A mouse in my house - help me get it out!

[RamblingRosa]

Help! Last night DP and I saw a mouse in our kitchen. We then saw it a few more times. Either that or there were lots of them! DP saw it later on (or one of its little friends) in the living room.

I've never had mice before. What's the solution? Is this a sign that I've got a filthy house and I should be ashamed of myself? Or is it just one of those things? I'm a bit squeamish about anything that kills them. Except maybe a cat!

[Wigeon]

Nope, not a sign your house is dirty, just a sign that the weather's really cold and your house is nice and warm. I'd check all your kitchen cupboards though to see what they're eating so you can attempt to cut off the food supply.

You can get humane traps but then you have to release the mice miles away from your house or they'll come back again.

Oh, and apparently they prefer chocolate or peanut butter, not cheese.

Afraid we've used good ol' poison in the past....

[PurpleEglu]

Chocolate definitely good for traps. We found raisins worked too

[TillyMintSpy]

We all get mice in our houses down here, no matter how scrupulous you are

The glue traps work best - we've had very little success with the snap traps. I've never tried a humane trap

[Wigeon]

Oh, and my SIL has used a kind of contraption that you plug into a plug socket and it emits a high pitched noise that mice can't bear, and so they leave the house. And doesn't kill them.

Here's some.

[traceybath]

I think you've got more than one I'm afraid.

Snap and kill traps work well with peanut butter.

You can call your local council pest control department and they'll come out for a small fee normally. They'll generally put poison down and may look around and see where the mice are getting in.

Don't waste your money on the plug in things - they really don't work. I had 2 plugged in and traps down and caught 4 mice in 12 hours.

Sympathy - I loathe mice.

[RamblingRosa]

Thank you everyone. I knew MNers would have all the answers.

I was looking at the plug in things that emit a noise on the Robert Dyas website. But it sounds like they're a waste of money.

I've checked my council website and they will come round for a fee but I worry that if it involves putting loads of poison down it won't be very safe for DD (2yo) who still can't be trusted not to eat things off the floor.

Snap and kill traps sound scary. Do you then have to dispose of the mangled body or just the whole trap?

[traceybath]

They put poison in places children can't get it - so under floorboards/behind kitchen units etc.

DH gets rid off the mice out of the traps - I'm too chicken.

[RamblingRosa]

The other thing with poison is wouldn't it just mean I'd end up with lots of dead and decomposing mice under my floorboards? I imagine mice smell pretty bad when they're decaying!

[TippyTumbles]

Best thing really is to use snap traps - the modern plastic ones are nicer to use than the old wood and wire ones (seem to cause less gore). We have been plagued with rats as well as mice this year so handling a few dead mice no longer bothers me now i've had to deal with dead rats the size of small dogs [shudder emoticon]

[SqueezinAroundTheXmasTree]

Snap traps are the way to go. get them down fast though.....honestly, have a look at my profile pics and you'll see the damage they can do. Over the past two weeks, we have had water coming thru our ceiling about 8 times because they have been chewing our water pipes cue loads of money spent on plumbers, a £700 ceiling repair, time spent with no water and no heating. Honestly get on top of it as soon as you can.

The plug ins don't work because the mouse starts to get used to it and it becomes part of their environment, plus the sonic sound doesn't penetrate walls and ceilings. Rentokil told me he'd seen mice and rats running right past them (we had already wasted £20 on these)

Humane traps, yeah, they are alright but you have to keep checking them and then drive the mouse away at least 2 miles because they are fantastic at finding their way back to your cosy kitchen. They are ok for maybe one or two mice but who can tell how many you might have?

Get the wooden traps from B&Q, they are baited with scent and work like a dream. You just double bag them and throw the whole thing away after it is used.

The plastic ones are ok if you don't mind physically getting the mouse out of it and resetting the trap.

Are they coming out from under your cooker?

You have to get the mice under control before they start to breed.

[bran]

We live in a flat and our whole building has mice, it's a nightmare. The noise things don't work, I've seen the mice wandering right underneath it and they're weren't bothered at all.

The most successful thing that we have tried has been poison, but we also have glue traps down and they catch a fair few too. We put poison down underneath the kitchen cupboards. DH and I can remove the kickboard to replace the poison, but it's too difficult for the kids to do it so they can't get at the poison. Use the grain type, not the blue stuff in a child-proof plastic box, our mice never even touched that. Check the poison every couple of days and keep topping it up until it stops being taken.

