ONG scurrying noise tonight

[StormCattitude]

Tonight I'm upstairs crafting, so sat still for ages. My children downstairs directly below me watching TV, also unlikely to have moved for ages.
I heard a weird noise around 11pm, couldn't place it as I had music on low. Wondered possibly if it came from the chimney breast but unsure.
Next thing my DC shout that they're coming up to bed, they'd heard a scurrying noise in the living room. They couldn't place it either, but said the cat looked alerted (she's old so this just means raising her head in the direction of suspicious noise these days).
I went to the living room & we quietly stood for a moment. The noise started again, but moving location. Basically it sounded like something moving around in void between the downstairs ceiling & upstairs floor.

It's got to be a mouse, or mice, hasn't it?

What do I do? What can I do? Actually have rodent poison as we're not far from a park, but I've never used it as it was more bought with the garden in mind. Wasn't expecting this. And if I used poison inside and a mouse died in the void it'd stink wouldn't it? I'm post covid with no smell so might not even notice!

Just me & my DC. No experience with this & no one to help me / us. Don't think I'll sleep tonight anyway, plus DD is in my bed & has said she wants music on all night as mice don't like noise.

Thinking back, the other day I saw the cat sniffing at a new doorway to the extension which hasn't been fully plastered yet so possibly open to the void. I thought she was just being weird. And I remember waking about 2-3am a couple of months ago & hearing something which sounded like something was moving possibly in the loft (I never go in there) but I was half asleep & after I'd got up to try to place it, it stopped, didn't hear it again so I'd forgotten about it.

I had a family member poisoned by mice. They pee over everything. If your cat can hear it then I’d guess you’ve got them. Mouse trap and get them gone !

Home insurance often excludes rodent damage, so good idea to check the small print. In cold and wet weather, you can get field mice coming into garages and loft spaces for shelter. Unlike house mice, field mice leave again by themselves when the weather improves and don’t tend to enter the main part of the house, as they don’t actually intend to set up a permanent home in your house, because they need easy access to the outside world. Their droppings are tiny. Try looking for droppings on the floor immediately next to the walls of your garage to see if any mice are coming into your house via your garage to shelter - they tend to stick close to the walls and dark corners, so that’s where any droppings will be. I suspect house mouse evidence would also often be close to skirting boards. They can also leave greasy marks on the skirting boards, and are incontinent, so patches of urine! Rat droppings are considerably larger than mouse droppings.

Most councils don’t have their own pest control staff - they just subcontract this to a local company . So they are not necessarily any better or worse than a private firm.

If you look on the council Website they often have a mobile phone number for pest control “ out of hours “ and you can cross check that with the number for registered pest control companies in your area.

bpca.org.uk/find

The company that my council use are cheaper and more flexible when you go direct - the council have a set package .

Omg I wish no one had this problem but I'm glad I'm not alone having rodents, or there'd be no one to give advice! Thank you all.

Today me & (luckily the most helpful) DC are decluttering so we can remove hiding places & chk for evidence (other DC had a ton of school work so tied up). Council will be shut yoday anyway so it gives Mr chance to get my head things. Might put the bait down later. I've got 3 lockable stations but they're only mice size so if it's a rat they'd be too small. But nothing I can do about that today! Cos if I go out shopping I won't be able to get on top of the house. Its mostly only times like this I REALLY miss having a 2nd adult here!

Sickened by these answers. Death by poisoning is a slow painful death. I've always used humane traps with no problems.

Our house is in woodland so we’re on very good terms with our local pest man. Had this not long ago only to find a row of bats in the loft this time, shifting to the side to escape the torch!

For mice he sets traps. Poison can be dangerous to your cat if he/she is a glutton like mine, so he refuses to use it. Also has surveyed the house for entry holes. We don’t tend to get mice now because of that.

@Brackenandbramble how did you get rid of them? I think we have a rat problem :( have a housing association house and have a roof tile missing (have reported 27 times and still not fixed) and live opposite a massive building site.

I can hear them pottering about. I feel like the old lady with Ratatouille! Am in catch 22. Council some out and moan about tile and orbit do the same... rodents need to leave before tile fixed.

I am seriously ill and it's a joke.

There is no such thing as an humane trap for mice. They exist to make people feel ‘kinder’ but they are far worse than a quick death for mice.

Good luck with getting rid of them OP. We had them once and the snap traps worked for us. We also had a cat who apparently was completely unconcerned by the mice living in our house.

