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Housekeeping

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Original poster

Cat or Plug in repeller thingy to get rid of mice?

18 replies

majormayhem · 09/03/2011 09:52

In the past month we've trapped & released 2 mice from the same spot in the girls bedroom. (could possibly be the same one, as DH only released it down the road the first time).

Now DH has spotted another in the bottom of his fitted wardrobe. Unfortunately, the plaster in the ceiling of the wardrobe is blown, so there is access to the loft. The immersion heater is also in the wardrobe, and there are holes and gaps around the piping.

He's not convinced that mice are a problem , but today I discovered fresh droppings in our blanket box and all of our clean bedding needs to be rewashed.

I'm going to get the expanding putty/steel wool from the DIY store today, and we have humane traps down, but I'm not convinced that it will take care of the problem. (We also found mousetraps in the wardrobe when we moved in and discovered patches of cement fill in the walls when we removed the wallpaper, so I'm guessing this has been a problem before.)

We used to havec a cat, and the only mice we had were the ones he brought in and we could catch them and get rid. But these have set up housekeeping.

So what's a better investment-- a new rescue cat or one of those electronic repeller things?

OP posts:

SparkyToo · 09/03/2011 10:38

Unfortunately we don't have a cat, so when we do have mice (now and again one seems to appear on the scene!) - we use the good ol'fashioned mouse-traps. Bit of chocolate in them, they do the job.

Fluffycloudland77 · 09/03/2011 13:11

I read on the Internet you have to release them at least a mile away. Your council might deal with it for free, our council does.

sharbie · 09/03/2011 13:13

3 cats here and had mice in loft recently.cats all pretended they couldn't hear anything/didn't care.
poison is yr way to go.

atah · 09/03/2011 13:16

We have both and have been rodent free for almost a year now - touch wood

Original poster

majormayhem · 09/03/2011 18:48

Yes Fliffy, I'm pretty sure the first mouse came back because later DH admitted that he didn't take it very far away. The second time I caught him (after DH decided he needed to show the damn thing to the DDs in the bloody house, resulting in me having to catch the bugger a third time ) I made sure he took him for a long drive before releasing him again.

I've done the poison thing in the past and found that they didn't eat it, although I'll do it again as a last resort.

Really I'm hoping for a deterrant. We have a river outside and our neighbors insist on throwing copious amounts of seed to the ducks (who now live outside our front door). So I think we're going to have anongoing issue if we can't stop them coming in.

OP posts:

LucyInTheSkyWithAntiHistamines · 09/03/2011 19:02

The plug in sonic repellants only work in dterring mice to set up home in you rhouse in the frist place. They are utterly ineffective once they are already established.

We had a horrendous infestation a few years ago caused by bloody neighbours who knoew their house was over-run but were moving out so didn't do anything about it, hence the infestation spread to our house. We used snap traps when it became apparant that the sonic devices where about as much use as a one legged man in an arse kicking competition.

Eventually, new neighbour moved into to horrifically infested house and called pest control. Over the course of 4 weeks, pest control found a dozen or so dead mice (they used traps and poison) but the chap said that for every one they found, there was 3 or 4 more that you don't see

So, I's choose a cat over a sonic device...and hope you get a more effective cat than our last one who was happy to co=exist with mice and would only hunt birds (of the caged variety...from our neighbour's aviary [hmmm] )

FortiesCromarty · 09/03/2011 19:03

We got a plug in deterrent and the mice moved next door , sounds perfect, maybe then your neighbours will stop feeding the ducks, otherwise you might all end up with rats.

Choufleur · 09/03/2011 19:03

You need to kill them. If you have seen one then there will be more.

TheHeathenOfSuburbia · 09/03/2011 19:37

We have just Dealt With a mouse problem here, I can talk you through what we did, in order:

Blocked the holes we could see - didn't work
Got the ultrasonic repeller - didn't work
Put down poison - poison nibbled at the edges, no dead mice turn up.
Bought one of these. First night, one dead mouse, second night, another one.

No more mice.

The electronic trap kills them in a neat box so you can just tip them into the bin. We got the bigger (rat) size because of the Amazon comments, some people said their mice wouldn't go into the 'mouse-size' one.

wannabesybil · 10/03/2011 16:20

Plug in made our mice act weird. You try typing on a keyboard and having a mouse dash out. They used to watch me from the printer.

One of my favourite memories is of a mouse one side of a fireguard and evil cat the other, just inches apart. Evil cat is almost seventeen and can't be having with it at her time of life. The plug in was in then, and it definitely did something to the mice.

IME Cats are a better deterrent than anything else. Traps do the rest. We used the ones that killed them quick and then you didn't have to touch the mouse to get it out. ebay mouse trap Could you borrow a cat - nice big semi feral tom?

CeliaFate · 12/03/2011 08:32

Contact your local environmental health dept. They may come out and sort it out for free, especially as you have young children. When we had a problem, he told us mice are totally incontinent and can fit into any space about the width of your little finger as they have flexible bones. That was enough to convince me to let him kill the buggers!

dizzydo · 12/03/2011 08:37

Heathen, I have one of those boxes and have only ever caught two mice in the four years although I KNOW we still have them - I see the odd one dashing across front room or along hall eeek Cant tell you how much weve spent on pest control they just keep coming back. What bait did you use in your box

TheHeathenOfSuburbia · 12/03/2011 10:42

Used chocolate. (Bits of DD's terry's chocolate orange in fact )

Actually what I did was put a wee bit of chocolate down beside the wall in the same place, for a couple of nights (while waiting for trap to be delivered)
Then put the chocolate down in the box without switching it on.
Then did the same and switched it on - ta-da!

I did feel sorry for the little chaps, but crapping in my frying pan is just not on, I'm afraid.

MillsAndDoom · 12/03/2011 18:28

We have two cats - one is useless the other is a keen outdoors mouser but rubbish at catching them indoors

We've put down poison which has been eaten but no sign of any dead mice, so we bought a plug in thing - still could hear them running around.

The only thing that worked for us was the old snap traps.

Original poster

majormayhem · 13/03/2011 10:08

Ok. Think I'm going to take a many-pronged approach. Cat, repeller, traps... mouse armageddon.

OP posts:

Hellebore1 · 14/03/2011 17:53

I have two cats neither of which proved any good at clearing my mouse problem so I spent £30+ on an electronic mouse deterrent, total waste of money.
I succeeded using a humane trap baited with chocolate hobnob, deposited them a good distance away from the house though.
Mice will only come in if there is something in the house for them to eat. I found two areas in my house that was attracting them. The sacks of bird seed in the cellar and the crumbs in the cupboard under the toaster . The seed was put into a plastic dustbin and the toaster emptied every day. Have been mouse free ever since [smile[

fruitshootsandheaves · 14/03/2011 18:00

I have 3 cats. 2 will kill anything, 3rd one brings prey in alive and releases it, cue much chasing of furry / feathered beings at various times of the day by me and other 2 cats!

TwoNoisyBoys · 16/03/2011 19:57

We've had mice under our kitchen units on and off for a couple of years. Started off using the humane traps for a while, but then then resorted to the snappy taps, which although I felt bad about, did do the job. However, every now and then we had a re-occurrence, a bloody PITA.......I read up on the net about deterrents rather than cures, and learnt that apparently mice HATE the smell of fresh mint.....I had a huge plant in the garden at the time, so chucked handfuls under the units and...........problem solved. Not had one since! I still buy some every few months and put it under, and fingers crossed, so far so good. Hope this helps.

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