The war has officially begun.
Since I last posted, my husband is still freaked out by the little creatures known as mice. He has gotten braver, though, and actually released two that he captured in his little humane traps. Last week, we weren't here much, and our garage now strongly reeks of rodents. I know the smell because I used to own hamsters... There are also a lot of little droppings everywhere. On top of all this, my wonderful husband was going to put the boxed Christmas trees away in the attic yesterday. As he opened the attic door, mouse poop proceeded to fall onto the ground at his feet. I believe this means war... probably too late for us to be completely successful.
Last night some of the youth girls came over for a sleepover. Rather than crash our party, Joel was researching how to get rid of mice. He read that cardboard really attracts them. Well DUH we have a ton of cardboard that we've been meaning to take to get recycled. We went in the garage to start putting it in bags to chunk, when a lovely little mouse scurried out of a huge folded up box. Luckily it was outside of our garage at that point. It saw us and ran back under the box. I started kicking the box, tennis ball holder in hand, to get it to run out. I think I injured it because it ran out kind of limping/hobbling to the nearest cover back inside our garage. I ended up catching it, as I had caught its little friend who was previously mentioned in a former post. Joel made the announcement, and this little mouse had a photoshoot with 9 screaming girls all around it. The pictures are on their cameras, however. Anyway, we released it into the field. I feel bad for injuring it. Joel was mad at me for feeling bad.
I am over feeling bad for killing the mice in traps. I know my family is all rolling their eyes at this point. I know I should have been fond of this idea from the get-go, but at least I'm learning now. Our first little mouse obviously wasn't alone. Who knows, maybe it's back. And in all fairness, I did warn it. Little mice, you better run away or you are going to die REALLY soon. Your sort-of-cute factor only saved you until now...
So, does anyone have any ideas for killing mice other than traps? Joel's dad heard of some poison that makes them not smell when they die. I'm not too fond of the poison idea being that our little dog eats everything in sight. I'm open to suggestions. I'm also open to hearing about what NOT to do.
4 comments:
I say trap those little guys--I'm sure Julia can give you pointers after her record haul. Just be careful of your fingers in the traps. Dad says do not harm the puppy--they are bonded now!
this means waaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
Okay. I have dealt with mice several times. There was the mega-batch of mice (26) in California. There have been several groups of three to five at our current house. When you see one, there are others. Usually many others.
I have only had success with kill-traps. We had to kill all the ones that were there and then leave out the traps for a while (until a small child came over to our house, when we realized snap-traps might not be "baby-proof") just as a precaution.
I recommend the snap-traps. They're a little nerve-wracking to set, but really they're fine as long as you keep your fingers out of the way. Don't try to pry the dead mouse out and reuse the trap, though. Some people recommend that to save money, but it's gross and traps aren't that expensive.
Put some kind of sticky food (we use peanut butter) on the trap, set it, and put the trap in a location close to the wall, usually behind furniture, where you've seen the mice going. Check the traps several times a day to see how you're doing. When you kill a mouse, invert a plastic bag over your hand (newspaper bags work well, if you get the paper) and pick up the mouse, trap and all, and turn the bag back to right-side-out. Dispose in the outside trash can. Set a new trap where the previous one met with success. (Note: in CA, the mice licked off the peanut butter without setting off the trap, so we had to superglue grains of rice - the food they had been eating out of our cabinets - to the trap, which turned out to be very effective.)
If you kill mice in traps and remove them daily, they won't smell. It's only when they die in places where you can't get to them that they smell, but then usually other creatures will come along and clean the carcass so the smell goes away after the flesh is gone. Not that this is pleasant or desirable, just my experience.
I've also tried poison-glue "humane" traps where the mouse walks on the glue and gets stuck and squeals for hours as it tries to get free as poison from the glue is absorbed through its feet. I don't recommend these.
Altogether, I think the snap-traps cause less suffering, if that's important to you. They snap the mouse's neck and they never know what hit them.
I really think you have to kill mice rather than turning them free. They're looking for a warm dry place to live, and they'll just keep coming back. Plus, killing them is cathartic. You'll know that mouse won't come back and you've stopped it from procreating.
Don't feel bad about killing them. They poop in areas where your food goes and spread disease. It's important (in my opinion) for the healthiness of your household for you to get rid of them permanently.
Please call for any further mice advice. We have strong feelings about this in the Stadler house!
Julia says she's already commented, but as I type this, you haven't approved it, so forgive any duplicate ideas -- we are married, after all, and share some mice experiences.
In short, you have to think like a mouse. "Eep, eep!" Catch-and-release won't work, because whatever reason caused them to seek out your house in the first place will cause them to do so again. You haven't taught them anything. Admittedly, dead mice don't learn much either, but nor do they return to your house (except in ghost form, but those are largely benign).
The only thing Julia and I can recommend (and she's killed dozens more than I) are the snapping mousetraps. They're actually quite humane, in my opinion. If I were a mouse, I'd rather have my neck/spine snapped and die instantly than be poisoned to death over a period of minutes/hours. (Don't get the "humane" sticky-pad traps -- Julia has probably already talked about that.) And poison is bad because it's poison. With snapping mousetraps, the worst anyone -- you, Lucy, Joel -- will likely experience is a very sore appendage if something goes wrong. Hard to beat.
We put peanut butter on ours, which seems to work, and doesn't get too gross if the trap is left out for a long period. But other things work. The key is to put the trap where the mouse will run across it -- along a wall somewhere, in a darkish area, with the "trigger" up against the wall. Check your trap every day, if you can.
They're reusable, in theory, but in practice, we throw the mouse and trap out the minute we find it, which is perhaps a bit more sanitary. Use an old plastic bag turned inside out to pick it up, just like dog poop.
And yes, I'll freely admit that it creeps me out to pick up a trap with a dead mouse in it. Yes, I actually worry that the mouse is just "faking it" and will come back to life and bite me or, worse, taunt me in English. At times, my imagination is no friend.
But all told, the mice in our neighborhood probably live more in fear of me than I do of them. Because I have snapping mousetraps.
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