Do not put down poison. It kills the mice horribly and they then get eaten by other animals like cats and birds or dogs that also get poisoned. The mice that live between our floorboards in winter have never caused us any harm to person or property in 23 years. I quite like providing them with a little shelter in winter but then I am a lover of all wildlife.

I got an electric zap trap from screwfix we had one rat dead the next day. Instant death no poison.

If I could find a runway they used I'd feel more confident putting things fown, it's the fact I've never seen one or their evidence. Although another memory that's returned to me is of seeing a mouse on the fence at the very far end of my garden during summer. Which is why I'm leaning to it being mice I think. My friend around the corner whose garden is a stones throw away told me at the time her husband saw a rat in their garden a few yrs before, so both are around here. Probably as we live very close to a park and a rambling brook. But 20+ yrs here with no rodents previously, so strange.

@Theluggage15 you are talking crap. The humane traps work very well. The mice are unharmed. I've lent the 2 I use to numerous people with great success. Mice all returned to safe environments, just block up the entrance hole, if you can find it. Mine were coming in along a pipe.

We had mice a few years ago, they aren't harmless, they wee as they walk so it is everywhere. We had a company out who put down poison but it was useless. We put down snap traps ourselves with recommended bait (peanut butter, chocolate) and caught a few but not all and they breed very quickly. In the end we had to have our kitchen ripped out and all the holes blocked up. There were a few dead bodies under the counters which made me feel SICK as we had eaten our Christmas dinner there a few weeks before. Good luck!

We had a mouse/mice recently, having realised after finding dropping in two (non-food) kitchen cupboards. Initially we put out the humane traps, having used them effectively in the past but this time our resident mouse was two crafty. We had several nights of the bait disappearing from one of the traps, but no mouse captured. We then switched to snap traps and caught a tiny grey mouse on the first night. Left the baited traps out for a few weeks, but removed them after no further catches, so it seems like it may have been working alone.
Just grateful it wasn’t a rat.

If you call out pest control, they won't put poison down if they can see you, or another company have left any poison. They are worried about liability if any non target animal is poisoned as it would be impossible to tell who was liable.

We had that issue when one company did a very poor job. There are some cowboy pc companies out there.

Oh and we also have one of the plug in things which emit a sound that mice can hear and don't like. Haven't seen a mouse for 18 months but I refuse to unplug it.

@Double3xposure - thank you so much for that link. Sometimes it's so hard to now what to do about things- there should be a manual of who to call in any situation.

I was totally ripped off by a company when I heard scurrying. They did seems to sort the problem but charged me several hundreds of pounds. I have a severe phobia so just paid up.

Rentokil told me they don't come out of you can only hear rodents . WTAF?

Which snap traps are you all using? I could do with one that could get a mouse or rat as I don't know what's here.
Unfortunately my council has no out of hours contact number to cross reference with the bpca. You can only book them in online and pay in advance. I'll call their contact centre tm on my lunch break & get their advice, as I don't exactly know what my pest is to book it in, and they're all different prices.

www.toolstation.com/sure-set-rodent-trap/p24391
www.screwfix.com/p/stv-pest-free-plastic-metal-rat-traps-2-pack/27499
Are these the right thing? No stock at my local screwfix though and only get 1 from tools toolstation for same price!

This thread reminds me of when my DM and I were sharing a room in the home of friends in a West African village. I had a rat shoot out from under my bed, a really filthy, vicious looking thing. We’d been hearing loud noises in our bedroom and had begun to suspect there might be a rat.

It took a few days before our friends brought a rat trap home to catch the rat. It never again came into our bedroom, thankfully, though.

I’ve never experienced rats or mice inside in this country. The only mice I’ve seen inside have been brought inside by pet cats, most of them dead.

I hope you find out whether there are mice inside your house, OP. It doesn’t sound as if your cat is going to be able to deal with the problem, so a mouse trap sounds like the best idea suggested on here.

LizzieW1969 maybe a few years ago the cat would've earned her keep, but judging from the way she only eyeballed the noises from her cosy box last night, those days seem past. Her mind is willing but her body not so much!

@StormCattitude

www.toolstation.com/sure-set-rodent-trap/p24391 www.screwfix.com/p/stv-pest-free-plastic-metal-rat-traps-2-pack/27499 Are these the right thing? No stock at my local screwfix though and only get 1 from tools toolstation for same price!

I can see four at my local store. They are good traps, yes easy to wash in a bucket of soapy water and rinse under a running tap.

Is it an old/countryside house? My parents have mice, squirrels and bats in their roof. They stay up there, no big deal really. Never had one in the actual house.

Oh soz I thought you had heard them in roof/walls rather than actually being in the rooms.