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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To put food down for the mice

40 replies

Mscombobulated · 12/03/2010 11:55

We've got mice - i caught the little buggers in the kitchen yesterday, about three times, i even managed to trap one under a cup and put it in the garden, of course it came straight back and was sat there on top of the dog food laughing at me. There were there again this morning and i have found their escape hole and probably where there nest is - i am so tempted to stick a jammy dodger down for them. But i'm going to have to be all grown up and get rid aren't i?

I've given them names too - oh well, off to the DIY store for humane traps then

OP posts:

traceybath · 12/03/2010 11:57

They are incontinent vermin [no lover of mice emoticon].

I hate them but get them every year as live very rurally in old house. However come April they do tend to stay outside.

Do remember to check the humane traps every day though - man from the council said people often forget and the mice then starve to death which is crueller than the snap traps really.

Original poster

Mscombobulated · 12/03/2010 12:03

yes, we used humane traps in our old house - i would collect the mice in a fish tank and when i had about 5 or 6 (i kid you not) i would drive them to the woods and release them. But one day i found a dead mouse obviously died of fright so it put me off using them - we gave up and got cats - but my DP is now allergic to them and i think my dog would be pants with a cat - its a shame i can't just let them stay they are very sweet - but there is two - so soon there will be 102!

OP posts:

MotherJack · 12/03/2010 12:04

Ohhhh..... I had this with rats in my garden the other week. I hated myself for dispatching them as they had looked really cute eating the seed that fell off the bird table, but I wasn't prepared to risk Weils Disease.

I shall ^never* allow DS to read Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh. Makes you too soft hearted

elliedodger · 12/03/2010 12:22

I'm not sure how humane the humane traps really are. If one finds its way into the trap just after you've gone to bed it could be trapped all night. It would be so stressful. A friend told me that she used one and found it absolutely covered in scratch marks.

I used old fashioned snappy traps when I had mice, but then we were completely overrun, to the extent that I had chewed clothes in my wardrobe.

MintyMoo · 12/03/2010 12:29

OP - no need to buy a humane mouse trap, try making this one up. You get a bucket (we used our mop bucket) and you perch it on a stool or pile of books by a surface (we used the kitchen surface) you then put some cereal in the bucket and place a toilet roll tube precariously on the edge of the surface with some cereal in it. the mice will run in the tube for the cereal and topple them into the bucket. You have to release them quite far away, DP and I released ours about twenty mins walk away on a common. This was about two or three weeks ago and still no mice, we caught two with that one trap. We'd had them for ages, seeing them occasionally but then they started coming regularly and pooing on the hob and eating our plants which we considered a step too far. We also named them and photographed their release, they were adorable and hopefully happy in their new home!

MintyMoo · 12/03/2010 12:33

ps: one of our mice appeared scared but the other was sat outside the tube in the bucket looking very confidentally up at us. They are normally mainly active at dawn and dusk so we rose early and took them straight to be released and when they were captive they had plenty of food. A few weeks ago I stumbled across a dying mouse at work (poisoned) it was twitching horribly and trying desperately to hide, it was waaay more distressed than either of our mice were.

BessieBoots · 12/03/2010 12:34

We have mice quite often (old house, right by a stream). I used to put poison down, but I do think it's better just to have a trap- With the poison, they would walk round the place, drunk, and it was far crueller than doing it quickly and getting it over with.

I do feel a bit crap about killing them, mind, but I'm scared they'll chew through wires and kill us all...

fragola · 12/03/2010 12:43

We have woodmice in our cellar. They're nice so I feed them. I don't think I'd be so generous if they were in my kitchen though.

Morloth · 12/03/2010 12:48

Get a cat. Mine isn't humane at all but mice/rats are not a problem around here.

sillyoldfatcatpuss · 12/03/2010 12:48

YABVU! Don't feed the little buggers! We had a burst pipe last year caused by mice eating the pipe insulation and leaving an inch long exposed section, big enough to let the frost in and crack the pipe in the thaw. Bedroom, hall, lounge wrecked...insurance excess put up to £1000! We used to use the humane traps, now I go for instant death [evil emoticon]

5Foot5 · 12/03/2010 12:49

Mmm! Must be less soft hearted than some of you.

We occasionally get mice in the garage nd it sis the snappy traps for us. Chocolate is the most effective bait we find

heQet · 12/03/2010 12:50

Do it! I had a thread on here ages ago where I told how we had a mouse and I put a saucer under the sofa with a selection of nibbles on it and then my husband hit it on the head with a shoe

Original poster

Mscombobulated · 12/03/2010 13:19

i wouldn't speak to my DP ever again if he did that!

OP posts:

NewLeaseofLife · 12/03/2010 13:30

I remember my mother stamping on them when I was younger. We have always lived in the country and she was a farmers wife.

I could never do that and tried the humane traps, the mice poo'd all over the trap, around it and right by the entrance to it but we never caught one. I got worn out with telling exh to check as well. I now have the Snappy ones. I hate the thought of it but its got to be better than glue boards (they chew off their legs to get away) or poison (slow and painful).

