away? Thanks.

    I have always used the peanut butter on the mouse trap approach.
    I have taken a lot of mice that way. The two cats get there share also.
    
    I gave up on the DCON when the mice started to die in the walls and
    stunk up the room.
    
    Not sure that you can do any better than traps.
    
    Marc H.

	    You may be able to drop moth balls down from the attic... 
	unless you have blown in insulation.  Otherwise, you may want
	to consider refinishing your upstairs wall.  Before you do,
	you could drill a couple of moth ball sized holes in the wall.
	    I figure that few (to none) of any mothballs dropped from
	the attic would make it to the first floor... unless they fell
	through a mouse hole.  A moth ball sized hole wouldn't be too
	hard to spackle.  If you put enough of them, 16" apart, you
	could effectively fumigate one whole wall.

					Tim

    
    Actually, I think the moth ball stuff also comes in a crystal form, 
    so you could drill smaller holes, which would be easier to patch.
    
    Cq

    
     If it is an outside wall, drilling holes won't get you very far, they
    are usually insulated. Stick with the peanut butter and traps or maybe
    try one of those high frequency thingamabobs that susposedly drives
    them insane and they pack up and leave. 8>)

    	Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give them a try...and my kids
    don't need a loud stereo system because I have one...and it doesn't
    seem to bother the mice either, even when playing hard rock. I just
    keep finding little tiny sunglasses and roaches in the ashtrays.

   > try one of those high frequency thingamabobs that susposedly drives
   > them insane and they pack up and leave. 8>)
    
    
    Has anyone really tried these?? Do they work?  I saw them advertised in
    one of those mail-order cataloges... 3/$20 or so.
    
    thanks
    		-J.

 >     Has anyone really tried these?? Do they work?  I saw them advertised in
 >     one of those mail-order cataloges... 3/$20 or so.

    According to a brief article in Consumer Reports a year or two ago
    ... they don't work.

    Rathole on Consumer Reports accuracy can now commence...

>    Rathole on Consumer Reports accuracy can now commence...

Can you have a rathole in a mouse topic?

    
     Rep. .101
     
      Thanks for the reply. I loved it..now back to work if I can keep my
    sides from hurting.8>)

    	I still have some sort of rodent problem that won't go away. I used
    to catch mice on occasion in the basement...but no longer...and no
    evidence they've been in the basement either (that's the good news).
    They also haven't been in the 1st or 2nd floor living spaces as far as
    I can tell. However, something is in the attic and in the 2nd floor
    walls. They or it was scratching in one of my son's bedroom walls last
    night.
    	I mentioned this before, but after not having been in my attic all
    summer, I went up there in the fall to discover little turds
    EVERYWHERE. I suspected mice, but it could also have been bats. We had
    two bats get into the living space of the house this past year. It
    might even be chipmunks or squirrels, but I doubt it's the latter (not
    enough noise/damage). I go into the attic now almost every weekend. I'm
    not finding fresh poops up there. I put several containers of mouse and
    rat poison up there just in case the invaders get hungry...but that
    doesn't seem to be solving the problem.
    	It's frustrating to not know what I'm dealing with in the first
    place. I've read recently about a couple of possible remedies. I'm
    wondering if anyone here has tried them. One is a substance which is
    supposed to be safe, gives off a strong odor, and which you go up into
    your attic and sprinkle down the walls between the studs. I don't
    remember the name of the stuff offhand. Also, I've seen numerous
    ultrasonic devices that supposedly drive rodents nuts and cause them to
    move out. These give off sound waves that supposedly don't bother cats
    and dogs (we have a dog), plug into any wall outlet, clear up to 3500
    square feet of living space of rodent problems (mice, squirrels, etc.),
    and cost anywhere from $40-100. Does anyone have experience with these?
    	Please don't tell me to get a cat or get an exterminator. When all
    else fails, I'll resort to the latter. Thanks.

    RE: .106
    
    Best solutions I have used have boiled down to:  Spring traps baited
    with peanut butter, and two outside cats.
    
    By the way, I glue the trap to a larger board so that I can move
    the dead mouse easier and so that if the mouse decides to drag the
    trap around some before it dies...I can easily find the trap.
    
    Marc H.

    I think I've read that those ultrasonic thingies work initially, but
    then the mice get used to them and ignore them.

Fascinating.

I just elongated my lunch hour reading all 108 replies 
from those who, like myself, find themselves adopted by 
mice.
 
Many cures were given, from poison to cats to "Hav-a-Hart"
traps.  Between the lines, there are volumes about
the authors, who have shown remarkable curiosity,
patience, compassion, savagery and Darwinism in their
approach to integrated pest management.

Wanting to take full advantage of the experience of those
who have come before me, I studied the replies carefully,
and have discovered a most amazing thing: mice come and go 
in cycles!  (No, not the kind you ride...)

Look for yourselves.  Not a single mouse story between 
September 10, 1986 and May 26, 1988.  Twenty months 
and no reports!  Another seventeen month gap between 
December of '88 and May of '90.

Eleven months span between Bob Paluses' suggestion to 
use sticky paper and high explosives and Robert 
DiGrazia's claim to have trapped 250 of 'em in his 
attic.  (Perhapsa casting call for a Cinderella remake?)  
Likewise, another eleven months from Kathy Roguska 
throwing in the towel and calling an exterminator until 
Mr or Ms DiPirro's stirring call for a multi-layered 
mouse control architecture, using traps, poison and 
moth balls.

And finally, it has been one year, one month and three 
days since Steve Wellcome doubted the effectiveness of 
"those ultrasonic thingies".

The mice, it would seem, take long vacations.  They stop
haunting us and go away.  But where do they go?  The Peace 
Corps?  The Mother Ship?  HP?  

I'd be content to feed them for a couple months then wave 
as they drove off, but I seem to be getting in on the 
ground floor of a new round of infestations.  I also bought
the stock at 161.

What, then, is the state of the art?  I've heard peanut
butter on trap triggers, cats from Maine Coons to strays,
great compassion from the live trappers and a single cry 
"cheap darts and a mouse safari".  Any good new ideas?

To define myself, I am in the "I want them dead" (out of 
revenge, not thrill) school.  Cats are out; I'd rather 
have mice, but that's a topic for another day.  I'd like 
to avoid traps (my kids still think mice wear clothes and
sing) and poison (dead mice smell worse than live cats), 
but I can be realistic.  If I have to.

Any thoughts?

-Don

    RE: .109
    
    Traps baited with peanut butter.
    
    Glue the traps to a larger board, to make the carrying away/disposal
    as easy as possible. Also, the larger board keeps the trap from moving
    with the dying mouse.
    
    Marc H.

    If the mice are in your basement, and if you have a utility sink in the
    basement, leave about 12 inches of water in the sink. Come back three
    days later to remove at least one mouse who exceeded his time limit for
    treading water.

An empty bathtub.  They're like the Roach Motel ads -- the mice fall in, but
they can't climb out.

A dehumidifier works too; I get several a winter that way.

			Steve

    I second the peanut butter baited traps.
    Simple, it works, and you get positive and quantive feedback.
    
    Re: Waves... yes it's that time of year.  With the hard cold winter the
    mice move indoors.   They stay out more in the summer.
    
    After months of thinking that I had successfully locked them out, they
    are beginning to show up in my traps again.  Sigh.
    I have to wait until spring to get under my deck and close the "leak"
    in the sill. (around the crummy job the previous owner did in venting
    the kitchen cooktop)
    
    	Dave.

    peanut butter baited traps
    
    The one that I saw in my basement last night went to mouse heaven this
    morning!
    
