To ask how the HELL do you get rid of a clever mouse?!

[Squeakingmad]

Not an AIBU but traffic etc.

We've got a wild mouse living under the floor in our house. Discovered about a month ago when the thing scurried across the floor.

We immediately put some traps down. No luck.

For three weeks we've had pest control in, putting poison down, laying traps. He is coming back today and I've just found fresh mouse droppings so the little fucker is still alive.

My kitchen is a mess because nothing can be in the cupboards. I'm knackered with constantly vacuuming and cleaning up. We know it's getting out and about and I'm actually full of RAGE about it this morning.

I've got two kids. I don't want a fucking mouse. If pest control can't get rid of it, what else can I do?! This is really affecting me now.

Maltesers are good on the prong type traps as they have to tug it to get it off the prongs.
Do you have a birdfeeder in the garden - maybe mouse has a store of peanuts so isn't interested in traps.

Thanks to those who have made suggestions for things I haven't thought of. I've got pest control coming this morning. Will show him the poo and tell him about the rats and see what he says. He has seen the poo before though 🤷‍♀️ It would make perfect sense for it to be a rat though. Which stresses me even more because they grow BIG and can do real damage to wires.

For those of you STILL posting about sticky traps - your point has been made. You can stop your crusade. By the way - Amazon sell a version of them so they are still available.

Really? That's a surprise NoCloudsAllowed

I wanted add that our mouser is now an elderly house cat (ragdoll) She's never actually killed a mouse, though a few years ago she carried one along in her mouth and we rescued it unhurt. Her method has been to catch their scent; she seemed to know exactly where they were coming from and would be on guard in that area, then she will corner them, so we've put them outside.

We haven't seen any for a long long while, but it's usually after cat has been away that they return (while we've been on holiday), but the scent of the cat (and litter tray?) is apparently sometimes enough to deter.

The thing that worked for us was the poison boxes you can buy in b&q. We stick a few behind the skirting boards and that does the job.

For the cat lovers - I live on a main road where cats frequently die. I don't want a house cat as I cannot stand cat poo and the stench. Absolutely no way. I've approached family about borrowing a cat but they aren't sure they will use a litter tray and can't let it loose.
A dog - absolutely not. No time for that and don't want the responsibility.

I am an excellent mouse catcher! If the cat bastard brings one in for entertainment and then loses it, I get on my hands and knees, pull out all the kick boards, machines, etc and bang about until it emerges. Launch myself at it, catch it in my hands, sometimes the tails drop off, and then launch it out the door.

I am surprisingly adept. Lots of practice. However if that fails lots of snap traps baited with Nutella.

I'm not sure borrowing a cat would work more than very short term. More than a couple of weeks of no cat have been the times our mouse (mice) has returned.

God, people need to stop going on about sticky traps. Of COURSE nobody wants to harm a little mouse! But this is a total health hazard for the op and I imagine very stressful.

We had one in our garage and that was bad enough! We used a trap baited with peanut butter after trying to catch it humanely. It was destroying things we had in storage so no choice

OP just do what you have to do. Contrary to what some posters are saying, you absolutely can have just one mouse

The most effective way of getting rid of rats and mice is to go on YouTube, type in Hawk Call, turn the volume up! This will 100% get them out of your house, as long as they can escape.

Do not use this method if you have pet rodents!

Wow @Aintwealljustrunaways never heard of that one!

Mice can't see very well. So they will be wary of the traps when you first put them down. They will go for it eventually. We found that the industrial rat traps worked best for us.

There usually isnt just one mouse.
We found that the poison pest controll put down was usless, I swore by the traps we just put diffrent foods on each time. ( peanut butter, bacon, chocolate spread ) id scatter the traps everywhere (unless you have pets)

Pest control just been, its FINALLY taken some grain bait. I'm so freaking happy, only taken 4 weeks. Might be having a very stinky Christmas though....

Thanks to the person who suggested a bait box with trap, didn't even know they existed so will look into that 😊

We had this problem this time last year. We put all non-refrigerated food (and things that weren't in glass) in sealed plastic boxes, cleaned everything and put out humane traps. We found one mouse and released it but then had the same issue shortly afterwards. We then bought the sealed snap traps, used peanut butter as bait, and caught another - disposed of that. We then had a build done and the builders found two mouse nests under our floorboards but they had been abandoned.

We've not had any issues since but I'm fastidious about keeping food in sealed boxes so that we don't have to go through it again. I had bought really naice mixed fruit for the Christmas cake and they had the temerity to eat through the packaging and snaffle on that - the swine!

OP we've had a rat recently (got driven into the house when the area flooded and we had the back door open for water to be pumped out of the cellar) and the little shite took all the bait blocks we left out and built a fucking nest out of the buggers - which is just damned rude!

We got him in the end with peanut butter on traps but they're incredibly cautious of new things and you need to leave traps and bait out for a good while before they'll consider taking it.

As for cats - next door's cats were useless, our fucking ex-racing greyhound saw the rat, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Haha people on MN always come with the ‘oh I’d rather have mice living with me than use a glue trap.’ That’s great for you, I don’t feel the same.

OP, I really feel you. I had 2 under 2 when I first saw a mouse in my flat last year. My youngest was only 4 months at the time so I was extremely stressed. I had the LA send out pest control as well as the estate agent as both were as useless as each other. They laid down bait boxes, snap traps and poison. I also had an electronic trap to try and catch them. In 11 months time, we caught absolutely nothing.

I went through all the kickboards to find any holes and fill them with wire wool and we still saw mice. The only time I caught two baby mice was using glue traps so they certainly are effective. In the end I paid for a pest control company to come out who managed to cut a hole in a cupboard and find the entry point. It’s now been sealed sinc the summer and I haven’t seen any mice since.

It’s the most stressful thing and you feel so unsettled in your own home. Get yourself some glue traps and place them were you see the mice. Make sure you use gloves as they can smell your scent and and will avoid the trap if you don’t. Good luck!

People are mad about glue traps - other traps aren't always a swift death they can be caught by parts of the body which doesn't kill them.

It's not a product, you literally get a trap and a baitbox and unite the two. Hard to set tho :)

I don't think any of the armoury - a hunting dog/cat, snap trap, poison are particularly nice for a mouse tbh.

But it is what it is, if you want to get rid. Sorry.

Electric traps are good in that it's instant death and no mess.

never worked for us. We had the kill ones afterwards, which unfortunately - or fortunately, bit of a mixed bag - worked so much better.

Glue traps are barbaric, that's why. They're being banned for a reason. People are rightly mentioning it repeatedly.

You need to kill what's left of whatever you catch on the traps, though instructions often recommend binning them alive. I won't go into more detail than that.

I once found a mouse in a bag of chocolate eggs. 😬 I could hear the rustling!

We've used the bait traps from B&Q, they work. We get rats in the shed as we live right next to some fields so will probably never be rid of them altogether. We had one in the house once, it got in overnight and tried to raid the kitchen bin. We went on a crusade and found where it had got in and filled all holes in with wire wool. Any little hole you find, fill it with wire wool. They can't chew through it. Sprinkle peppermint oil around as well as they don't like the smell. Luckily we do. Also keep the kitchen spotless, no food left out anywhere, no crumbs on the floor overnight. Nothing too smelly left in the kitchen bin. I am paranoid now and check round every night before bed. Good luck.

Not sure if it's been suggested already but I saw a video online only yesterday about how the best thing to catch them is a grape. Don't cut it. Just put it on the trap as is.