NEVER feed mice, you should try to keep animal food in containers, I wipe my sides every night and try to hoover/sweep the kitchen floors every couple of days.

The best bait I have found is peanut butter!

Buzzybb · 12/03/2010 13:50

Humane solution and they never returned was a snake [Not mine to keep]. Sis has a pet snake [yuk yuk yuk actually hate the snake nearly as much as mice] I take the snake skin when it sheds about twice a year put it in utility room and for some reason they have never come back.

Coffeebeanz · 12/03/2010 13:56

I thought I was a humane kind of animal lover, but when we got mice in our newly renovated house I just had to get rid ! Having just spent thousands on rewiring, the last thing I wanted was some rodent nibbling through my very expensive cableing

The snappy ones with chocolate are the best !

Dillie · 12/03/2010 14:01

Cats are the best thing .. well until you find half eaten bodies and only heads lying around [queasy] and the cat wonders why it is feeling so sick!

Please do a humane trap and release them about 20mins away from your house, and if you can get the whole family group so no babies starve to death ... I know I am a big softy!!

YABU to feed them ... you may find a whole colony of 20 !! They breed every couple of months i think!

BigWeeHag · 12/03/2010 14:10

I live by a field and on the edge of a forest, I thought I had one mouse, caught it in a snappy trap, then discovered I actually had 437298432784932432 and their mates. Every time I move something, I find more poo. The nice man came from pest control and put down poison, and it has taken nearly 3 weeks to kill them all.

He claimed it was a humane way to do it - they bleed to death on the inside. A new definition of humane, that. But honestly, I was so freaked out by there being so many, and lots of the toys and clothes are ruined, all the bedding has had to be washed, all the soft toys wipe cleaned then frozen... it's an actual nightmare.

darkandstormy · 12/03/2010 14:11

we had a mini mouse sanitarium one time with one having post traumatic stress another with a sore foot [mashed by my cat] and a baby rat living in my welly.We fed them up with cheese and muesli.Then we set them off on their merry way to the wood at the top of the road.yanbu mice rock.They are so cute and just in the business of survival.We are all God creatures, this is their little crack of the whip.

Beveridge · 12/03/2010 14:22

Good grief. We discovered we had mice yesterday - it/they have chewed through DD's toys and bizarrely appeared to have dragged one of her spoons and a chunk of chocolate into her toy bag ( I mean, HOW did that get in there???? We are not the kind of house to fail to account for chocolate missing in action, and DD is only 9 months!)and had a good go at that too.

Felt sick as only that morning she was kneeling in front of her toy bag pulling out her books, and unbeknownst to us there was mouse poo and wee only a few inches away . So we called a pest controller out, don't like the idea of poison but felt we couldn't take the risk with DD crawling about and chewing everything at the moment.

I tussled with the humane trap issue a few years ago pre-babies and husband but once I realised that i wasn't going to be getting up and going out in the middle of the night to release them,leaving them distressed (and I didn't have DH to do it for me!}, it had to be the snap traps I'm afraid.

Mind you, all sympathy i had for them evaporated when I came home after a weekend away to find that yes, there was a mouse caught in the trap but that something else had eaten most of it! All that was left was the fur, legs and tail. I just about had a fit. And thought, well, if they're eating each other and it's going to be Lord of The Flies in my kitchen, then I don't feel bad about the traps...

So, YABU - don't feed them, whatever you do...if they weren't incontinent perhaps if would be different but you don't know where they'll widdle next

flaime · 12/03/2010 14:38

Our cat brought one in for me last year, Boxing day I found it living in the bottom of the oven with my baking trays - I should have guessed really as the cat had taken to watching the cooker as if it was a TV

The mouse had been living on smarties the kids had dropped so def agree with the chocolate suggestion. It was really easy to catch it with a humane trap and we set it free down the bottom of the garden and kept a very straight face when telling the kids that of course the cat wouldn't re-catch 'smarties' and eat him .

mumdrivenmad · 12/03/2010 16:33

FEEDING mice in your kitchen!!!! ewwww do you know they are incontinent??? That means they are pissing over everything they walk over.

heQet · 12/03/2010 16:54

Mscombobulated - I was certainly VERY upset indeed! but then growing up, I used to keep all manner of small furry animals - mice, rats, gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits... so I don't see mice in the the same way as most people I guess.

this was also me

Original poster

Mscombobulated · 12/03/2010 18:10

Oh No Dillie, i hadn't thought of the poor starving babies!! perhaps i should put more food down

I put paprika down eariler, apparently they don't much like it - well, mine don't seem to mind, came home to tiny foot prints - going to have to be the cat!

OP posts:

rightfootfirst · 12/03/2010 20:48

YABU

poison and traps, and lots of them, that's the way forward. For every one mouse you see there's hordes more peering at you from under the skirting.

we get them in the attic at winter, can lie in bed at night and hear the traps pinging - only realistic way to keep them under control as cant keep them out.

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