    Ken

    "Ms or Mr. DiPirro," eh? Geez, you can't tell either? I guess I've been
    working in ZKO too long. I haven't eliminated the problem. I retreated
    for a couple of months and am preparing to regroup. They seem to be
    avoiding the basement in favor of the attic and 2nd floor bedroom walls
    these days, but when I last tried to get into my attic, the pulldown
    door busted and is now being held together with metal pipe and duct
    tape until I can fix it. I'm sure the mice know this too. They're
    probably having wild parties up there with all the other local rodents.
    I'll get them! I'll get them!

    My turn...
    
    Hello.  My name is Fred, and I have a mouse problem.
    
    I just moved into my new (well, new to me...) house in February.  I
    thought that all the noises emanating through the cathedral ceiling was
    the snow and ice shifting and melting.  WRONG!!!  The noise persisted
    even when all the cold stuff was gone.
    
    My exterminator is coming back tomorrow for the 4th time. He's used
    both tracking powder and bait.  It's possible it's having some
    positive effect, but I haven't noticed any.  In fact, the mice have
    won the first battle, as I have retreated from the upstairs bedroom
    to the downstairs one so I can sleep at night!  They are very loud, and
    keep me awake.
    
    I caught a few a while ago in traps in a crawlspace under the house, but
    not lately.  I've also plugged a few suspicious holes, but they are 
    still triving.  It is very frustrating not being able to trap or even
    bait them where they are living, as there is no access through the
    ceiling.  This leads me to my latest, mad, plan:
    
    I am renting a tank of nitrogen, which I will release into the house.
    The gas will rise, displace the oxygen in the cathedral ceiling, and
    asphyxiate the little buggers.  Well, in theory... I was going to drill
    holes in the ceiling and pump in carbon-dioxide, but thought I'd just
    let physics work with me.
    
    If this fails, I am calling in an air-strike.
    
    
    								Fred

    Why not rent a cat instead?
    

    
    I wouldnt go as far as gassing them.  If the die in the walls
    or in the house in large numbers...well the plan might have a 
    side effect to it!
    
    I cleaned out my mouse motel by using mostly box traps and some
    snapper traps.  I was getting atleast one a day.  In two weeks
    time I had cleaned house and it only cost $179 for the peanutbutter.
    
    jd

    Although asphyxiating the mice by displacing the oxygen with nitrogen
    is one of the more creative solutions I've ever heard, I doubt that
    you'll be able to get it to work.  As I understand your problem,
    releasing the nitrogen inside your house won't do any good; you'd
    have to get the nitrogen into the space above the ceiling, and 
    presumably, if your house is built properly, that space is vented
    to the outdoors to prevent condensation buildup, etc.

        When I was a teen my bedroom was in the finished attic and every spring
    I would be lulled to sleep by the scurryings of the bats that had wintered
    above the ceiling........ They would go in-n-out the eve of the roof right
    above my gable window and I would watch them on summer nights.  Along with
    their rustelings I would hear them "squeaking" a rather fast "eeep eeep
    eeep".......


                      You got bats in your bellfree ?

- jw

re: .119, JD

>>    snapper traps.  I was getting atleast one a day.  In two weeks
>>    time I had cleaned house and it only cost $179 for the peanutbutter.
    
   Yow!  Is this a typo, and you meant $1.79, or did you really by a
   couple of cases of peanut butter?  :-)  :-)
   
   - Tom

Thanks for all the suggestions! Nothing new, but it's nice to know you
care!

re: a bunch:

Again, the mice are between the cathedral ceiling and roof.  I can find no
evidence of them in the house.  Therefore there is no access for a cat, traps,
glueboards, etc.  As far as predators go, I had entertained the idea of
drilling a hole and putting a snake in there.  Keep in mind that there is no
"dead air" space.  I had mice on occasion in my last house, a ranch. It was no
problem there as I just went up into the attic/crawlspace, and set traps.
Unfortunately, this is not an option with this design.

re: .120

Steve, there is no venting in this design.  My theory is that the nitrogen
will rise to the ceiling, and work its way through the paneling into the
area where the styrofoam insulation and mice are.  Hopefully, it will stay
there long enough to asphyxiate the mice.  While it's not completely airtight
up there, there really isn't anywhere for a gas to go.  I figure the plywood
decking and roof will keep the gas there long enough to do its job. If
not, then I'm only out about $20.



                                                        Fred

re .123:

I doubt this will work unless you tent the house, or the house is _really_ well
sealed, except between the ceiling and the space where the mice are.
You have to displace nearly all the air since animals can survive to rather
low levels of oxygen.

The nitrogen won't rise to any significant extent since it's just about the
same density as air (heck, air *is* mostly nitrogen!)  If nitrogen rose, we'd
have a layered atmosphere as the nitrogen would separate from oxygen.

It _is_ one of the more creative solutions I've seen though.

-Mike

	Hell, try Helium, you know it rises, and I'm pretty sure mice can't 
	live on it...

	Steve T.

If you use helium, will the mice sound like Donald Duck?

    
    AMONIA !   Nothing likes the smell of that stuff !!!!  :^)
    
    Fred

re: .126  

>>    If you use helium, will the mice sound like Donald Duck?

   C'MON,......   get serious...
   
   
   If its mice, they'll probably sound like Mickey Mouse!
   
   :-)
   
   - Tom

    Ammonia is not a good choice.  
    
    Mice like the smell of it because it smells like mouse urine.  There's
    a carnival roulette game in which the ball is replaced by a mouse,
    which presumably doesn't care which hole he goes into.  Actually, the
    operator rubs a little ammonia on a hole that no one has bet on and the
    mouse goes through it.
    
    Maybe you could make an ammonia trail out of the house, perhaps with a
    six-inch brush.  That would make you the Wide Wiper.

    
    re: Tom
    Typo, typo, typo!!!!!!     Actually, the Govt bought the peanutbutter!
    :)

    My mouse problem started when I got a dog. One day I saw one of
    the little buggers go scurrying across the floor and hightail it under
    my book shelf with the dog skidding into the self right after it. 
    When I shook the shelf the mouse came out carrying two naked little
    babies which she dropped when the dog took chase again.  When I moved
    the shelf I found a nest made of dog hair and kleenex with six babies.
    Now I felt awful, I'm a mother too, so I scooped up the nest in an
    empty kleenex box and put it outside hopping the mother would find and
    relocate her family.  She didn't the next day there were six dead
    little pink babies.  
    
    My compassion ended there when I found two stashes of dogfood (one in a 
    drawer in the basement workbench and one in the tuperware lid drawer).  
    and my kitchen towel drawer became their dining area. There were crumbs 
    and dropping on the towels.  I used the peanut butter baited traps. 
    Caught two more mice (hopefully mom and pop) and haven't had any more
    since the weather got warm.  I now give my dog a designated amount of 
    time to eat and then pick up and seal away the rest of the dry food.
    Hopefully, their relatives never came to visit and won't know where I
    live....

 Here's an update to the base note.  Our mouse problem has been solved!

 We switched from cheddar cheese to Brie and Stilton and the capture rate
 went up for a while (yuppie rodents?). I was sometimes catching four in
 one night.  They never went for the peanut butter.

 I also sealed up a number of small openings around the foundation where
 the rodents were getting in.

 We then acquired two young kittens.  Turned out that they were taken from
  their mother before she had a chance to teach them how to hunt.  So,
  I had to give training sessions in the garage.  

