Oh, I Hate This...

[NightAngel]

We have mice. We got some of those sonic things that are supposed to drive mice away. They don't work- I can feel it when I'm near one but apparently it doesn't bother the mice any at all. :(

I know this is going to sound stupid to some of you but I like mice and I really don't want to kill them. Sadly, though they are getting into the pantry cupboard and on the kitchen counters. They have to go.

So we've had to resort to snap traps. I HATE hearing them go off. I HATE killing the cute little things.

I feel SO BAD! :cry:

But I can't have them wrecking my family's food and spreading germs, etc. either.

[protege]

That's why my grandmother had a cat. Once he came to the farm, rarely did we have critters inside. In fact, one night we had a mouse under the refridgerator. I brought kitty in for some petting. Apparently, the mouse saw him, and promptly disappeared. Of course this was after I declared war on the mice--quite a few mousetraps were set up, including the sticky kind with peanut butter. The mouse somehow missed all those, only to be scared by the cat.

[officegirl]

My old roommate and I had mice at the old apartment we used to live at. This was back in my college days so being the poor student I was, I only had a spring box and mattress laying on the floor- no bed frame. One night, I was lying in bed watching TV and I heard a rustling on the floor. I ignored it at first but then saw something out of the corner of my eye and knew it was a mouse. I ended up sleeping in my roommate's bed with her for weeks. One day I walked down stairs, prepared to leave, and almost stepped on a mouse. It scared the nuts out of me but the mouse didn't move. As I got closer, I realized that it was in the process of dying- it had apparently eaten the DECON we set out everywhere (which claimed the mice would go outside to die). I put a basket over it to make sure it wouldn't go anywhere and then made my roommate's brother come over and get rid of it. I don't have any fondness or weak spots for mice I must admit...

[gbm85]

There are humane mouse traps. They have a little door that mice can get into, but they can't get out of. Two or three of those with crackers and peanut butter should do the trick, and you can take them to the park to let them out.

[Tanasi]

Folks it ain't like mice are an endangered species, kill the blame things. The black plague was spread by fleas that lived on mice. AFAIK we don't have any but I have a supply of glue traps ready to go.

[Ringtail Z28]

First and most important step in getting rid of them is to find out how they're getting inside your house. Until you fix that problem they'll just keep getting inside. Unless you're like me and enjoy the target practice. :devil: And never ever use poison inside the house, you'll end up with rotting rat carcasses in the walls or poisoned pets if you have any.

[Argabarga]

Just spotted one the other night in the garage while working on a car, trap time, the one we had set up there hadn't had a customer in so long, it had rusted to the point that I dont' think it would work anymore....

[Melxb]

Cats are the perfect solution to a mice problem. A few years after we moved into our house we were INUNDATED with mice. We don't know why mice choose to move into our house enmasse but they did. They took over our house. It got to the poins after a few weeks that we could only eat food in the refrigerator or in plastic containers because we didn't know if the other food in our pantry had been touched by mice.

My mom was given a tiny kitten by one of her co-workers. Darla was only about 6 weeks old when she came to live with us. She was an indoor/outdoor cat so we didn't declaw her (she WAS fixed though!). She was a huntress from the get go. She hunted and killed about 7 mice in 2 weeks!! :eek: She single handedly got rid of our mice problem.

Since then we've been cat people and we don't have problem with any rodents or possums. (I hate possums! Worse than mice!)

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Methinks it's only a matter of time before the mice start infesting our backroom. They are on the move.

We still occassionally have mice that come in through the front doors and run back and forth from outside to the store. They can fit themselves in the tiniest cracks.

[Zombi]

;) Folks it ain't like mice are an endangered species, kill the blame things. The black plague was spread by fleas that lived on mice. AFAIK we don't have any but I have a supply of glue traps ready to go.

Plague can have any number of vectors - the disease is endemic in the San Francisco area, where it lives in the squirrel population. And actually, in the Middle Ages, it was predominantly spread by the black rat. ;)

[Barefootgirl]

Zombi is right - it was rats, not mice that carried plague-spreading fleas during the Black Death, although I doubt that Jenni is going to end up having to paint a big cross on her front door. The more likely serious health problems with rodents are things like Lyme Disease and hantavirus, which you get by breathing the dust from dried mouse poo, and which can have some really unpleasant effects, like haemorragic fever.

