There’s a mouse in my Christmas tree!

[reallyneedmoresleep]

Was removing a humane trap from the loft and I dropped it - it opened and a very cute little mouse has shot up the Christmas tree.
The tree is large with lovely dense foliage, or at least it was an hour ago. Teen DSes are being brilliant. We keep spotting the mouse with our torches but cannot catch it. What to do?

Erm... are you sure it was a mouse? Looks like a rat to me.

That’s a mouse PainterInPeril. My cat once helpfully lined up a rat, mouse and vile for me to make comparisons.

On humane traps, I have one permanently set up in the kitchen (as far as the cat can get in the night) so that the mice my cat lets go have somewhere relatively safe to escape to. They always seem ok, if slightly bewildered when I find them in the morning and are quite sprightly when released into the field behind the house (not worried about them coming back as the cat brought them in). Not ideal, but at least it gives them a chance and stops them trying to hide from the cat in unhelpful places then eventually getting caught anyway.

We have a cat and he just watched a mouse happily once

Oh my giddy aunt he/she is gorrrrrgeous! Awwwww 🐭

Don't get cats, mine is the sole source of mice in our house...on the point about taking them further away I often catch ours (I am surprisingly good at this) and release into the garden and they don't return, perhaps they die though!

No you have it the wrong way around.

The first is humane- a instant death

The second is inhumane. You transplant a mouse away from its mousey family, where there isn't necessarily food/shelter where it dies a slow death.

Definitely a mouse. A fat, healthy (possibly pregnant?) mouse

Very cute mouse! I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if a mouse is released away from its mouse family there is a very high chance of it not surviving, difficult to know where a family is though.

Ooh I'm going to save a Pringle tube

Having watched him bring them into the garden when we are out there (he likes to contribute to picnics) or through the window, I reckon most of the mice my cat brings in come from the same field I release them back into so have a reasonable chance of finding their family when I release them.

And snap traps do not always cause instant death, mice may be caught across the back or by a leg. I’ve seen both as a child hence using humane traps now it is my choice.

I take it you don’t have a cat. A mouse in a Christmas tree would be literally all the Christmases come at once for every cat I’ve ever met.

We don’t have a cat. Although at one point. DS suggested borrowing his friend’s python

It's adorable 😍

Well done OP! Your son must be a ninja!

Mice brought indoors as "gifts" will often run round the perimeter of a room, around the skirting boards. Our late cat used to regularly bring them into the house. We kept a cardboard box under the kitchen table which he slept in and he once brought one live mouse in and dropped it into his box, then nipped straight back outside, brought in a second mouse and dropped that in, too, so we had two at once to deal with. The easiest way we found to catch them was to drop a plastic ice cream tub over them, then slide a sheet of stiff cardboard under it, flip it over and take the mouse back outside, keeping the cat indoors while the mouse found somewhere safe.

Unfortunately, one mouse found its way into the workings of the washing machine and we had to unscrew the lid to take the corpse out, which had begun to smell dreadful.

If you have had one mouse in your loft, it's likely you will have others up there. And yes, if deposited outside a long way away, they are unlikely to survive.

Our late cat used to bring the odd frog in, too, and they are tricky to catch.

I use normal traps otherwise the buggers just come back again. It's not cute when they carry so many diseases.

you write a story about it like the one about the owl in the Christmas tree and get rich.

That’s one big mouse. Are you sure it’s not a ratling? Our cats bring mice in quite regularly and they’re substantially smaller than that.

Ohh, that’s a cutie. I’m pretty sure he’s a wood/field mouse, not a house mouse, so that’s good. Hopefully he’d just wandered in for a look around rather than to infest the place op. We had one at our previous home that lived in our garden. Our stupid (usually very lazy) cat brought him in one time and then just let him do a runner into the laundry. Took me a few days to catch him in a humane trap and let him back out. He didn’t venture in again, and our cat clearly decided mouse catching wasn’t his thing, so we all lived happily along side each other.

I agree - definitely a wood mouse.

Must admit am quite surprised by mouse tolerance/love on this thread, especially as I have the idea that most folks on here are female. Rather had the idea that many saw them as creatures of horror/disease. I do live with the odd mouse/whatever caught caught "hunanely" and then released outdide.

I thought rodents were considered disgusting,
no? Would it be as cute if it was a rat was in the tree? If not, why not?

When I was a student we had a mouse in our flat which we caught with the same principles as the kitchen roll trick. Except the safe little tunnel was actual the tube of the non-upright vacuum cleaner, and instead of 'safe foliage' we had to take it outside onto the street and shake mousie out... we had a bus-stop by our front door so doubtless the queue thought we were mad.