 I would get a vole or mouse cornered and then would shove the cats in the 
  general direction. After a couple of tries, one of the cats caught on and
  has become a superb mouser.  He begs to go in the garage every night so he
  can hunt.  The only drawback is having to chase the cat around the house to
  pry the dead mouse out of his jaws before he wolfs it down (and gets worms).

 The other cat still doesn't have a clue about catching mice.  He just sits and
  watches them run by.

                                                                 Joe m

                             ****************

re: .132

Just be very, very careful that you never have any
antifreeze spills in your garage.  Pets find 
antifreeze tasty, and a small amount will quickly
kill a cat.  

We've never had mice get into the main part of the
house, though we have had squirrels.  I think that
just the presence and odor of our cats keeps the
mice out.  We don't let the cats into the garage, 
but have had good luck using peanut butter in a 
multi-mouse trap (called, I believe, a Steel Cat).  
Mostly, I don't worry very much about the mice
in the garage (though perhaps we should, because they
can carry the ticks that cause Lyme disease, and we
know that a certain very large aquatic rodent trapped in 
our back yard was found to have numerous such ticks).

   Gary

    
     I thought I saw something in here before on this topic but couldn't
    find it in the directory. 
    
     I was outside this Friday night and heard a scurrying noise in my 
    attic above the garage. I was outside saturday morning and heard it 
    again this time in the soffit above my breezeway. Looking up I saw
    what I belived to be a mouse moving around. Well I found out what's
    moving around, now how do I get rid of it/them??? Will it/they cause
    damage if I choose to ignore them for too long? I'm not really worried
    about them getting into the living part of the house cause we have a
    couple indoor house cats. But I don't need anymore tenants...
    
    Ted

    
    Once they get into the walls, they can go forever. They chew wires
    (the plastic casing actually), they mess up insulation. They're
    generally a big pain in the butt. 
    
    Because our house is "an island in the woods" we tend to get them 
    at this time of year. They come in through the garage, get into the 
    walls and then have full run of the house (they've never come into
    the living space... presumably because of our dogs).
    
    After trying all sorts of hightech humane traps (much as they drive 
    crazy, I'm still not the "crush their heads" type) I accidently 
    invented the following:
    
    Put a 5 gallon bucket in the suspected area (in my case the garage).
    Put 1-2" of birdseed (especially black oil sunflower seeds) in the
    bottom. Make a ramp out of piece of scrap wood that runs from the floor
    to the lip of the bucket.
    
    The little buggers run up the ramp and jump into the bucket and can't 
    get out. Then I pluck them out and set'em free FAR from home on my 
    way to work.
    
                						- Mac

    That idea doesn't sound bad! We keep bags of bird seed (Black Sunflower
    and thistle) and the cat food out in the garage, I wonder if this 
    enticed them! This is the first year we've kept bird seed out there.
    
    I'll try to dig up the materials and do bucket idea this week up in the
    garage attic. Thanks for the tip!
    
    Ted  

   While I don't have first hand experience with this, I've been told
   that peanut butter is good for attracting mice.
   
   fwiw,
   
   - Tom

The peanut butter trap is similar to the bird seed trap, 
except that my version kills the mice.  Fill the bucket
1/3 full of water. Smear pb from the top of the ramp 
down to the waterline. The mice lean over to nibble
the pb, fall in, and drown. Empty trap and refresh
peanut butter daily.

I like this trap because it is non-toxic to anything
except a rodent.

Margaret.

	Note 331 has a bunch of replies about mice...

	Roy

    Thanks Roy! I spoke with someone here about mice and he used D-Con
    with good success. I might try that!
    
    Ted

    
    Trust me on this one:
    
    	If they are getting into your walls and attics and you use
    	poison, you run the risk of having a mouse die inside a wall.
    	The end result being a slowly rotting mouse that can cause
    	a much bigger STINK than he did while alive.

    OK I'll give the bucket first shot to see what happens. 

    I had the same problem in my new house. I found that glue traps did the
    trick. The mice run on the glue and then are stuck. You pick up the
    trap and throw the whole thing away. Kinda like fly paper for mice.
    
    As far as the poison goes. I understand that the mice leave and
    re-enter the house a couple of times a day. They leave to find water.
    The poison makes them thirsty, they leave and then die. At least that
    is how the theory works.
    
    Tim

    RE:.0
    
    	You could try a 12 gauge loaded with slugs.   :^)

    Joe

    don't the slugs just go splat when they hit something?
    
    :-)
    
    ed

    re: .9
    
    Yeah, that's the theory.  My experiences with poison, however, have
    generally produced the rotting-corpse-in-a-wall result.  Of course,
    the smell goes away in about a week, so it's not *too* bad....

I too have a house that is an island in the woods. There is no way I will
ever be able to eradicate the mouse population.  But I AM tired of them
coming into my house at this time of year.  They screw up the insulation
and, even worse, wake us up in the middle of the night. There is nothing
more maddening than lying awake at 3:00 a.m. listening to a mouse scratching
in the attic.

I have been using the peanut butter/crush their heads trap method (Sorry,
but I get GREAT pleasure in seeing their dead bodies carried out of my
house!) Ideally, I'd like to stop them from getting in in the first place.
Is this possible or would it be like shoveling against the tide? If possible,
how?

							Mark

    Well I put a bucket with water, a ramp, and some peanut butter up in
    the garage attic last night. I'll check tonight to see if there are any
    results. If nothing happens after a couple days I'm going with the
    D-Con. I've heard the same story about going out for water and dieing
    using the D-Con but am concerned about them not making it out in time
    or coming back then dieing. 
    
    Ted

    
    Re: Fighting against the tide...
    
    	I've read articles where they make the following two points:
    
    		1. Recommend sealing all possible entry holes with
    		   expanding foam.
    		2. Mice are remarkably flexible and can squeeze through
    		   an opening less than a 1/2" round.
    
    	Based on the second point... I'd say you have quite a battle 
    	ahead. Their easiest entry into my place seems to be the garage
    	so I try to capture them there.
    
    	Re: Sticky traps. I caught one mouse on the sticky traps and 
    	decided they were just TOO cruel. The little buggers just kind
    	of sit there and die of thirst... nasty.
    
    								- Mac
                                                         

    You should see what a mouse looks like in a bucket of water!  The
    poor things must swim until they are exhausted!  I saw one in a 
    bucket of rainwater that still had his cute little face, nose, 
    and whiskers out of the water but his little body was hanging 
    below the water.  He was DEAD in the water!  

    Now, my mother has a family of squirrels that made their way into
    the upper regions of her mobile home.  How does she make them find
    another place to hibernate?  

    justme....jacqui

    Re:  A few back
    
    I used De-Con last winter to remove my mouse problem.  They [a family]
    resided in the ceiling of my kitchen and made there way down to the
    bread drawer for their snacks of death.  Well in the Spring, I started
    my next remodeling chore of this old house and gutted the adjoining
    dining room.  For 2 weeks we suffered with the NASTY smell of the
    decomposing little critters.  This year I plan to use peanut butter on
    traditional mouse traps and take 1 out at a time.  The bread drawer
    won't be used again this year.
    
    One other note, you do not have to be an island in the woods.  I live
    in a well populated development and the closest park is about an 1/8 of
    a mile from my house.  Those little furry things travel to the eastest
    access to a heated environment.  At 125 yrs + my house as ample
    entrances.  They remain on the To Do List right behind a new city water
    main connection.
    
    FWIW  Doug

    I have the same problem.  
    
