to react this way to a mouse??????

[Mumyum1]

So last year we appeared to have a single mouse in the house somewhere. He'd made his way amongst the children's toys, he'd made his way upstairs despite our no food upstairs rule (an actual followed rule!) and into the children's bedroom - I know because over s period of a few weeks I found a small amount of mouse poop in all said places. Also in my bedroom. Mouse poop 1 inch next to where I left my laptop and iPhone on a folded blanket on floor next to bed. A single dropping on top of the laundry pile. No poop in any of the food cupboards.

It totally totally totally freaked me out. At the same time my son came home from nursery with scabies and I was convinced it was a mouse mite that had infected him. Even did a crazy lady and took him to GP to say I think it's a mite infestation from the single mouse invasion we have ...

Anyway over those few weeks I redid loadsbof washing, washed lots of floors and stairs and dettol-wiped carpets ... and eventually we caught a live mouse in one of those live capture traps - of forbidden DH to put poison behind cupboards etc

We've been fine for about 2 months and DH just 3 hours ago came upstairs to tell me he's just seen a mouse but no droppings so he thinks it's this mouse's first foray into our home due to the cold weather. I then went on a close investigation and found 2 little mouse droppings on the stairs. 3 on the landing outside our bedrooms, 3 inches from 2 baskets of clean washing I'd just folded and brought upstairs this afternoon. (Do I need to wash it all again???????) 1dropping in the corner of the playroom and 3 little poops in the children's den in the playroom. When I vacuumed yesterday there was definitely nothing. I'm always on mouse poop hyper alert.

I'm so grossed out. I want to throw out the playroom rug that the den is on. I want him to tear away the cupboards to fill the hole (he says he can't and agrees with my wondering whether we will now always have a mouse come in whenever it's so cold??). I need to dettol wipe all the stairs again and the landing carpets. He's just laid out about 6 live traps. I need to steam all the downstairs floors before the one year is allowed to crawl there. My skin is crawling as I type this. AIBU?????????? DH says I'm crazy and obsessed.

Do the plug in deterrents actually work? Any advice which ones? We have kept traps down since we had them last just to be sure - but i dread the thought of ever having them again.

I woke up at a friends house with a mouse sat on my face once. Thankfully it was pet shop bought mouse, for some reason a trend went through my street of people getting pet mice (categorically NOT me, my mum wouldn't have allowed it, plus psycho cat) It had escaped the cage (bird cage, bars spaced way too far apart, they can get through a gap the size of a pencil diameter) a week prior, and their house was, to be completely honest, a shit tip, so i was still worried it had some sort of disease. It was 10 to 4 in the morning, for some reason i was asleep on my back, and i woke up with it sat over my eye. Bolted upright and it landed on the bed next to me, gave the blanket a flick and it got a soft landing on my folded up dressing gown on the floor and ran under the bed. Big group of us hunted through the room for it the next day and found it, poor thing was let go on the grassy island at the top of our street, whatever happened to it i don't know, but being captive bred i doubt it lasted a week, poor little thing.

My hamster escaped a few months back and managed to get under the floor, i heard it scratching the ceilin in the middle room, dad thought it was a rat, went in to blind panic, ripped up floor boards (still no idea it was the hamster, god knows why we didn't check) and almost clubbed the poor bugger to death wit ha crow bar when he stuck his head out. Thankfully he realised in time it was my gorgeous little hulky, but it took a few days and coaxing with treats and a floorboard left up to get him out again. He's a little houdini, he's on to his third cage, has had adventures under the floor another 2 times, 6 total escapes, and can open the cage door so it has been clipped shut so extensively even i can't open it.

When I was younger we always had them, as we had cats a plenty and lived on a farm. I'm making a brew and getting all paranoid about the gaps between the appliances. I couldn't cope with it, no, no, no! God forbid the R word. I don't even know why I read this thread as I knew it would give me the heeby jeebies!

You could try this bucket trap but a cat and blocking holes is the most effective longer term solution.

The plug ins did not work for me. I had an awful time a few years back where we had babys/young ones , im sure they run around in pairs and had no bloody fear. The places i would find them, bath, washing machine, shoe, an old cup of tea that was left over night sick
I had no choice but to get traps at the end and oh my god the drama when i had to empty them, i'm talking gloves or plastic bags over my hands another in one hand while i used the broom to push the mouse onto the dustpan then id pick the dustpan up and tip it into the bag and throw it all away, after the first few i realised i was gonna have to empty them cause the traps were expensice lol So i did the whole thing but would hold the trap in the bag and empty it so i wouldnt have to see.

