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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

to be so creeped out by the fact we have mice...

54 replies

emeraldgirl1 · 09/01/2012 15:09

pest control came today after we saw droppings on the kitchen floor. we had them come a year ago as DH saw a mouse back then, but we thought after their visit (sealing holes etc) the problem had gone away. In true panto tradition - oh, no, it hasn't. We still have mice.

Have never seen one myself, thank God, but the thought of mice in my kitchen makes me squirm in horror. We are very clean in the kitchen and I'm upset that we don't seem to be able to keep them away. Pest control guy (hopefully not just trying to sell me services!!!) is offering a system where they come every few months to seal any new holes and put down new bait. But he thinks (again, I can only trust him) they're coming in through next door's open vents, which obviously we have no way of getting them to deal with if they don't want to.

I'm not obsessively houseproud like my mother but we are very clean and keep a clean kitchen, and the thought of rodents running over the floor is making me feel quite ill atm... :(

OP posts:

Almostfifty · 09/01/2012 22:47

Get a cat.

I have a deep rooted phobia of rodents, so we have a cat, I don't have mice in the house.

flapperghasted · 09/01/2012 22:53

We got a rat! That was scary. It was so noisy running in the walls and above our head in the basement where our office is. I think we had 2 in the end...had to get Rentokil in. Luckily the little blighters ran off and died away from the house. We'd been told they might die in the house and stink the place out. Rats! Sick to my stomach just thinking about it!

We're clear now though, thank God!

mummymeister · 09/01/2012 22:55

used to work with pest control when i was an eho so they don't freak me out really. we always try and trap then rather than poison. if you poison them they go off and die somewhere and smell for ages. humane set traps using fruit cake (christmas pud is also good) sorts them out. can't stand cats so not an option.

crazynanna · 09/01/2012 23:16

Will a cat sort a rat out?

sheepgomeep · 09/01/2012 23:23

mouse traps and a pack of rolos....

We had a Huuge mouse problem in one of our old houses (old terraced house with fields at back and a batty neighbour who used to throw food scaps in the garden). We killed 17 yes 17 mice in 2 days with mousetraps with rolos as bait.

over the next 6 weeks we killed about twenty more and I have no idea how many more we killed with poison under the floor boards.

It was mousewar, We could hear them scrabbling about under our bed and in ds room

I had nightmares for months

Scholes34 · 10/01/2012 09:03

Sheepgomeep is right - chocolate is what you need for mousetraps, not cheese.

mrsjay · 10/01/2012 09:06

Yes a cat will catch a rat as long as its a big enough cat , my cat in her younger wilder days once broght a rabbit home ARGHH it was like a blood bath , so she couldve sorted out a rat , and yes mice have a sweet tooth the prefer cholate ,

MoreBeta · 10/01/2012 09:11

We had a farm cat that used to catch pheasants and drag them home so she wasn't too bothered about catching rats as a result.

I caught our mice using a dab of nutella on the trap.

glasscompletelybroken · 10/01/2012 09:18

We have finally (fingers crossed) got rid of our rats after 3 years!

I don't know why we had them - we have a cat and are clean, don't leave food out for the birds or rubbish lying around. We do have a stream running through our garden which they like apparently.

We tried every trap, poison and deterrent on the market and nothing worked. We had the council out and 2 other alledged rat experts, but no joy. They chewed through our electric cables and kept us awake at night scurrying about. We did catch some in traps and they were HUGE! The problem is that they breed so quickly and once you have two you will soon have a host of them.

We had the drains surveyed and dug up large parts of the garden to try and find where they were getting in and finally - after fixing a hole underneath next doors path - we seem to be rat free!

It's been a nightmare and I feel for anyone who has this problem. Mice can get through a hole the diameter of a biro and rats don't need much more so it's very hard to block up every place they might get in. Unfortunately if they like your house enough they can be very perisitent in getting back in if you block off one entrance.

We thought we had got rid of them when we had cavity wall insulation done but they just chewed/tunnelled through it!

StrandedBear · 10/01/2012 09:19

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Catsmamma · 10/01/2012 09:21

Snap traps! Bait with jam/peanut butter/ chocolate, something sticky so they are really attracted and have to dabble in it to eat it!

Lay them close to walls and unit bases in kitchens, mice usually skirt around the edges of rooms.

Declare war!!

And all of you with the humane traps do realise by the time you have confined mousey, inspected him and taken him on a small jaunt to the 1 mile away woodlands he'll be so stresssed he'll die anyway. And if by some chance he is strong enough to survive that, the fact that he's now on unknow territory will mean he has no idea of where to find food or shelter and will die. Mice do not need holidays.

...they pee on their feet and run mouse piss all over your kitchens! KILL THEM!

clam · 10/01/2012 09:34

"You wont just have a mouse, you will have mice"
Not necessarily. We were told that years back in our previous (old Victorian pile with floorboards and lots of holes) but we caught it and all signs/problems disappeared.

