MOUSE IN THE HOUSE

I hate to break it to you all, but...

Mice are ubiquitous and there is hardly a house, garage, office, factory or anywhere else occupied, or used, by humans where mice are not present - whether you are aware of them or not!

They can climb pipes! They'll travel inside the walls if they can, especially if there is any food up there.

Our infestation last winter, one brave one popped out from where the radiator pipe goes into the floor in my daughter's bedroom <shudder>

She woke up and it was in her bin where she had put an apple core 🤣

Not to mention the one that ran over my foot underneath my electric blanket 😬

Ha ha! We were renovating a house a couple of years ago, lots of holes in walls etc. Hubby woke me in the middle of the night with a whisper & said “look at my knee”. There was a little mouse sat there eating a biscuit crumb 😆😆. As I sat up, it ran off & went under the bed. So I rolled over & went back to sleep.

The very small one I saw was in my bedroom one night (loft conversion)! It was pest control who informed me that it was highly unlikely that it had entered upstairs and tracked the entry points to behind the kitchen kickbacks under the sink.

@oakleaffy Glue traps ARE illegal, thankfully. I wish Amazon would stop selling them

OP, do get a cat if you can afford it and like them. I have a semi feral bruiser and he made our annual mouse invasion (rental in a run down victorian flat in London) disappear. I'm irrationally terrified of them, it's been such a relief!

Remove the kick board. Shine a light under there check for mouse droppings. And also any holes even tiny ones
Use wire wool and expanding foam. Where there are any pipes that come into the house for the washing machine , kitchen sink etc where the pipes go in/out . Put wire wall in them gaps tightly and add expanding foam. Do the same outside on any pipes . Also check for any holes outside as well. Even tiny ones. Also cover air vents by using wire grills double it if you need to. Make sure air can still get in. But make sure a pencil can't get through.

Use snap traps with a tiny bit of peanut butter litterly a tiny smear.

We have a cat. The only help it has been is to catch a mouse outside and bring it in (still alive). Not much of a help with mice already inside!

DH says we need a better cat...

Be careful OP - we had what we though was just ‘one’ mouse too - turns out it was a whole bladdy family of them - also my daughter caught salmonella (conveniently when mouse droppings started to appear) and they had to shut her nursery down as a precaution, I was pretty sure it was from the mouse droppings tho. We paid for a pest company. We were end of terrace and the neighbours told us that the mice run between the attics and become especially bold when it gets colder… we bought snap traps and the pest control company used poison.

We have them at work at the moment. Pest control are laying snap traps. I don't like to see the mice killed tbh but also understand that they can't be in the office, it is not hygenic. Fully agree with everyone saying glue traps are barbaric, please never use them. If you must kill then kill humanely.

A note if you're considering using poison - please be really careful if you or neighbours have cats etc - the poison often doesn't kill the rodent right away, they continue running about for a while so when they finally go, any cat/wildlife that consumes them up can also be poisoned.

We used snap traps with chocolate spread or peanut butter. I was the only one who saw them but we heard them everywhere!
We also threw them away in traps so did get through a few. We still have some left over but hope we don't have to use them.

They do like hiding behind the fridge and oven and just running out to say they are here! One also ran out from under our sofa then panicked and ran out to the kitchen. I also saw one in our downstairs loo that had run out from the wall and in the upstairs bathroom again from the wall where the pipes come out. My husband saw the grand total of none!

Peppermint oil helps but the sound things don't work. I saw a mouse literally sat under it.

Hello. Can I help?

#WillworkforDreamies #Satisfactionguaranteed

@ttcat37 I never get them at home, although there are reports of mice in the building.
When I take her on holiday, my normally indoor cat is surprisingly proficient at catching mice.
Although there was one cottage where it was shrews rather than mice - and for some reason she preferred bringing them in to chase them, then losing interest. Nearly every evening the entertainment was playing 'catch the shrew'.

I always hastily remove Santa's mince pie after DS is in bed for this reason! Refuse to have chocolate tree deccies. As for those gingerbread houses people leave up night after night, think we can assume they don't live in Edinburgh tenements 😁

Please don't use glue traps. It's just a mouse, catch it humanely and drive it somewhere to release, it's just living it's life, no need to be cruel

Snap traps. I know it's not nice, but there are millions of mice in the world and it's the only guaranteed way to get rid of it out of your home.

When I bought some on Amazon the advice said to not touch the trap with your bare hands as they can then smell you on it and avoid it. I used some latex gloves to load it. We caught it the first night.

Find where it's coming out into your house and place the trap with food in it nearby. It'll then go "dum de dum, let me have a little look around here for some food, ooh - look, there's some food right near where I'm walking - yum!" and snap. Seeing your picture, I'd pull off the kick board (they should just clip on and off) and pop it behind it, near the gap.

If you use the non-kill traps I think the advice is that you have to take them a good few miles away as the crow flies as they'll find their way back otherwise. If you're in London, this might be a trek in itself!

Our cat regularly brings in live mice, so we've become quite expert at catching them now, so normally catch and release, but one little bugger was persistent and ended up running around in the kitchen ceiling, so the traps had to be set, as the cats had given up on it by then!

They are bloody brazen things though. I was sat eating dinner the other week and caught a glimpse of movement out my eye. Looked round and there's a bloody mouse trotting across the floor like it owns the place!

Being typical cat owners, we locked it in a room with an outside door, opened the door and went back to eating our dinner! Watched it on a camera and saw it scuttle out the door!

With yours, catch/kill the one you've got then see if another one arrives. If it does, you will have to do more investigating as to where they're getting in, but it IS possible that it's just the one.

People will tell you otherwise, but sometimes it is just one. If you're seeing it during the day, there's a good chance it is lost and can't find its usual 'home'.

I live in a flat and to my horror saw a mouse calmly strolling across the kitchen floor one fine day. I called pest control and they said they could find no evidence of nests or a large infestation, so presumably this one had snuck in from a nest elsewhere in the apartment building.

I had similar sightings again but when I got my kitchen renovated last year, I spent the evening after my old kitchen was pulled out plugging the walls with steel wool and expanding foam. They say a mouse can slip through a hole the size of a pencil but there were massive holes in the wall. A mouse superhighway! Thankfully I've not seen a mouse since then. The only long term solution is making sure you keep the little critters out.

best solution is a cat, added bonus you have a cat

it wouldn’t matter, they’re a wild animal. Thats their home.