We caught 11 of the bastards that time. An awesome homemade trap which works everytime for me, if you have a bin or some other kind of empty/deep contanier place it under or againt a surface you know theyve been. they seem to love the counter my microwave sits on. Get a few old toilet rolls and place a little bit of peanut butter inside one end and balance it right on the edge of the surface using a coin to weigh the other end, so like a quarter to half is hanging over. So it has to run along the tube to get to the peanut butter at the end, the tube then falls down into the container. make sure the container is in the right spot to catch it. If you want to relocate them you can pick it up and take it wherever or i fill the bin half up with water so they drown over night and then i just tip it/bin it.

Oh god - haven't been able to sleep all night. Have a weird scratch by my eye since yesterday and keep thinking one of them has done it to me in my sleep 😭Nooooooooo. I feel like once they know where you live, one member of the pack will always remember, no matter how many of them you get rid of.

I had mice some years back, when my old cat was too old to be bothered. It took 2 or 3 weeks, but I used humane traps and made sure I released them into fields a few miles away. Got rid of them all and never had a recurrence. Mine were coming up from the cellar I think.

One inch is a very big mouse poo

I wish I knew the answer to the lying behind the cupboards and rotting away question..

Once before, a mouse crawled into my piano and died after a mauling by my previous cat. They stench was beyond description and as soon as we found the source I spared no effort to poke the little carcass out, clean off the sticky bits of the piano and sanitise it as thoroughly as I could. The result was that the smell was gone as soon as I was finished with my task. So now I (sadly perhaps) have no idea how long it might take for the smell to dissipate naturally from an undisturbed body.

The stench I am smelling right now is far less intense, making me suspect the uninvited and now probably deceased little visitor is in a wall. I hope that since mice are very small it won't take long for decomposition to be accomplished, and the smell will diminish quickly all on its own, because I can't get into the walls to look.

Can anyone reccomend a brand for the plug ins? The one i bought was from a supermarket but i cant remember the brand.
Also hahaha at me telling OP she's overreacting and then reading back what i used to do to pick up a DEAD mouse.

Get pest control in,and then get the plug in mouse repellents. Work for us.

YANBU.
Things you can do.
1, Pest proof by plugging all gaps bigger than a pencil width with expandable foam or steel wool.
2, Get a sonic plug in thing.
3, Get a cat.

Get the one from Amazon its about 20£ but does a variable noise.

Get pest control in, Council or private. Don't piss about with DIY. Take their advice on blocking holes etc. Do it today.

Mice tend to come back into old houses each winter. I've lived in two houses with mice infestations and I did the lot, traps and poison. The problem is that they live in the whole street. Best thing is to get a cat.

YNBU OP. I'm fucking terrified of the things and sorry, only the old fashioned non humane traps worked for us not a fan either and I used to keep two pet rats as a child.

They're coming in because you're their nearest food source and the warmth, not because your house is untidy / not clean enough. The poison didnt work for us, I can't work out if its because they knew what it was or had just simply got immune to it. Also you're left with the possibility of undiscovered bodies. I remember being a student - having a mice problem in the first year, when moving out three years later found one at the back of the freezer we'd obviously missed when cleaning up. It was tucked underneath the motor bit for the warmth .

Our Pest Control man said that they're always out in the gardens if you look closely enough and that's how they get in in the first place. Keep everything off the floor so its got no 'food' to find and use chocolate or peanut butter in the traps.

I used to be freaked out by mice but now see them as a seasonal hazard. IME when the weather gets cold we get mice. As a seasoned mouse wrangler I would recommend the old fashioned snap traps. It's unpleasant emptying them (disposable gloves necessary) but they normally die instantly and to me that seems more humane than trapping a living creature in a small box without food or water for several hours. We have 4 traps and if we get them out at the first sight of a problem we seem to catch all the culprits within 3-4 days, although we leave them out for another week or so to be absolutely sure.

