To not want to keep them?

[FearsomeNasalHairs]

Background - roughly 2 weeks ago my dd who is 3 started talking to some imaginary friends, Zoe and Chloe. All quite sweet and nothing harmful, we often hear her talking to them in the living room if we are in the kitchen.

This morning I was making a cup of coffee whilst DH takes ds to school and I can hear dd saying here Chloe have some toast but share with Zoe.
Thought I would go and film her (bribery material for when she is older ) only to find to my horror that there are two mice sitting on the floor in front of her and she is hand feeding them toast!

General panic and screaming from me and then dd as I have scared her friends!

Anyway DH has just got in to find me bleaching and scrubbing everywhere, he's had a listen and decided we should catch them and cage them as pets!

I'm not being unreasonable to say no fucking way right? I feel sick at the thought of mice breeding and loving in our house, and he is merrily looking at mouse cages on eBay.

You know you really have Zoe, Chloe, Joey, and a whole lot of their friends, right ... ?

Are you using humane traps (say yes )?
You need to take the mice a long way away to release them or they will come back - more than two miles I think it is.

I was in my 90 yr old mother's house a few years ago and found a small heap of bird seed on the hall carpet, 'Have you got a hole in your bird seed bag?' I asked her 'Oh no' she replied 'There is a vole that comes into the house at nights I am feeding it'.

Yikes! I am absolutely petrified of rodents, We found a mouse in our old house and I couldn't sleep for days. I would have been down to homebase for traps asap( tame rodents or rodents of any kind are banned in this house though, actually add all animals to that!).

YANBU, if they are 'wild' they will be harboring diseases and possibly breeding near/in your home and potentially creating a big problem, the amount of droppings alone makes me feel ill.

No, YANBU - bit unfortunate you scared DD but I would have screamed at the site as well, you can't keep them, they aren't pets, and it might not just be Zoe and Chloe, there could be a Bowie and a Howie under the skirting boards too. Might you have an infestation? You might need an exterminator.

sight not site

YANBU, don't keep them; you'll resent having to clean them out. Plus I don't know if 'wild' mice would adapt well/take kindly to being caged.

TBH, unless you get the exterminator in, you'll be 'keeping' them after a fashion anyway; they'll carry on living in your house.

That pic looks like a harvest mouse, they are really tiny, about the size of your thumb. I used to keep them as pets, they are a conservation animal as levels in countryside have fallen so much.

That's a thought, if you want an extremely low maintenance mouse for DD, harvest mice are great. Keep them in a decent size glass viv (as they chew through everything!) and you only really clean them out every other month or so, as they have to be able to build up their environment, they are a dream to watch!

actually, it doesn't look like a harvest mouse, here's mine if you would like to get one

Off to drop dd off at friends and then to bnq to buy traps. Will report back later thanks everyone

I was thinking that it might be a ex-pet mouse.

The nose doesn't seem pointy enough to be a woodmouse. Though you could show your daughter a picture of a woodmouse and ask her if that's what Zoe & Chloe look like, just to be sure.

We have fancy mice and it took ages to get them to feed by hand so I'm surprised.

She's definitely dr Doolittle ... can she come and tame my new ones?

Do they look like this?

Zoe, Chloe and Joey

This is the best imaginary friend story I've heard!

You can't kill Zoe & Chloe

Your mini-mouse is very cute, Dubs.

I would rather have a mouse in my house than that bellend Joey Essex. But speaking from experience I would say there is definitely more than just Zoe and Chloe

Obviously no to the wild mice pets.

But the 'reveal' did make me laugh

Your DH sounds ridiculous. Keeping them as pets and insisting they are girl mice

Get rid of them as soon as possible before they start breeding. It won't be funny then. Catch them get rid of them then fund out where the little bastards came in and block it up

Rats do indeed eat mice - it's called muricide.

Unfortunately if you've seen two, there's probable more . Get a pest control company in, ASAP!

Although if you're in London, there's so many that they get immune to the poison quite quickly. When I lived in a student house share, we resorted to old fashioned traps (baited with Hershey's Kisses [of Death]) as they were just walking through the poison and laughing at it!

I had a friend once whose grandma got mice. He put down humane traps for her. When he came to empty them, she was blithely missing the point by drowning the ones she'd caught in a bucket!!!

This is the best thread ever. Don't kill them though!

Sweet Jesus. Your dd is a mouse whisperer! Absolutely no way would I be allowing those to stay. We had mice about a year ago. I discovered it when I came down and found all the grapes gone. They also had quality street and ate them under the sofa.! I did not handle it well ( I mean really..... The purple one too) Traps everywhere and I caught 3 in the end. I was mortified. I think it's a tricky one but you can get traps where they go inside and you can't see them ( they're round & black traps) so your DD does not need to see their cold dead corpses. Get your DH to empty them though... Definite blue job. Good luck.

Ps. Ours were coming in through a hole in the floor boards in the under stair cupboard. I caught all 3 in a trap just next to the hole. I caught them in old fashioned traps loaded with peanut butter. The black ones were in the kitchen guarding the grapes since small people can't be hurt by them.

Mice are yuck, they pee constantly and drag/wipe it everywhere to mark their territories. Get rid asap.

There are most certainly more! I grew up in a mouse-infested house because my hippie parents did not believe in pest control. Nothing cute about holes in all your clothes which to Zoe and Chloe are really yummy food!

get pet rats, far better and interactive than mice.