    I find peanut butter and the crush their head method works well.  I
    also got a cat.  The cat has absolutely no idea that she is supposed to
    be earning her keep.  She isn't the least bit interested in catching
    them.  My terriers on the other hand just about kill themselves in the
    basement crashing into shovels, lamps etc. while in hot persute.  
    
    Someone a few notes back asked about squirrels in a mobile home.  I put
    a fake owl up in my attic and that was enough to get rid of the
    squirrel problem I had.  
    
    Mark
     

    re: 18
    
    Cat...  How about 2, that's what I have.  They are affraid of the
    noises in the walls and run the other way, nocking into shovels, lamps
    and all sorts of stored stuff.  The good thing about the cats are for
    the most part they are quiet and have each befriended one of my
    daughters.  This creates no fighting unless they want to play with the
    other ones cat.
    
    My cats are no use in mousing....
    
    Doug

    I have an outdoor cat, and she comes home dailey with little criters.
    I think she is trying to rid the whole neighborhood of mice, chipmuncks,
    moles, etc.
    
    (the other) Steve
    

re: .19

Perhaps your cats don't mice because you feed them too well!  Get yourself some
anti-worm pills for them (for insurance) and let them loose!

Bathtubs make excellent mousetraps.  They can't climb out.

    I had squirrels in my attic they got in through a loose board in the
    overhang.  I had my kids start on the far end of the attic and drop
    coffee cans filed with pennies on the floor.  Like the old beaters in
    the tarzan movies they herded the squirrels back out through the hole
    where my pellet gun and I waited.  After the hunt I boarded up the hole
    and have not had a problem since.  
    
    Brian
    
    PS.  These were red squirrels who ate through another board to get back
    in after we chased them out the first time.  hence the hunt.

I find that dehumidifiers work too...  I've found about a half-dozen mice
drowned in mine over the past couple of years (one at a time...)

					Steve

    Using pungent nasties like ammonia and moth crystals may help --
    but do block the opening once they're out, or they'll come back
    at some (inopportune) future date.
    
    Dick

    Well so much for the bucket idea! Seems the mouse ate the tiny bit I
    left on the top of the ramp, reached down and ate what he could reach
    in the bucket and split. Tonight I'm going to get a few of those cheap
    traps. I left the bucket up there last night for chuckles to see if
    he'd try to reach farther down in to get the rest of the peanut butter.
    I'll try the traps for a couple nights, if no results by Saturday then
    out comes the D-Con!
    
    I don't mind trying out different ideas, like the bucket. But it's 
    going to get old quick putting up the ladder and climbing into the
    garage attic every night to check results.

D-con.

Put it where the cats can't reach it and wait a day or two.

    Cats are effective at mouse control if they are hungry. If fed
    well, then results can be poor.
    
    I agree on terriers. Years ago my wife saw a mouse and of course
    expected me to get ride of it immediately. I joked that our
    yorky terrier would get it, thinking to myself fat chance. Well
    next morning there was the mouse downstairs torn to bits in
    the dog pin. Of course that is the  only one he ever got.
    
    I found that most traps work, but why pay 50 cents to a buck for
    sticky traps etc. that are throw away after each use when the
    old standard trap works just as well and lasts forever.
    
    In most cases the old standard trap is less cruel, usually kills
    them almost instantly. Of course sometimes it only catches a leg
    etc. 
    
    On sticky traps they die very slowly. They seem to violently try
    to get away from the pad until they die. 
    
    on both sticky or standard traps if only one leg caught then they
    will chew off their leg and leave.
    
    Peanut butter works great as said. 
    
    On standard traps I've seen many mice lick every drop of peanut
    butter off without tripping the trap, but they get caught eventually.
    
    I tried most traps and finally figured out that no really has made
    a better mouse trap than the original.
    
    Once you get use to  removing dead mice from trap they work well.
    I found the most disgusting mess of dead mouse from the sticky
    traps. Amazingly after overnight in a sticky trap the mouse
    is a pile of mush. A plain old dead mouse in regular trap is
    not nearly as  bad.
    
    Good luck on anyone sealing them out of house. If you have seen
    mice like me go through non existent or incredibly tiny cracks/holes
    then you know what I mean. I figure that a mouse body is not
    made up of bones, but pieces of very flexible silly putty or
    something similar. 
    
    I would not use D-con or something like that with animals around or
    little kids. 
    
    Traps  will work, you just cannot expect 100% hit rate everytime
    you set them out. If you do set them then make sure you check
    them each morning. The longer a dead mouse stays there the more
    disgusting the mess.
    
    I had a dead mouse in a wall once and I agree, it stinks like crazy
    for quite a while.
    
    					Harold C.
    
    
    
    

re: .28

>    Cats are effective at mouse control if they are hungry. If fed
>    well, then results can be poor.
    
That depends entirely on the cat(s) involved.  We have four cats, all of 
which are very well fed.  Two of them nonetheless have a very strong 
hunting instinct, and will spend days staking out the stove when they detect
a mouse living under it.  They always eventually catch the critter, too, at
which point they tend to carry the dead body up to our bedroom to leave for
us as a present. :-(

The other two cats rarely show any interest in mouse catching at all.

-Hal

    	I may be wrong, but I think cats get the idea very early on, or not
    at all. I have a male cate that I played "catch the moving hand under
    the sheets" with at night. He would listen and pounce where the noise
    was. He also liked other similar games. Not sure if this helped or he 
    is just a natural hunter, but his favorite activity is hunting and he
    is extremely good at it.
    
    	With that said, it still does not keeps the pests out of the attic.
    The standard peanut butter/trap has been coming up empty. They seem to
    be learning how to avoid it. The trap is sprung, the peanut butter is
    gone, and there's no rodent. Not sure if it's mice or squirels. I also 
    don't want to put the cat up there because it's all exposed fiberglass 
    insulation.
    
    	I'm not too keen on the poison idea but don't have too many
    alternatives left. I was considering making my own trap that consists
    of a metal pad in the middle of (but insulated from) a metal base with
    120V leads connected to the base and pad. I put peanut butter in the 
    middle and when the critter steps on the base and licks the peanut butter 
    it "fwies his wittle bwain". This kind'a stuff just brings out the best
    in me ;-)
    
    	Ray

 >   Well so much for the bucket idea! Seems the mouse ate the tiny bit I
 >   left on the top of the ramp, reached down and ate what he could reach
 >   in the bucket and split. 
    
    	Switch to my (non-patented) birdseed-in-bucket method. They get
    	NO satisfaction until they jump in. You fed the mouse before he 
    	had to risk the big jump into the bucket.
    	
    	In late September I had a real problem with a colony of the little
    	buggers living in woodpiles in my garage. Easily caught over a 
    	dozen in about a week and a half. No more problem.
    
    								- Mac

    re:31
    
    	BTW - I wasn't ignoring your idea. I have seen in the attic, and
    the cat has caught in the house, flying squirels. I suspect this is
    what's springing the traps. These things can easily leap some number of
    feet straight up, so the bucket idea won't work on them.
    
    	Ray

    I vote for the snap their little heads w/peanut butter route.
    
    We have a weekend house (60yrs old or so) in the country mostly
    surrounded by farmland. We have a tremendous mouse problem...
    my husband laughed at me the last time we were there...
    there is nothing that grosses me out more than walking in and finding
    mouse droppings all over the counters and floor, I've almost convinced
    my husband that it's the mice that use all the toilet paper, not me.
    
    I went to the store and got a 6 pack of mouse traps and set them
    all over the kitchen after everyone went to bed, hoping to flip off the
    light and immediately hear SNAP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP, SNAP! Well, it
    was'nt that exciting but I did get 1 mouse each night.  
    