I would never use poison - it takes several painful hours for the mouse to die, there is a chance that the poisoned mouse will be eaten by a cat or owl and so poison them. And of course you don't know where the poisoned corpse will end up. A rotting mouse carcass under the floor boards will attract flys, get maggoty and stink (a painful childhood memory) ..

I know mice are awful and germy but try not to worry too much. They are easy enough to get rid of and human beings have lived alongside mice/rats/fleas and other vermin for millennia and we have evolved to survive them.

I am playing the devils advicate here... just for fun you understand..

But mice are part of biodiversity. We are told we should always promote biodivesity so you should be happy you have mice in the house. Mice also carry a lot of desease. Again, all these bacterial and other paracites are greater biodiversity so you must be a good ecofriendly mum and put out food for them to encourage them to share your home with. If you do a good job you can also get rats and cockroaches.

Now that may not seem so nice, but technically it is correct. Until you start to question the mantra biodivesity is good.

PS regarding the mice... kill them .. as said above they are incontinent so they leak urine wherever they go.. worktops, food storage, clothes.

Yep you need to poison them, carefully obvs!

We live in the country and had RATS in our walls last year. Don't think they ever got inside but I was fully grossed out and not happy, cleaning like a mad woman lol.

Anyway we tried humane traps and they were useless. Get some poison where your kids and pets can't get to it. Also watch out for dead ones full of poison

Bait traps with chocolate.. not cheese.

I totally understand your reaction. We had mice in our last house, it was impossible to stop them (we had exterminators in several times) and as we were in an old Victorian terrace there were loads of holes to get in.

I was constantly scared of seeing them (it always used to be me that they jumped out at!) and it actually caused me such a lot of stress that there was a significant impact on my mental wellbeing. We ended up moving (dramatic, I know).

So you are definitely not overreacting, do everything you can to get rid of them!

Put out traps close to corners and next to skirting boards.. but don't bait them.
wear nitrile gloves (buy them by the box of 500 from a local car spares wholesaler)
Bait the traps with flakes of chocolate but don't set them
When you see the mice are eating the bait.. set the traps..
as said elsewhere... block up all and every hole into the ouse. Get fine chicken wire and stuff it into the holes then fill with expanding foam.. They can't get through that..
Be very intense with cleaning.. sweep up all scraps and stuff that gets onto the floors.

Good luck

Thing is, we have Plug ins we've been using since the first mouse last year and I thought they were working. Until now. Never been unplugged. One for downstairs where the vents are and hubby has seen the (different) mouse back then and the one now. One for the hallway. One for the upstairs landing just outside the bedrooms and another for my bedroom just because.

The first one was caught after the kids and I left - lucky we had a visit to my parents coming up at the time. DH was alone and noticed an odd smell one day and tapped with his foot against one of the traps and one felt heavy ... not after all very humane I know.

I have sheer veneer surface cupboards and tops in the kitchen and have never seen droppings there. Surely there'd be at least one or a few droppings there if they'd managed to get up?

DD is 14mo and just starting to toddle about but still does loads of crawling. Poor thing can't understand why she can't go on the floor. Thankfully she's just fallen asleep but she had about a million vaccinations yesterday and is so needy and grumpy and wakes every time I get up to go and steam the floors downstairs. Just thinking of aaaaaaalllll the tooooooys I'm going to have to handwioebwith dettol wipes again!!!!!!

My heart is sinking and I jut feel so despondent. Why does this depress me so much?! DH told me now, don't worry on Saturday I'll give everything a good wipe down. Are you friggin kidding me?? Saturday????? I going down now!!!!

Am going to dare not To rewash two baskets of clean washing I did yesterday - I found three poops about 4 inches or so next to the baskets. Or what do you think you I rewash it all????

I hate that I become so consumed all I will do is clean all day long. And repeat at night and the next day.

I want to sell this house and move like someone posted above. I just asked DH can we build a new house from scratch with no holes please.

My beloved departed cat was such a good hunter. Used to bring me live mice then play with them and eat them herself when I told her I'd had dinner thanks.

I am terrified of mice so you have my sympathies. First of all you need traps under the cupboards along skirting boards like previous poster said chocolate works but best is peanut butter and choc together. Makes the trap sticky so they can't get it.
Wire wool in every single hole you see. Look under the sink pipes coming in and out of the wall. If a biro pen can fit in a hole a mouse can too.