Mouse Help!

[Nomad916]

Was reading in bed & heard some little noises, thought it was just something shifting in my drawer. A few minutes later, saw a (cute, brown-grey) little mouse poke out from under my bed before going back!

What do I do now? Crept out of bedroom & closed the door. Now sleeping on the couch. Single mum, so no OH to take care of it!

Live in a ground floor flat. I do not want to kill it, but want it out! 🙈

We have mice. You can buy humane traps. We use regular ones. I reckon all the mice think the hole into our kitchen cupboard leads to some sort of mouse utopia from which no mouse has ever returned…….they just keep coming.

What do you do with the trap once the mouse is in? Do I just take it outside & open it?

You need to take it miles away and let it loose or it will just come back in.

We occasionally get mice as we live near farms and fields. First, check the room for mouse sign to get an idea how many you have. Mice are incontinent and will poo around 50 poos a day. They look like black sesame seeds and commonly will be along walls behind furniture or in corners. Then we’d put down humane traps baited with something..the mice here go for a pretzel and they are brown field mice like yours might be. House mice are usually light grey. You then take the mice you catch and release them back to a field at least a mile away. You wash, bait and put trap back out again. Every day you check for mouse sign and clean up what’s there so every morning you have an idea whether you have caught all the mice or not. Mice are social and very rarely will you have a lone mouse in the house. If you catch it early, can be as few as two though. They breed fast so you cannot wait to tackle this. If there’s tonnes and tonnes of poo and you’ve caught and released more than 8, time to call pest control.

You also need to figure how how they are getting in the house and block up any routes in from outside. So that once you’ve cleared the house, more mice just don’t wander in.

Get a cat!

I recently removed the plug from
The bathroom sink, so it's just an open hole. Could it have come from there? Otherwise I suppose open windows as ground floor?

Do they climb onto beds?

So I've got to take it for a drive in the car for a mile once I've got it? 😂

Is it easy to release the trap?

Awwww! You need to get a fairly tall jug or bucket 🪣 and put a stack of books 📚 next to it as like a staircase. Put cheese in the bucket 🧀 maybe even a tea towel in there as well with the cheese on top so it doesn't hurt itself if/when it inevitably falls in! As long as he/she cannot climb out again!

Play a 'mouse and rat ultra sonic deterrent' audio recording from YouTube on your phone. I found a 12 hour recording but it only took 10 min for scratching to stop. I did it a few separate times over last autumn and it worked brilliantly each time I needed it. I was very surprised but delighted.

What you do is get an electronic mouse trap, www.screwfix.com/p/pest-stop-plastic-metal-battery-powered-mouse-killer/45407 . set it with peanut butter, and leave against the wall under your bed (mice tend to run along room edges).
As soon as the mouse works out the peanut butter is inside, he'll trot in and as he takes a lovely mouthful the elctronic trap will zap him dead instantly. No blood, no squashed mice.
The trap light will change from green to flashing red. Simply take the trap outside to an open area and empty the mouse, where it'll quickly be found by other animals/birds for safe disposal as part of their food chain.
Reset the trap and repeat (where there is one mouse there will be more). Check the room carefully for small holes and fill them.

Yes, they can come up pipes, so could be the plug hole in the sink.
They don’t usually come in open windows. But you can buy screen inserts if you want.

They can climb onto beds

The humane traps are very easy to release. They have them at Homebase, B&Q, etc. They also have air holes so the mouse is quite safe. Mice are active when the house is quiet. So this can be day or night. Day would be when everyone is out of the house. Night when they think everyone is sleeping. Reading is as quiet as sleeping.

Peppermint oil not essence on some cotton wool pads. Mouse and his mate who is probably also around will move out soon

OP has said she does not want to kill it!

The problem with most kill mouse traps is that they are not reusable for long if at all. This is because mice are not stupid, they have a high survival instinct. They will notice that their buddy went into a trap and is now lying there dead. The dead body is usually there for hours before you find it and remove it. So the mice will then avoid the same trap when it’s been cleaned and re-set.