    My husband made fun of me because I would immediately get out of bed in
    the morning and check to see if I had caught any....I was nicknamed
    "The Mighty Mouse Hunter". 
    
    Hey, you poop on my counter.....you pay the price! 
    
    See Ya, 
    
    Nancy 

    RE:.31

    	Using a snap trap with a giant stripped sunflower seed as bait I
    once caught 8 mice before I lost the sunflower seed.  Maybe the word
    got out because I really haven't had much of a problem with mice since.

    Joe

    I picked up a couple traps last night and went up to the garage attic 
    to put them out. Well, much to my surprise in the bucket I decided to
    leave up there an extra night was a dead mouse. Turns out he got greedy
    and wanted more of the peanut butter that was remaining from the night
    before and had to reach in the bucket to get it, fell in and drowned.
    So if it worked once I figured I'd put it back and try again. I also
    put 2 traps out. Tonight should be interesting!
    
    Thanks for the tip on the Bucket and water idea! It sounds odd but it
    works!
    
    Ted

Poison:

they eat the stuff

They GO OUTSIDE FOR WATER

the poison swells up in their stomach and they die, usually not far from the 
water source.

All you have to monitor is the amount of poison left in the box every few 
days.




Traps:

You have to monitor them and empty them.




Birdseed:

Mice emptied a joint compound bucket full of birdseed one winter.  Ate holes 
in the bucket to get out (and eventually back in again).  (ex wife left it 
in the shed with the lid off)

    Got one last night with a sticky trap.  Was watching TV and out of the
    corner of my eye I saw the little bugger running around.  Got out the
    sticky trap, put a piece of cheese on it, and set it out.  It was
    stuck to it this morning.
    
    Dan

Many of the rat/mouse poisons work in a rather unusual way.  They thin the
blood so that any minor injury (including internal) and they bleed to death.
The antidote is Vitamin K.

I once worked in a rat poison packaging plant for a (very) short time.

-Mike

My experience with gluetraps -

Due to the nature of my house construction, I've been fortunate not to
have mice inside - up until this summer when I unwittingly left the
bulkhead open a smidge for several days.

The first clue I had as to their presence, was droppings near the
kitchen sink. I got some glue traps and set one out by the edge of
the sink one night with a peanut in the middle.

Next AM, the glue trap was inside the sink, with plenty of marks
in the surface of the glue indicating a struggle to free itself
(which succeeded). My brother has worked in the food industry for
years and often tells of how gluetraps laid out for rats will be
found with limbs embedded in the glue, as a rat will actually
chew off it's own foot/leg to free itself. (Sorry if you're eating.)

In any event, figuring that the glue trap won't work for the same
mouse a second time (as won't most traps they are lucky enough to
escape from), I put out some conventional head smashers. No dice
after several days, but no signs of the mice by the sink, either.

Finding some other droppings in the basement, I put some conventional
head smashers down there as well. The first morning I had three kills
in three traps. Two days later three more. One of them had a lot of
glue on it's underside. No further signs of the mice since. And the
bulkhead now has a positive closure.

-Jack

Just a question for you folks...  are you using the small snap traps, or the 
larger ones?  I was in the hardware store yesterday, and saw 2 sizes.  The 
larger ones are labeled as rat traps, but I wasn't sure what folks were using..

Thanks,

- Tom

    Tom, the small snap traps should be sufficiant, judging by the size
    of the mouse I caught last night. Unless you have giant mice! 
    
    Be carefull setting them they HURT! :^0

    	I was also using the small ones. One hint though. You may want to
    drill a hole and screw them down to something. Sometimes the mice
    aren't killed instantly and try to hobble off with the traps.
    
    	Ray

    Another tip - a drop of almond extract on the trap will mask the
    human odor and you'll catch more mice.
    
    					Steve

    I'd like to know how the h*ll does the mouse eat off all the peanut
    butter without snapping the trap??? I have a hard enough time setting
    it without getting snapped. I got a feeling though that they will get 
    less and less cautious till the big snap! I might have to pick up a 
    couple more tonight. This is MISSION CRITICAL!!! ;^) 

    re:-1
    
    	Yup, seen the same thing. If I get time this weekend I'm actually
    going to build the mouse trap I mentioned earlier. If I do, I'll report
    back on the results. I'm hoping that 120V is enough to send them into
    cardiac arrest (or whatever the medical term is for it when you get
    zapped and your heart stops).
    
    	Ray

    Just keep putting on the peanut butter. I've had my traps licked
    clean many times, but sooner or later they slip up. After awhile you
    get most of the bunch and you usually will not have a problem for
    months.
    
    With two traps I got 15 mice in a 2 to 3 week period, during that
    time I would sometimes have two dead mice, one or zero and 2 very
    clean traps. Just varied, after the 15th one that must have been
    the end because none at all for quite a while.
    
    I've also had one trap dragged all the way across the garage floor.
    Got stuck when the mouse tried to take it outside through a hole.
    
    				Harold
    
    

I have a video at home with the title "Rambo Rat" on the front.  It's an 
all night camera-on-the-tripod series wherein a mouse/rat gets caught 
(eventually) after repeatedly removing the bat from the trap.

The trap FINALLY snaps on his neck and the scene switches to a fire and 
brimstone preacher telling the congregation to raise themselves up by their 
bootstraps (and a whole lot of other holy roller stuff) and then the scene 
switches back to the rat/mouse simply laying there in the trap.

then,

after a minute or so the rat/mouse starts to move.  Eventually he's 
fighting mad and actually succeeds to get out of the trap.  Now the scene 
switches to the fireworks scene(s) from Deep Throat or something similar 
and trumpets blare and flags wave, well you get the point.

...friend of mine in Jawja copied it for me.   His friend caught the rat, 
eventually.

    re. -1, ha,ha, good one!

Any suggestions on how to determine where/how they are getting in?

I've been around my foundation many times. No obvious holes. Foamed all 
cracks and cranies. None has been eaten out... But we still have mice.

							Mark

> Any suggestions on how to determine where/how they are getting in?

    They are RESOURCEFUL!

    We found that the dryer vent flap wasn't closing completely due
    to lint build up outside. Express route into the basement! This
    was discovered when someone started the dryer and heard them
    scurrying up the plastic vent tube.

    Walk around your house looking at ALL features and items and think
    like a mouse! Look everywhere too, up and down. Don't forget that
    they climb too. I saw one in the basement climb a cement wall like
    he was walking on the floor.

    Charly

    maybe it's sealed up so well they can't get out?
    
    Nahh.  :-)
    
    ed

    I don't look on the outside.. that hard.
    
    Try walking around inside of your basement on a sunny day and look for
    light coming through cracks and crevices around the sill.  Also check
    any utility entrance holes for slop.
    
    Do you have a bulkhead door?  Does it seal?  Your basic bulkhead door
    has cracks large enough for most mice.
    I installed a steel door at the base of my bulkhead stairs.  Good
    for insulation and vermin protection.
    
    	Dave.
    

>    I installed a steel door at the base of my bulkhead stairs.  Good
>    for insulation and vermin protection.

	Thanks Dave. Been there, Done that. The amount of cold air coming down
	those steps was enough for me to install a door too.

	Time to escalate the warfare (more traps!) They got in again last
	night.

