I have had mice in the last 4 houses I have lived in. Am I a complete minger or is it par for the course on the ground floor?

[mawbroon]

We have trapped two mice this week after finding out they were eating the veggies under the sink. As the thread title says, this is now the fourth house where we have had a mouse problem. I have blocked up a hole where they might have been coming in and all my food is now in plastic boxes with lids. Hmm, sweaty tatties vs mouse eaten ones - what a choice!

Any other top tips?

Oh I feel for you...

Had mice (recurring) at my old flat. Yes, ground floor...there is a 2ft high gap under the floorboards, which is why it's so blardy hard to get rid of the little buggers.

Even fitted carpets don't help.

This house is Ok because, although we are mingers the floors downstairs are all concreted over, under the carpet - it is a 1920s house and there are boards upstairs which is fine, but downstairs not a whisker in 3 years!

Oh I tell a lie...we did have some mousey poos in the understairs cupboard once. I got everything out of it, crawled right to the end and cemented up a hole some B8stard mouse had dug through the concrete

I also filled any other possible areas of doubt. Nothing since.

I remember the familiar heart dropping feeling when you hear the scratching in the night.

The black and yellow plastic traps from Wilkos work really, really well...set up with peanut butter/chocolate spread (tis fiddly but Ok) and leave by a skirting board somewhere darkish.

I actually sat in wait - heard the rustling, heard the scratching, heard the deadly bang as it claimed mouse after mouse. A mother and 5 children within 5 days.

Don't use poison btw - they die everywhere, you find them everywhere, inside clothes, bags etc (bleurgh) and the smell is dreadful. Plus it is crueller I think. At least with a trap you know where it is when it dies.

Get one of those sonic things you plug in. The noise will drive them barmy and they'll up and leave after a few days.

You may need one in every affected room.

get a cat

Oh Flllightattendant, that sounds awful. Ours is nothing like as bad as that - they only seem to be in the kitchen undersink cupboard. They were eating everything in my food cupboard, but all packets and stuff have been put into plastic boxes. Saying that, the noise of them scratching sometimes wakes me at night (no mean feat!) but although they sound like they are in the bedroom, I haven't found any evidence of them whatsoever, so I am guessing they are in the wall somewhere. We also have lots of squirrels round here, but I think they sleep at night, don't they?

AnnieOleTing - do those noisy things work?

talktothebees - have been offered a shot of a cat, but we are all quite allergic otherwise I would have got one four houses ago

Cats often just sit there and pretend they didn't notice the small furry thing that just scuttled across the floor. So you're not missing much

I think your first priority is to fill the gaps in the wall. Have a good look outside and fill everything in. It is said a mouse can get through a cm high gap but it will discourage them if you fill anything obvious.

See if that helps. My frienfd swore by it when she lived in a basement in London.

Prevention is better than cure. We had mice when we were at university (we weren't mingers, but our landlord was!). After all the possible gaps were squirted with that expanding foam stuff they couldn't get in and the problem ended. My parent's holiday place always had mice, but they were field mice and came in through the very ancient walls, so we just got used to keeping everything up high or in tins/jars (you know they can eat through plastic!). Traps will kill the ones that have got in, but not stop any new ones, so you'll need to do both. The squirty stuff is good because it requires no skill, and is very quick, but make sure you get the stuff that sets hard.

Oh, and one year my parents place got rats! That was really horrible - my mother tried to get the dog to chase them but all he did was howl!

Mawbroon, the sonic thing certainly worked for a friend who had rats in his basement. After a couple of days, he heard a furious scuttling of the whole family leaving and that was the end of them.
We also used one in our previous flat. Once all the holes had been filled, we put one in the kitchen, and though we still had traps down, we caught no more after that. And we had wooden floorboards, through which they can squeeze, a hole the size of a pencil.

The sonic waves tend to bounce around walls, so you may need more than one, they can't get through doors/round corners.

Oh and as FlightAttendant said, the best bait for traps is either chocolate or peanut butter. Cheese is a myth.

Good luck.

There are none in the trap today. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

2yo ds keeps going to the cupboard where the trap is (there's a child lock on it!) and saying "any mice?, any mice?"

You generally get them in older homes as there are more gaps!

It doesn't mean you are a minger - although it could be worth finding out if anyone else in the flats have them....maybe they are.

If you are near to some countryside/ parks/ big gardens etc they are probably field mice. In which case it's nothing to do with hygiene, they just want shelter for the winter.

