Mouse in the House

[Lazy Gardener]

I've given up on the plastic traps. They used to work well, but the ones I've bought recently won't even snap after the first or second snap.

@CrealCritter Have you figured out where the mice are getting in?

 

[flowerbug]

i've never had mice in the house for long enough for them to become friendly. how long did it take to get them all out of the house?

my worst trial with mice was them getting in my car. i could not ever figure out where they were getting in. they made a smelly mess of it. i had to pull the trunk lining out to find their nests and i still didn't get them all. finally i sold it. i warned the guy that it would need more work to figure out where the mice were getting and and that i could not get the cabin filter for the inside of the car replaced. so perhaps they were in there... i couldn't tell. before i sold it i washed the entire car inside with bleach and water.

i hate mice even if i think they are cute and wished they didn't poo and pee inside. if they didn't i wouldn't mind them so much.

here i have trapped many hundreds from the walls and around the house.

last year the AC stopped working well and it turned out they'd chewed through the wires in the control box where they'd built a nest.

i just trapped three from around the AC again. it's something i will probably have to do all winter again and then next year i can take another look at the AC and see if i can plug up where they may be getting into that control box if it looks like they've started nesting in there again.

the house and foundation are sealed up well now, but it has taken me 22+yrs to get to this point.

one last gap i need to find somewhere and it isn't being used often, but i will need a boroscope to do it... snow is a big help. i can see what is going on when it starts snowing.

 

[flowerbug]

uhg, chewing in the wall a few minutes ago. an interior wall. they've done this before and i've trapped them outside to get rid of them but it may take some time.

when the snows come on at least i can see their tracks and put traps out for them. i've caught three mice outside so far, but obviously not the right one yet.

here i was just hoping they'd not be back this season.

will need a scope and perhaps to drill some holes in the walls to figure this out so you can see why i don't want to do that. the outside foundation is sealed up to my visual inspection but there is the AC unit along that wall and there is always a lot of mouse tracks from the berm to that unit and the wall in between. i'm suspecting that either they can get to the wall by going underneath the AC unit or one other place, but i don't really know for sure where they are coming in. they could be getting access to the eaves and running along there from a ways away until they've found this gap into the house/interior wall.

as of yet they haven't gotten out of the wall and into the house or the crawlspace, but it is annoying to hear them chewing in there. too bad i can't track them by the noise they make in the wall, but they are quiet when the move enough that i can't hear them other than when they're chewing.

 

[flowerbug]

thanks! i helped on it, but didn't do it, i also helped with the interior fireplace rock work. the ex-step-dad buit the place and split the stone with a sledge hammer, with help from all of us we got it done. it was only meant as a summer place. the whole house was mainly built as his artist studio and that is why the arrangement is bass-ackwards from what you'd expect of a house in the north.

i know how tiny some mice can make themselves. when i was trying to figure out what was going on last year i started watching a bunch of vidoes on youtube which showed what mice could fit through and various methods of trapping them. it was interesting to watch various vids of them on night cameras and such to see their behaviors.

 

[flowerbug]

arg! still have not caught the miscreant!

there hasn't been enough snow on the ground to see any tracks (i went out a bit ago to take a quick walk around the house hoping to see some tracks in the little bit of snow that we did get but no luck there).

now that the rains have passed i'll reset the traps later today with a bit of fresh peanut butter in them and see if i can get it trapped.

 

[flowerbug]

I'll probably be hated for this but I set bait boxes up in the wood shop and in the chicken building. After about 2 weeks no more mice. I still have at least 1 trap set in every room of the house and have not had any mice in them since setting the bait boxes.

For some reason I recalled a sermon I once heard. Where this contrast was made on speaking truth vs lie - rat poison is 99% grain and 1% poison, but that 1% poison is 100% effective. It's a excellent metaphor.

I also stopped free choice feed for my chickens and turkeys, now I feed them daily and only as much as they eat so there is no left over for mice.

there are no outside animals here to feed other than the wild animals so if we put out any sunflower seeds or heads for the birds to pick at they are placed a long ways from the house. we used to have bait boxes out for chipmunks and mice, but after some time i figured out that what it really did was attract yet more of them in from the surrounding area. it wasn't actually controlling anything and wasting a lot of $. i still had to hunt and trap.

the best results i had were from finding gaps in the house itself and getting them plugged up. there is just this last spot i haven't found yet, but i suspect i know where it is i just have no easy way to look.

i'd have to lift the AC unit... i'm pondering a way to lever it up and put some bricks under it but that's not going to happen any time soon. the AC unit has been a place where they've put nests in before but i've never thought to look underneath it. which had i thought of it this past spring i would have had the guy doing the service help me move it while he was here to check it out. the reason for the service was needed to begin with was that mice had built a nest in the control panel and chewed through some wires. i don't know if the plastic pad the AC unit is sitting on is a solid chunk of plastic or if it has holes through it that the mice can be using to get under it and then along the house and up into the walls. i can't see any other gaps. i've got them all filled with cement and any smaller holes filled with the expanding spray foam (and then caulked over to protect the foam from degrading) it helps keep the bugs out.

 

[flowerbug]

Oh how I hate mice.

i don't hate them when they're outside where they belong! just when they get in the walls and disturb my lethargic slumbers or chew on wires in places they should be or destroy my car or get caught in a trap and then drag it someplace in the car i can't find and smell up the place and ...

what some people don't really know about them is that they have no sense of fear when it comes down to being hungry and food. they'll crawl over their dead kin to get to the bait, they'll chew through their kin to get to the bait, etc.

 

[flowerbug]

They will eat their kin. I hate them even outside. B/C I have a garden, and they eat and poop on the food I am growing for my own sustenance.

they may eat some of what i grow but i don't notice them pooping on anything, the rain and sunshine seems to clean it off if they are. i never notice droppings in the gardens.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Perhaps your mice have better hygiene than mine do.

 

[flowerbug]

Perhaps your mice have better hygiene than mine do.

i will say without a doubt that they can be stinky and destructive as i had my old car parked outside and since i didn't run it very often the mice got into it and i never was able to find out how they were getting in there. i eventually sold it. the smell of them in there was horrible. when i've had to clean out nests in some places here or there if i've been able to find them early enough they're not too bad, but after several years they certainly reek. i just never find the nests in the gardens themselves. under rocks and around the edges i don't look for them much. in the winter i notice their tracks in the snow around some cedar trees and such but i'm not going to bother trying to trap them all. that's just pointless to me. i would however love to get rid of the mouse hotel we have which is close to the house enough that i'm sure most of the problems we do have left come from there.

since it is supposed to warm up again this evening i'm going to go out and refresh the peanut butter on the traps and see if i can nab this miscreant this evening.