							Mark

    Well I killed a few more over the week-end using the snap traps. I have
    noticed a few problems though. Someone gave me a cage trap with flap
    doors on each end. The mouse or what ever goes inside and gets the food
    off a balanced platform causing the doors to shut when he gets on it.
    Well they're eating, dumping and leaving without causing the doors to
    close. errrr...  Also I've switched the bucket I had up there from
    water to just seeds on the bottom to just catch the mice instead of 
    drowning them. (Tried to be a nice guy!). Well they're going in the
    bucket, eating the seed and getting out!!!! I thought they couldn't 
    jump???? The bucket is probably a foot or so high, is this not big
    enough???? I can't picture the mice I've been catching jumping out
    but I also couldn't picture them licking the traps clean without
    snapping them. I'm probably going to have to go back to the water
    method in the bucket. But someone has giving me an idea of a layer 
    of seeds on the water to look like a flat bottom. The Mouse jumps in 
    for the seeds and ahhhhhhhh.......
    

    Re: -1
    
    I use a five gallon bucket and they can jump about halfway up... but
    not out. But a five gallon bucket must be 18-20" tall at least.
    
    								- Mac
    

Greetings,

I can't help but post my recent 'close encounters of the mousekind'.

It all began about a week ago when I watched the movie by Stephen King
called Graveyard Shift.  For those of you who have not seen the flick,
it is about an old cotton mill invested with rats --- and the mill owner
insists that employees work the graveyard shift to rid the mill of rats.

In any event, the next morning I went to feed the dogs as usual, reaching
into the dogfood bin --- when all of a sudden a mouse ran up my arm!!!
You can imagine my shock with the recent mouse-movie I saw.

Then, that very same morning, while at work --- a cube-mate of mine 
happened to bring in one of her dog-teaching-toys (you guessed it,
a hairy life-like mouse) which she flung over the cube wall onto my
desk.  Again, I must have aged a year or two as a result.

Now --- you say this must be an amazing coincidence.  But it doesn't
end there.

While perusing this notes conference (which I hardly ever do), I happened
to notice this topic about a Mouse in my House.  I read through the replies
taking note of the suggestions in case I ever needed to rid my house of mice
(I had a mice attach about a year ago when we first moved into our new house
in the hills --- using snap traps quite successfully).

Well in any event, when I returned home that afternoon, my wife was complaining
about a terrible smell coming from the workshop.  Because of my recently
acquired knowledge about rotting mouse flesh, I immediately checked where
I had set traps last year  (which I thought had all snapped or been picked up).
To my surprise, a dead mouse was caught in a snaptrap, for how long I don't 
know.  He must have been really hungry to snack on my 1-year old cheese bait.

Needless to say, I've got my peanut-baited snaptraps, and 5 gal. joint compound
bucket w/ seeds & plank all setup for the hunt...

So the moral of this story is:  A watched snaptrap never snaps...   or
                                Watch Stephen Kings' Graveyard Shift and you'll
                                never look at mice the same way again...

Believe-it-or-not,   Bruce.

    RE. -.1 
    
     Good story! I think the mouse running up the arm would have given me
    a stroke, out of surprise alone!!! haha. 
    
    I'm glad you mentioned the compound bucket. I also have one I've been 
    keeping after it's use due to the size, but forgot all about it. I'll
    make a switch to that one. I didn't have a chance to check last night
    so I don't know if I've caught anymore.
    
    Ted

    
    
    Hi Ted, Gordie here!
    
    That must have been a sight... picture this, Ted with his hands under his
    chin, on a chair, yelling it's over there as his wife slams the thing
    with Ted's speakers that he can't sell in the music notes file.
    
    Hay! I thought all mice lived with weeeeeezels.

    	Well, I actually built my electric mouse trap and, as Tim Allen
    would say, I need more power ;-) In case anyone doesn't remember, I
    glued a piece of sheet metal with 1"x1" hole to a piece of wood. I 
    also glued a 1/2" x 1/2" piece of metal to the wood in the middle of 
    the hole.
    
    	I connected 120v across the two pieces of metal and put vasiline
    (sp?) on the bigger plate to unsure good electrical contact between the
    rodent and the peanut butter that was on the middle plate. The idea was
    that the rodent would be standing on the large plate and put 120v
    through 'em when it went for the peanut butter.
    
    	I did see teeth marks in the peanut butter but found no casualties.
    I suspect that there's a combination of insufficient contact and/or not
    enough power to send 'em into cardiac arrest. Guess it's back to the
    drawing board.
    
    	Ray

re .59:

Vaseline, being petroleum jelly, would be a pretty good insulator I'd think.

Also you'd probably want a fuse in the thing in case the mouse conducts _too_
well.

-Mike

    re:59
    
    	Gee, how much current should a mouse draw ;-) I used the Vaseline
    because I figured it would make and keep the surface moist and protect
    the metal from corrosion. Maybe I should just try bare metal ?
    
    	I would imagine this rodent jumped straight up as soon as it's
    tongue touched the peanut butter. Perhaps little pungie sticks over the
    trap would work ;-) Excuse me but it's been a long week.
    
    	Ray

>    	Gee, how much current should a mouse draw ;-)

Well a squirrel once took out the power on the whole street I lived on as a
kid.   Of course it wasn't quite the same as it got cozy with the high voltage
end of a power transformer.

-Mike

	    More Voltage might do it for you.  Get a step up transformer.
	Would a 10,000 Volt boiler xfrmr be overkill?!?  I think not!  8^)
	Wire a 100W lightbulb in series with the feed to the transformer
	and stand back.  You might be able to use a 24V door bell xfrmr,
	wired backwards = 5x = 600 VAC.  The lamp will act as a current
	limiter.
	    My guess is that the mouse who tried to get the peanut butter
	the last thime will opt not to try THAT again!  A bit of electric
	shock therapy?

					Tim

    If you HAVE to try it, do what the ethically-challenged pros do:
    
    Try a wire grid instead of a sheet.  This is what is used in
    skinner boxes to deliver a shock to a test animal.  The paw
    has to curl around the wire and cannot uncurl while the shock is
    delivered, ensuring good contact.  Also use a slo-blo fuse for
    protection.  Carbonised mouse makes a pretty good conductor.
    
    Pretty gruesome eh? 
    
    Colin
    

    re:-1
    	
    	I LIKE IT !!!, but then you knew I would ;-)
    
    	Ray

Ray,

Why not use a Bug Zapper Transformer. A old HeathKit  Bug Zapper I have stated
that it is about 10K to 12K volts on the transformer.

Dan

From:	US2RMC::"[email protected]" "Jon Callas" 16-NOV-1994 14:26:30.00
To:	[email protected]
CC:	
Subj:	There's nothing in the world that can't be fixed with some combination 
of duct tape, WD-40, and habaneros.

Date: Thu, 10 Nov 94 09:42:36 PST
From: [email protected] (Curtis Jackson)
Subject: A truly *novel* use for habs
Message-ID: <[email protected]>

The History:

We've had roof rats in and out of our house for months.
No matter how many entrances/exits I seal up, they find
another one. No matter how many of the bastards I trap,
there are more.

The Hab Part of the Story:

Last weekend I decided to try my hand at smoking some
habs. But since it was cold (for here) out, and my wimpy
little water-smoker doesn't do well in that environment,
I decided to smoke them inside the garage. It did occur
to me that this might piss off the rats, of course.

The Aftermath:

We have now spent our first consecutive 5 rat-free days
in memory. Not a peep, not a scrabble, not a single time
have one of our dogs gone ballistic.

The Moral:

We'll have to extend the old saw: There's nothing in the
world that can't be fixed with some combination of duct
tape, WD-40, and habaneros.


All that fun stuff aside, just how much should I smoke
habs? I was so gigglingly gleeful at the hell the rats
must be going through that I just let the smoker smoke
itself out with two large homemade packets of wood
chips, so the habs ended up completely black and they
crumble into near-powder if you even look at them.