My mum has a mouse problem in her kitchen - at one point, she found a nest of little baby mice living in her teatowel drawer. I think she killed them.

Is a cat totally out of the question? The smell of a cat around the place is normally enough to keep mice well away. My mum won't get a cat because my dad hates animals, so she has to persist with the traps.

[NightAngel]

Actually, I have a dog who probably wouldn't be overly fond of the idea of having a cat around.

Since my previous post The Great Huntress, Rio (my Lab/Dal mix dog), has bagged herself a mouse. Now, we're jokingly calling her The Great Huntress because she's not. She chases stuff all the time- lizards, mice, flies, etc. but has NEVER managed to catch anything before. Unless she does it again we're chalking it up to it being the slow, dumb mouse of the family... :lol:

[ditchdj]

My baby rat snake's gonna love those mice when it grows up. :devil: Right now we have to buy it newborn mice from the pet store called "pinkies" and it wastes no time getting down to business whenever I put a live one in its cage.

[Banrion]

I have never seen any mice in my house, and probably never will. Between the 5 snakes, cat, and carnivorous lizard, even if one got in it wouldn't last long!

[LostMyMind]

Aren't all lizards carnivorous? Anyway, mice too scared to come around my place. I got way too many wasps around.

[Cia]

One winter we had so many mice in the house that my cat and dog got tired of catching them. Munch caught 7 and Roadie caught 5. We had to use a combo of live and kill traps to get the rest. @..@~

[MystyGlyttyr]

We have cats everywhere. (Semi-farmland.) Needless to say, we have no small rodents or slow birds anywhere within a mile of our house. :lol: There's been something of a shortage of grasshoppers, too...

[AFpheonix]

My barn kitties are getting awfully lazy. We've been catching quite a few mice in the traps I have set up in the feed room.

Maybe your dog would like a companion dog? little fox terriers like to catch mice and rats. We had one that would get sooooo excited when she found rats under the chicken coop at our old house. She'd parade around with her little victims for days after she'd killed them.

[Tanasi]

Rats ~ Mice six of one half dozen of another. Only difference is size.

I have a good story about possums. Years and years ago my youngest uncle had been married a few months and moved into their first house. My uncle having grow up in a house without window screens didn't see a need for them but his wife disagreed. This was an ongoing arguement with them that my Dad loved to stir up. I think it was late Sept or early Oct we were letting the dogs hunt possums at night. We didn't kill them just let the dogs run and tree them and then we had to pull the dogs away. Well we caught a small one late one night and put it in a toe sack with evil intentions in mind. We snuck up to their window (which was open) and pitched the possum through the window into their bed. I'm not sure who screamed louder or more like a little girl but it was soooo funny. The next day he put screens on all the windows.:devil:

[NightAngel]

Rio just caught herself ANOTHER mouse. Of course, she brought it in and left it next to my computer chair. *bleh* Perhaps she is becoming The Great Huntress after all?

I praised her highly and she seems quite proud of herself.

Score:
Rio- 2
Traps- 3
Me- nauseated

[MadMike]

I've had quite a few mice get into our house, but with six cats, they don't usually live very long. Interestingly enough, the one of our cats that is the most timid around people is the most vicious hunter. I found one of her kills with its head separated from its body. Another time, I caught her carrying a dead one around, and she growled at me when I took it from her. Then there was the time I found her with a live one, and had to take it from her and release it outside because I got tired of waiting for her to stop playing with it and kill it. One time, she tried to hide one of her kills in our bathroom rug, much to my wife's horror.

The first few times, she freaked out and tried to get me to call an exterminator. I pointed out that we had four (at the time) exterminators already. :p

Unfortunately, we got another type of pests in the house that the cats are ineffective against -- yellow jackets. Most of them ended up in my son's room, and just a few days ago, he found out they had built a nest inside one of the computers he was working on. I dumped two whole cans of spray down the vents, and most of the ones I found after that were either dead or dying, but they still kept coming. Had to call in the pros for that one.