There may be a smell after they die, but it won't last very long. The worst part of it for me was hearing the scratching in the walls as they died. We also had a sudden outbreak of blue bottles a couple of weeks later. [yuck]

[thereistheball]

FYI mice are incontinent so not good if you have a baby crawling round on the floor / they have been near your food.

[RamblingRosa]

OK, I'm a bit freaked out now. There I was imagining I had one little brown mouse hanging out in my kitchen. Now I'm thinking about a whole colony of them gnawing through my water pipes! I think I'm going to call the council. I'm too squeamish to dispose of dead mice [ashamed city girl emoticon]

[IdrisTheRedNosedDragon]

We ha the things that make noises to deter mice there as a general deterrent (as spotted by Wigeon my lovely SIL ) but have also used traps for when there are more of them.

What I don't advise is discovering one has got stuck under the fridge and then one of you tipping up the fridge while the other one bashes it with a broom and your then 4 year old DS tells you that there is a tin of paint on top of the fridge. It makes a mess (but at least dh did kill the mouse)

[arisHOHOHOcat]

shall i bring my cat over?

hes an excellent mouser

[RamblingRosa]

Ooh, yes a cat would be lovely

[bentneckwine1]

See my cat has the wrong idea...he brings little field mice HOME to me and presents them alive in my kitchen.

Cue mouse trying to escape up a gap in the pipework...me chasing cat out of the room to give me a chance to liberate said mouse before he reaches my loft and starts a colony!!! So rubber gloves on, old bbq tongs and an empty margarine tub. Catch the tail sticking out the end of the pipe and gently pull down...didn't want to tug and pull the tail off!!!
Little mouse eventually appears with a perplexed look on his face...popped into tub with lid on. Then taken to the nearest grassy area and set free...wasn't quite as touching as when Willie jumped over the harbour wall to freedom...but it did give me a rosy glow to be helping the baby fieldmouse find it's family.

Moral of the story being that a cat might not be much help!!

[Nefertari]

Pick it up by holding the tail, and then let it go some distance from the house.

[RamblingRosa]

I've had a humane trap down since last week and the little blighter is still at large. I've bought some poison and am tempted to put it down but I'm really put off by the idea of smelling/finding a rotting mouse corpse!
A neighbour's offered to lend us their cat but I'm not sure how that's any better/more effective than poison?

[myboysarethebest]

HELP

I'm struggling with a mouse at the moment.
Bumping this for anymore ideas.

Have tried poison, traps, peppermint oil, sonic plugs in (x2). It has been about 3 weeks since we first discovered it, and just saw the cheeky bugger run past the end of my bed. (past the sonic plug in)

Just ordered some glue traps.

YUCK YUCK YUCK - I hate the thought of mice in my house. We are in a masionette, so I'm sure mice are all around.
Might look at councils website.

Any other ideas??

[myboysarethebest]

JUST WENT BACK INTO MY ROOM, OPENED THE DOOR AND AGAIN IT RAN PAST.
RAN INTO MY BOOTS - EEERGH
HAD TO TIP THEM UPSIDE DOWN TO GET RID OF IT, THOUGH WISH I HAD PICKED IT UP AND TRAPPED ON IT....

[ayjayjay]

Really sympathise I cannot bear mice and have lived in houses riddled with them before now. I have a cat now so hopefully won't have that problem again.

I found snappy traps are the only thing that really works and second the use of peanut butter/chocolate.

Would also advise that you move all food into sealed plastic containers and be rigourous about removing any food debris from floor or surfaces to remove their food supply.

Unfortunately I think it's very unlikely that you have only one.

[ratspeaker]

Keep anything they can eat in containers
Block any holes you can see
Put down peppermint oil on cotton wool balls, change them frequently

Our house rabbit is great at chasing mice!

[anonymousbird]

I got some cracking (good old fashioned whack em on the head type) mouse traps from Homebase last week - have caught five in my loft already, they love peanut butter, I can confirm too!

[LoveBeingAMummy]

There will always be more than you think, we used the old wooden snap ones and they worked really well.