Please tell me that I over-smoked them, because that'll
mean I get to do it over again this weekend. <insert
maniacal grin and anticipatory rubbing of hands together
here>

Curtis

    I wonder if it was just the smoke, or some volatile compound in the
    peppers that drove the beasts away?  I read recently that pepper
    extracts were being used as an anti-fouling paint for boats in
    place of toxic copper.  Apparently, the marine animals just can't
    stand the pepper compounds and won'r settle on the hull.
    
    C
    

    I have read that very few commercial pepper driers will do habs.
    -- I think one place that does do them is in Gilroy when they are
    not doing Garlic.
    
    I suspect it's the Capsaicon (sp?) in the habs which drove out
    the little beggars.
    
    ed

   Not surprised by this news... I've seen stuff like peper-mace on the
   market for at least a couple of years now... extract of pepper sprayed
   into the face of an assailant is reported to disable them (1) for at
   least 45 minutes.
   
   - Tom
   
   (1) - I saw a presentation on this stuff once - apparently one of the
   requirements for getting authorization to sell this stuff was that
   they had to go through some training by the manufacturer.  Part of the
   training - according to this reseller - was to get sprayed (in a
   controlled environment) yourself.  Typically, after this experience,
   people were inclined to soak their faces in ice water for most of the
   45 minutes before the burning sensation would subside.  I would
   venture a guess that smoking hot peppers was essentially a diluted
   form of home made pepper-mace...

    I thought I'd give an update to the mouse situation. I hadn't gone
    up in the garage attic for a week so I went last Saturday to check
    things out. I ended up killing another mouse on a Snap trap, (#5).
    I took out the bucket with the seed, I just wasn't having any luck
    at all with this method. I reset a couple of the traps and put out
    a container of D-Con. I'll try to check tonight if they are eating
    it.
    
    My experience so far has had the following results:
                                                                       
1.  Bucket of water with peanut butter on the inside.
    
      I caught one mouse with the bucket of water and peanut butter on the 
    inside of the bucket (mouse falls in and drowns). The mice just seemed 
    to catch on to this and would stretch down as far as they could reach 
    to grab the peanut butter and leave. This might have worked over the long 
    haul but I didn't want to wait a year to get them all.
    
2.  Bucket with seeds on the bottom.
    
      Had zero results from this! At first I was using too small of a
    bucket and they were eating the seed and jumping out. I switched to a 
    little bit bigger bucket (compound bucket) and they wouldn't even go in.
    
3.  Snap traps.
    
      You get what you pay for, at $1.30 or so for 2 traps. These are
    cheap. I had 4 traps set but only 1 was doing all the catching. They
    do work but are a pain to set. Some are more sensitive than others,
    hence the one trap doing all the catching. They origionally licked
    the traps clean and left! 
    
4.  Cage.
    
      This cage apparently was for a bigger rodent. It had the teeter table
    in the middle with food on it. When they got on to take the food the
    doors would shut. Well they climbed on the teeter table, ate, and left.
    
    I don't have the patience anymore to play these games so this is why
    I'm going to the D-Con. If it was my cellar or the garage I would 
    continue with these methods, but I've grown tired of climbing up into 
    the garage attic. Now it'll be to just check the consumption level.
    
    

    I just wanted to comment on the D-Con use for mice. As was stated 
    in some of the earlier notes, it works but if they don't get out
    of the house before they die, be prepared for quite a stinch!!!
    
    There is a faint smell for a few days and then it peaks with a real
    bad stink. It is now starting to fade away, thank god. I don't think
    I'd use it again, the smell was that bad! 
    
    It does work though!!! 

The key is to use D-Con in the warm months when the mice tend to spend a 
lot of time outside.  Waiting til the winter months when they spend more 
time inside the walls means they'll die in the walls instead of down near 
the closest water source.

    I've nabbed 4 mice and one mole? so far since I first noticed
    we had  some in the house.  How many can I expect do they run
    in packs ? are they social animals any one have any idea.
    FYI I used snap traps baited with cheese and haven't missed
    one yet.  I followed the advice of earlier replies and really
    mashed the bait onto the bait holder.  Curiously this is the
    first year we've had any.
    
           Dean

    	re:-1
    
    	There's no way to tell how many you'll get. We thought we just had
    a mouse or two under our kitchen sink. I trapped 12 mice in the next 3
    days using two traps.
    
    	When you put the traps out and nothing trips them, your done (for
    the time being).
    
    	Ray

    I had mice licking my standard snap traps clean until I decided to use
    scotch tape to wrap the penut butter or cheese onto the bait holder.
    It makes them work harder.  The results were 2 or 3 kills per day using
    6 traps until no more scurrying could be heard...no licked clean traps.
    
    A little tip....  Tape the bait on BEFORE you set the trap.
                      Doing it AFTER causes you to use those few
                      choice words you save for special do-it-yourself
                      occassions.
    
    Good luck,
    
    Dave

    I've got to tell you I learned this by accident but it worked well 
    without my even setting it up.
    
    I had a mouse problem (well they co-existed in the shed), and they
    caused damage to my snowmobile.  While I was working on it I needed
    to drain the antifreeze.  I had used a plastic rubbermaid trash can
    lid as a bucket and left it to catch the draining antifreeze.  Much to
    my surprize a couple of weeks later when I resumed my project there
    were 5 mice in the bucket.  This is just a shallow cover maybe 3 inches
    deep at the most and there was only about an inch of antifreeze. 
    Seems the little buggers like antifreeze thus the warning on the
    container about pets etc.  Makes me wonder if they drowned or if the
    chemicals killed them first.  Maybe the viscosity of the antyfreeze
    slows them down enough so that they can't excape before dropping off.
    Also, the antifreeze may act as a preservative thereby preventing them
    from stinking up the place.
    
    It cracks me up how we can go to great lengths to kill the little
    buggers only to find they die an accidental death. 
    
    Now I wouldn't advise this where other pets or children have access but
    considering the damage they'd done I had little sympathy for them.
    
    PS.  I was PEAK antifreeze. WOW! what a product endorsememt.  Reminds
    me of the saturday night live skit on the whipped topping/floor wax.
                                                                        

    
    
    
    	Anti-freeze has a sweet taste to it, a person needs to be carefull
    	with it, house hold pets like it too. 
    
    	Mike

    My cousin and her dog were visiting a friend, and the dog was in the
    friend's cellar for a while.  4 days later the dog died, of antifreeze
    ingestion (the friend realized later and confirmed that there was a
    small puddle of antifreeze on the cellar floor).  The vet said that 
    there's no antidote, and (for a small dog, at least) death comes in 
    exactly 4 days.  Just a teaspoonful is lethal.
    
    Leslie

Intravenous injection of alcohol (we use Vodka) can bind with the "bad stuff" in
antifreeze, although the odds aren't good for the victim. Having done necropsies
on dogs euthanized just a few hours after ingestion of antifreeze and seeing
what little was left of their kidneys, I'd reckon that unless you see the animal
drink the stuff and get him to a vet as soon as possible, it's close to a lost
cause. After renal failure (and assuming the animal doesn't die of something
else in the mean time), it would probably take 2-4 days to have the toxins build
up enough in the blood stream to cause death. Over the course of several years
of working with animals, I haven't yet seen a successful case of treatment,
though most owners don't bring the animals in until several hours after
ingestion.