[Zombi]

I admit it, I'm a typical girl when it comes to pests of any kind. You know, squealing and whatnot. Mice I can handle, but bugs make my skin crawl. It's spring here at the moment, and the ants are on the march again. For some reason, they like my bathroom. Bring on the Raid! :devil:
Then there's cockroaches. Evil, nasty, filthy, disgusting cockroaches. My co-worker found one in her till the other day. I looked over to find her huddled against her counter, as far away from her drawer as she could get.
Me: What?
A: EEEWWW! There's a cockroach in my drawer! Kill it!
Me: EEEWWW!!!
A: *pokes it with a $5 note* EEEWWW!!! K, come and kill it!
K: What? *sees bug* EEEWWW!
Me: Make it die now! *gets D, the floor manager*
D: What? *sees bug, and gives us that "Bloody girls!" look*

Yes, D is male. He fished it out and disposed of it, to a chorus of EEEWWW!!! from us sooky la-las. :o

[Melxb]

Rio just caught herself ANOTHER mouse. Of course, she brought it in and left it next to my computer chair. *bleh* Perhaps she is becoming The Great Huntress after all?

I praised her highly and she seems quite proud of herself.

Aren't these gifts? My two cats, Lola and Diego, every once in a while will come into our house with birds in their mouths and drop them at my feet. Then they sit back and wait for me to congratulate them. They're quite the hunters. Although Lola, the female, is much more vicious. She likes to bring them to me still twitching and alive. Once, when she did this, she picked the bird from the floor and shook it til its neck broke-I think.
Sigh. What are you going to do? My cats love me and this is their way of showing their appreciation.

[Seanette]

Or maybe they think we're giant kittens who need to be taught how to hunt. I once had a cat (neutered tom, yet) bring a *live* snake into the house and turn it loose. Problem here is that I'm ophidiophobic. While I was screaming and climbing furniture, my grandfather (farm boy, retired logger) very calmly caught the snake and tossed it back outside (in that part of Oregon, I'm told there are no poisonous snakes).

I'm not sure which of us the cat was more disgusted with. :lol:

Another cat (spayed female) had a standing deal with a neighbor. She took him some kill, he gave her some sort of treat. Neighbor passed on, new neighbors moved in, this set a young couple expecting their first child. Tasha (the cat) cruises on over with some piece of prey and nearly scares the nice new neighbor into early labor. (My mother got that sorted out with the neighbor.)

[BlaqueKatt]

ever consider a pet rat-rats kill mice so even the smell of a caged rat will chase off the mice-hence why I normally have rats-plus if a rat escapes it's cage it will come back when hungry or thirsty-they're more like a really tiny well trained dog.

BlaqueKatt-who loveses the fuzzies

[friendofjimmyk]

I don't have a mouse problem, but I HAD a spider problem. I am a single female and I live alone and I HATE bugs! HATE THEM! I don't have a man around to say, "EEK! KILL IT!!!" So, I had to start taking matters into my own hands.

However, because of my weird beliefs (I know, weird to some - but something about the Goddess and spiders was told to me and I feel bad if I have to kill one now - I could be wrong - there are some pagans on this board - maybe they could tell me more about this as I am only starting to practice) Anywho...when it came to killing spiders, I would feel so guilty and would try to ask the Gods for forgiveness...but I had to do something because of how bad I react to certain spiders and their bites. I would catch some of them and release them and others I would have to smoosh.

Then I got a cat...no more bug problems - I mean, they are all gone and have been since he has been in the apartment! Yah Kitty!

[Mr. Rager!]

I could not stand to hear the sound of a mouse trap snapping. I'd freak out... (dang super soft-spot for animals)

Fortunantly, we do not have a problem with mice at all in our house. Of course, having two cats will do that for you.

When I was doing a stereo swap on my cars (right before I sold my old car) I saw a mouse run through the garage. Poor thing. It got itself cornered and I knew it was scared. So I grabbed it and took it back outside by our shed. Who cares if mice get in our shed? Not me.

I would agree with trying to find humane traps though.

[RavenStarr]

I absolutely hate mice. However, as long as I don't see them I'm okay. If I see one I go all to hell. Like I did a few weeks ago when I saw one run across my stove. Or like the time when I picked a dead mouse up out of the washing machine.

I used to be a lot worse though. If I saw a mouse, I would climb up in a chair and not get off till that mouse was caught. Now as long as I don't see them I'm fine.

I hate hearing traps go off too. I won't even go and see if a mouse is in it or not. My husband or one of my boys does that.;)