There shouldn't ever be a smell from poisoned mice as the poison actually burns through all flesh and tissue leaving the bones - it's a foul death though and takes them a long time to die so don't agree with it.

We've had mice three times in our Victorian house. They came in more in the summer, I think because the back door was open all day! Plus I have three chimps children who drop scraps on the floor all the time.

Wisteria, we back right onto a big park which is full of squirrels and foxes and all sorts of other wildlife, no doubt including lots of mice! They seem to be big house mice though rather than the tiny field mice which I have trapped before in other houses.

LOl at the chimps Maidamess. One night, I was in a hurry to go out and I forgot to hoover up the rice that ds had dropped on the floor. In the morning I thought "oh, better hoover up that rice" and it was all gone Have learned to hoover round the table every night!

Shame..... there's not a lot else you can do then unfortunately.

When I was growing up we were either on the farm or in other rural areas and mice were a fact of life to be honest. Traps are the only way forward I suppose, unless you can bear the thought of a decent 'mouser' cat.

When we moved in here it was riddled with the blighters and the previous owners not only failed to mention it but they must have had them for years! eeewww

Bumping 'cos we've just noticed we've got mice.

We don't want to use poison or kill traps cos DD is only 2.7 and into everything and would doubtless cause herself harm with them, so do live traps even work? I bought some today, but I'm pretty sceptical. Even if they do work I don't know what I'll do with the little buggers, if I release them into the street they'll just come back in, right?

Annoyingly, I can hear high frequencies so the plug ins are a no go. I think they annoy me more than the mice!

I saw some glue traps, but it seems pretty cruel, what do you do when you catch them?!

Eugh.

Just thinking about them walking, pooping and peeing all over my kitchen makes me feel yukky, HELP!

lots of tips here

you need to fill in as many access points as possible

use the proper old fashioned snap traps

hoover, hoover, hoover and pack all food away

dizietsma - are you sure you have nowhere you can put traps? if you don't kill them they will most likely be back (with their friends too)

we have traps under floorboards and behind the kickboards in the kitchen so no risk to little fingers

Mice PP on everything they touch..that is how they can identify their run. I found the sonic things did not work (we get field mice in during the harvest)
The plastic traps are excellent and peanut butter is the best bait. The humane traps are plain daft as they will just come back unless you release them in New York.
Siamese cats are excellent mousers and anti-allergenic.

if you can fit a pencil thru you can fit a mouse thru. the exterminater we had in said the sonic things dont work, they like sweet things better than savory.
he also said dont worry about crumbs etc, they go everywhere because they are just plain nosey he said.

Our mice pooed on the sonic thing. It drove me mad though.

The only thing that worked for us (having tried everything, traps - 'humane' and snappy, poison, blocking holes, rubbish sonic thing) was finally getting a cat. She has a star chart on which we record the corpses (there have been considerably more mauled ones that I have 'rescued' and thrown over the garden fence to die in relative untortured peace). Her current tally is 24 and we've had her for less than a year (considering a female mouse can reproduce within 3 weeks, have up to 10 babies and do it all again within a month, she has decimated the local mouse popualation). She no longer catches them inside the house but goes into neighbours' gardens (houses?) and gets them.

A cat is the only thing to get - friends too will testify to their effectiveness. Even the smell of one living in the house puts them off. And a female apparently is better than a male. Unsurprisingly.

I had a problem about 3 years ago. We used traps (I also do not like the poison) with chocolate. Worked very well, and DH always disposed of them quietly

My next door neighbour had a very bad problem recently, but the mice never got to my house (we share the kitchen wall!). I never ever ever ever ever keep food avaliable for them, and even though I am not paranoid about crumbs I am careful enough.
I spoke to the pest control officer that came to my neighbour's house and he said we just need to close all the gaps. I thought it was impossible, but he says that it can be done
He also said that if all the holes are blocked you can be a filthy as you like and you'll not have mice. But if the holes are not blocked you can be as clean as you like and you will have mice at some stage or another...

Problem for us with blocking all the holes in the house is that we live in a rickety old Victorian terraced house and they come under the floorboards for miles. The vermin man said that baby ones can squeeze through the gaps in the floorboards (even under fitted carpets) or cling and climb on the OUTSIDE of water pipes that run in from the street into your house. I gave up in the face of this but then I am quite lazy.

Thanks for the advice, gals. Have used the foamy stuff in holes in the cupboard we think is the problem (only place we've seen mouse poop) and I think it's done the trick. Thanks, I can relax now!