					Trace

    
      I put a dish of antifreeze on my car floor to see if it would get rid
    of a mouse that made a nest in my cars Defroster section.  Still
    haven't gotten an answer yet.
    
    -Dean

Hi,

I am desperate needing advices about finding out where
the mice are from and how to stop them.

I have a 30+ years old ranch. In the past few years, I 
got few mice into the house (head count from the mouse traps) 
at beginning of the each winter. I ran out of idea that
how mice got into inside of  the house. I had a brand new roof this summer
so there is no hole or crack in the roof. I noticed that English Ivy
found its way into my basement this summer, so is it possible that the tiny
gap between the foundation and the siding big enough for mice to get
in? Or is it possible that mice can come in through the chimney or the 
bathroom pipe and the kitchen pipe sticking out the roof?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

-Shuhua

    Mice come from outside.  They can get through incredibly tiny holes or
    cracks.  Best thing is to plug up every entrance (near ground,
    typically) you can find.  Traps can also work.  Don't use poison.
    
    				Steve

I've *seen* mice getting in to my house.  They get into the garage, then
dash into the house when the door between the house and the garage is
opened.

This is in addition to what was mentioned in .1.

If you have pipes coming through the floor, stuff steel wool in between the
pipes and the floor/bottoms of cabinets.  Don't leave doors open.  And keep
a cat.  :-)

> Don't use poison.

	And in case anyone is wondering why, think about what happens when
	a mouse dies inside the walls/floors.....

	Also check out these existing topics:

  3820                       14-MAY-1990     1  Help! Mice in CAR and garage...
  4052  BTOVT::HYNES_F       10-DEC-1990     3  Mice in the attic

    	Actually, I always thought that mice came from other mice, but I
    could be wrong. Once you have a few mice, watch out. They breed like
    rabbits. I used to have a problem with mice until larger predators took
    care of the mouse population. The only problem with that is when they
    get higher and higher on the food chain and finally start chasing you
    around the house for a meal. I found a pretty large dead squirrel in
    the middle of my basement floor the other day. I'm not sure what killed
    it. I'm not sure I WANT to know. It had a pretty scared look on its
    face though.

>     I found a pretty large dead squirrel in
>     the middle of my basement floor the other day. I'm not sure what killed
>     it. I'm not sure I WANT to know. It had a pretty scared look on its
>     face though.

	Maybe the same thing that used to kill the birds in the cages
	in the mines .... (ie. you may want to put a carbon-monoxide
	detector in your house!)

     
     While sitting in our den eating popcorn last week we heard a 
    crunching sound in the ceiling obove us. Mice!! The next day I
    went out and got four traps and place them in the attic with
    peanutbutter and cheese. Checked these traps last evening and 
    almost S#!* my draws!! All four traps were sprung and two out
    of the four had a mouse. No big deal right?  Wrong!! Something
    Ate more than half of each mouse!! All that was left was the tails
    the head and the spinal cords!!
    
    History...We have a modular 44' ranch...Very tight...I figure and
    I hope that these mice can NOT find any food and decided to canibalize
    thier Sibblings, Friends, Mother, Father..Whatever..I have ruled out
    ratcoons, squirrels, birds...Anyone ever retrieved a mouse trap and
    only gotten half of what you exspected?
    
    WDL

    ... Maybe you have zombie undead mouse heads living in your house.
    In which case, you don't have to worry. :-)

    
    You pegged the answer yourself. Mice eat their own.
    
    						- Mac

    	I had snakes in the walls taking care of the mice
    population for a while. Fun, isn't it?

    Where can you find the "havahart" mouse traps?  We
    have a mouse that's been feasting itself on our
    bananas and licking peanut butter off a knife in
    the kitchen sink (did that in the middle of the day.
    I heard the knife moving in the sink went out to check,
    and caught the tail end of the mouse disappearing behind
    the cabinets in the kitchen).
    
    I live in Hudson Ma.
    
    Thanks!
    
    -Shannon

    Wiley's Agway in Northboro or Robinson's on Main ST. in Hudson.

    Just came back from there...  They had it...
    
    Thanks!

               
    
    How does one know if they got mice or squirrels in the attic ?
    
    Here is what I am noticing ...
    
    I can hear nuts being dropped and some scratching and movement.  
    I'll hear noises for maybe 30 seconds and it stops.  
    I ussually hear them between 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm and in early mornings
    sometimes.   Keep in mind, I'm not home much during the day but
    sometimes can hear noise.   I hear most of the noise at nigth.
    
    I hear from different PEST CONTROL folks thinking its Mice since the
    noise is mostly at night.
    
    One guy says it might be RED SQUIRRELS but I didn't thinkthey roamed
    in MASS.
    
    I live in the middle of woods and I see tons of squirrels running
    around.
    
    The area where i hear the noise is no accessable cause its above my
    family room which has a catherial ceiling.
    
    I wonder if I should make a opening to get access to this area or
    give a PEST CONTROL a try in keeping them out ?
    
    House only 2 years old.
    
    Any sugestions ?
    

    
    Mouse traps with peanut butter...
    

    
    The peanut butter on the trap as mentioned is good for mice. If it's
    squirls you can get a have-a-hart trap from Home Depot to trap them. 
    I've had a pigeon make that kind of noise. It found a spot where
    there was a wood knot on the inside of the plywood that was thin, and
    pecked through to get to the heat. Wet it down with the hose it never
    came back.
    

    
    We had both squirrels and mice before and being the kinds who don't
    want to deal with dead animals, we called the pest control people,
    who "guaranteed" that whatever process they used to get rid of the 
    rodents would not leave corpses in the attic or in the yard (as
    we didn't want our cats to get poisoned as well).
    
    Eva 

    
    re: .231   Just wanted to clarify, sounds like you have mice to me,
               try the PB traps and see what you catch. Mice leave very
               small dark droppings, should be easy to spot under the
               insulation or on/around the attic floor. I catch mice every
               year, and hear the scratching that you describe. I have
               found acorns under the attic insulation as well. 
    
               Squirrels are usually a bit noisier and more destructive (from
               what I've been told.)
    
               Charlie
    
    
    P.S.  I always modify my mousetraps (with pliers) before using them.
          I set them with a "hair trigger". Straight from the package they
          will often get licked clean without ever being tripped...Those mice
          are tricky little critters ;^). 
             

    Sounds like mice. you'll probably find droppings under the insulation,
    and (if you have fiberglas insulation up there) passageways in the
    insulation about an inch in diameter.
    
    Traditional or glue traps with peanut butter should produce a specimen,
    particularly if you can place it where the mice tread (I find glue
    traps work better because you can tuck them under the insulation.. just
    don't forget about them!)
    
    ..tom

Yep, sounds exactly like the mouse problem we had in the rental house we just
moved out of. These were also inside a "cathedral" type ceiling area.

Try to figure out how they get in there, and then block it off. Once they're
forced out into the open attic space, you can trap them. Then try to figure
out how they got in the house in the first place. You can sort of track them
by their droppings. They leave tons of little pellets everywhere they go,
about as big as a "-", that look very much like the chocolate sprinkles that
you put on an ice cream cone.

In our case, the cathedral ceiling area was wide open at the point where it
joined the main attic, so there was no stopping them unless I wanted to do a
bunch of carpentry in a dirty attic that I didn't own. Even after I closed up
a couple of their entry points into the house, they would always find a new
one. They'll apparently fit through a much smaller hole than you'd think.
From the amount of droppings we'd find around, I'd guess the house had been
infested for years and years. We had to pull out the dishwasher and clean it
up, because it was to the point that the droppings would stink every time we
ran it... not fun, and a health problem.