Mouse in the House

[flowerbug]

Supposedly, "they say" that a mouse has a range of about 50'. So, I do put traps out in the garden when I see evidence of mice. They can decimate any root crop if you don't get them first. The best time to control populations IMO is when their food supply is limited. That way, the bait is more inviting.

ah ha! they must not like garlic or onions as those are the two root crops i grow here. we no longer do beets (i may some year so i'll keep this in mind if i do thanks ). we have voles, mice and chipmunks around so at times i'll see nibbles on plants but for the most part they've not gotten after everything. beets were a target at times, but i never trapped to find out what it was. oh, but for sure the chipmunks did get almost all of my Edamame soybeans the past few times i've tried to grow them so i gave up on those - it is hard enough to keep the seed lines clean because of all the soybeans grown around here anyways.

rarely will they ignore peanut butter. in my car i could leave a trap licked clean of peanut butter for months at a time and still catch them. i didn't want to bait it heavily since i don't want to attract yet more mice towards the car/house. so what i put out now are very tiny amounts of peanut butter on the traps. they must have a superb sense of smell. i put out six traps (one in the garage to make sure nobody is in there - if i don't get something within a few days i know it is clear for now and i'll bring that trap back in, the other five i put along the foundation outside along their most common runs where i can usually catch a few mice a week). if i put those same traps out in front of the house they usually are not touched at all unless the raccoons come around. i don't usually see any tracks in the snow out front either. if we can get some snow that helps a lot to see what the traffic is like and where.

i may have to get a live game camera, but i'll try other things first.

 

[Nifty]

Interesting thread! (now on the new homepage)

I don't think I've ever had mice in my house, but I've always had a problem with rats. I wonder if they don't co-exist?

... what I do know is that controlling them has been a nightmare and it seems they are winning!

Yesterday in fact, I setup a bunch of traps in my attic and crawl space under my house. I also setup a few of the super cheap (and AWESOME) wyze cameras to capture any movement. We'll see what happens...

 

[flowerbug]

there isn't an attic here. we do have a crawl space but the mice can't get in there unless they run in when the steel door/cover is open and they don't live long. it's very dry down there with the furnace running and the only water source (the sump pump sump) has wire mesh over it to keep the mice out. one of the first things i did when i stayed here was make sure there were no ways for the mice to get from the crawl space into the house. with all the mice action i was hearing in the walls at the time i was really worried that they could get into the crawl space but they have yet to do that. visually i would be able to notice if they ever do as i have to go down there twice a year to change the air filter i would also notice their tracks/droppings on the floor if they were around.

i'm glad we don't have rats, i'm sure they are around in the woods and barns in various neighbor's places but it is a long ways between us and most neighbors and i think the coyotes, foxes, hawks, owls, etc. keep after them. it is open enough that even the squirrels which might try to live in the north hedge don't seem to stick around for long.

it may come down to getting the camera too for us to find out what is going on. good luck! post vids! lol

once you find gaps get them sealed up with caulk/spray foam or both (i put the foam in first because if you don't seal up the tiny cracks then they can feel the air moving and will try to chew through if they can - once the foam is dried then i scrape it flat enough that i can put some caulk over it to protect it from the elements). this has worked really well to keep the bugs out too. for over 20yrs we had a pretty bad problem with various swarming bugs coming in but once i found the gaps they were exploiting and sealed those up it took care of almost all of that problem. i wished i had figured that out many years sooner with all the time we spent getting all those bugs off the windows.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/science/19qna.html

https://www.rentokil.ie/blog/10-rat-facts/

https://www.rentokil.ie/mice/rats-vs-mice/

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Dogs generally do make great mousers, at least that has been my experience.

 

[flowerbug]

Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan is a good book. I like reading nonfic like that.

same here, i like to read about anything...

 

[flowerbug]

Rats drive out all other rodents. Even moles. I can judge how under control I have them by the rodents I see. I have a ton of moles right now so Im actually happy about the hills all over the yard. Those are townsend moles I think. We also have shrew moles.

I even saw a townsend vole the other day. They are slow enough even my fat rear can run them down over grass and catch them. The dogs and cats love those for eating and go nuts if they see one.

Cats have been catching a lot of shrews lately. They like to eat the heads off them. I toss the rest to the chickens.

I know we have pacific jumping mice as the cats have gotten a couple in the last 8 years.

I like rodent diversity since it means the rats are gone. Of the natives, only the shrews get in the house.

i caught one shrew last year. i'd never caught one of those before in a mouse trap so i had to look it up and read up on it to see what it was. more often we have various mice and voles. a few of the mice i've caught looked very different than others, they were not rats, i'm still not sure what they were, perhaps just field mice that looked odd because they were starving and rained on too much is my guess, but they were longer than i'd noticed before. sometimes when we get really heavy rains the mice will get flooded out of the low lying areas and come to higher ground.

one time after a really super vicious downpour and storm i had a mouse in the garage that was drenched and squeaking from the trauma of it all. sad as i felt for the little guy i did put it out of its misery.

 

[flowerbug]

We had another bat in the house on Sunday. We cannot figure out where they are getting into the house. They should be hibernating for goodness sake! We are going to have a thaw this weekend, I guess I will need to see if I can find where they are getting into the house.

they seem pretty well able to get in some tiny spaces like mice they can flatten themselves out.

i've had a bat think it could hibernate behind a piece of wood i'd put above my patio door to keep the the birds from building nests up there. it was living there all season and towards evening i would see it falling off the ledge to fly away and feed. never any complaints from me about it being there except i knew that i'd be taking that wood down and that it should find some other spot to hide in for the winter so one warm later summer day i took the wood down and encouraged it to go find some other home for the winter. not sure it did.

 

[flowerbug]

after last night i know i haven't trapped the mouse yet. there were noises last night but gladly no chewing. it will be cold enough tonight that i'm not going to bother to refresh the peanut butter on the traps. this weekend it is supposed to warm up to the mid 40s and for a few days so i'll get the traps redone for that and hope i can catch the critter if it does decide to run out for some fresh feed or something.

 

[flowerbug]

I did some research and what we have are probably Big Brown Bats. They are a "cave bat" that has adapted to hibernating in houses; finding home attics to be the proper temperature for hibernating ... great. They live in colonies, and when hibernating they will wake up every couple of weeks or so and move around a little bit. Hence, every 2 weeks we have a bat in the house - or so it seems. Colony means that there are probably a number of bats hiding somewhere... Yippee.

still good to know what you are up against. i still am not quite sure, but figure it is mice as they've been the most common critters to get in the walls (besides the hornets/wasps/bees).