IvanaHumpalot · 10/01/2012 10:25

I would suggest Tupperware etc... for all food stuffs except cans. I used to have mice (& other things) in my student digs. They will nibble at all food packaging, soap powder boxes blah blah. Clean up all food spills, crumbs, Hoover, Hoover, Hoover and wipe down kitchen surfaces. A crumb is a feast for a mouse. Plug-in deterrent also good.
Also, I was told mice don't have bladders like we do - i.e. mice can't hold their wee, so they constantly dribble wee as they walk around, hence my manic cleaning.

HardCheese · 10/01/2012 10:35

YANBU - I was a bit taken aback at how freaked out I was when we got mice in our flat in the summer. The pest control people we eventually ended up calling out, after traps baited with peanut butter didn't catch anything, linked it to the fact that another flat in the same house had installed a new boiler, which had needed to have part of a side-path into the house drilled up - apparently they can make their way in through new excavations via the pipes. It took us a long time to get rid of them, to be honest - the problem with living in a London Victorian terrace is it's hard to seal everything off - old, gappy floorboards etc - and they appeared to be moving between flats via the spaces around the pipes.

No sighting or dropping for a couple of months now, so fingers crossed, but it's not impossible a different family will move in at some point.

AmberLeaf · 10/01/2012 12:13

Agree that you dont get 1 mouse, you get mice.

Neosorexa gold poison gets rid of them.

PercyFilth · 10/01/2012 12:33

It's not just the incontinence ....

It's the chewing! Their teeth are permanently growing, so they have to chew constantly, and unfortunately they sometomes chew through electric cables and the like.

StopRainingPlease · 10/01/2012 12:37

Nothing is shifting our mice! Snap traps, humane traps - various bait, including choc spread, peanut butter, cheese - also poison. They are just not interested. Have caught only one in several months, but I know they're still there as DH has had a couple of close encounters this week.

startail · 10/01/2012 12:47

We have poison under everything downstairs. But my DDs are old enough to know what it is.
Funny creatures, ours like chocolate, porridge oats, dried pasta, leather gardening gloves and parasol covers.
The parasol coverage me very, it's a fancy hardwood one with fairy lights in the arms. DH and I have scoured EBay etc and the only new cover we've managed to get is slightly too big.
Parasol was very cheap in an autumn sale, I like it and do not wish to pay £££ to replace it.

RabidEchidna · 10/01/2012 12:55

I had a mouse living in my sofa.....new sofas coming in the next couple of weeks

attheendoftheday · 10/01/2012 13:07

Catsmamma I got my advice (and my traps) from a neighbour who catches mice etc. to survey the species living in an area then releases them. He doesn't think they will all automatically die (though obviously wild animals die). The fact I have wood mice rather than house mice means they stand a better chance, apparently. Either way, I'm happy to give the mice as chance of survival rather than killing them myself.

waterlego6064 · 10/01/2012 13:09

troisgarcons Exactly the same here. I was just coming on to disagree with those suggesting that a cat is always the answer!

Ours brought in an average of 3/4 mice per night in the summer months. Sometimes dead but usually alive or half-alive. I will (unfortunately) never forget the sight of a naked OH in a 'sleeping baby' style yoga position, trying to look for a mouse under the wardrobe at 3am.

shagmundfreud · 10/01/2012 13:33

I've learned to cope with my negative emotions re: mice.

Have seen quite a few. In the kitchen. In the sitting room. In the hallway. In my bedroom

Caught a baby one in a humane trap and it was actually quite sweet. Took it to the park and let it go.

Came home and saw a much bigger one. Got the glue traps out.

Have started to feel ..... pleasure when I see one in one of the traps we put down, instead of the squirming horror I felt at first.

Now I think 'ha!, mouse 0, Shag 1!'

Honestly - you get used to it!

MrGin · 10/01/2012 13:36

I remember house mice when I was a kid.

I distinctly remember walking into the front room and seeing a mouse sitting on the floor watching the tv. It turned to look at me and then went back to watching the telly.

They went once we got a cat.

TheSecondComing · 10/01/2012 13:53

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

ISpyPlumPie · 10/01/2012 14:07

YAso NBU - I screamed so loudly during my one and only encounter with a mouse in our kitchen that DH (who was upstairs at the time) thought someone had broken into the house!

We got a plug in thingy that seemed to work as there's been no signs of mice/droppings since. We also got a humane trap and put chocolate on it, but we never caught anything. In a way I was quite relieved, as I did not relish the though of having to liberate any mice from said trap. Also read that if you let them out nearby they just get back in, so don't know what we'd have done - driven it somewhere?

Good luck with getting rid of the feckers

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