A MOUSE!!! what do I do?

[solo]

Well, that's it really...A bloody big mouse has just walked into the room...I've had the doors open in this warmer weather and no longer have my doggy what do I do please?

Pannacotta, Humph, if you had had large mouse families in your house you ight feel differently - I have always loved little things like mice but when they are eating through electric cables and you are wondering why your phone doesn't work for three days, leaving little puddles of wee on your floors (or worktops for some people) and the important documents you were keeping in a cupboard have been nibbled to bits, you might not be so laissez faire about it.

Mice do stick around if allowed and they eat things. Clothes too - they're like moths but much bigger.

Mice are dirty little destructive pests and not even good to eat. ANy more coming in my house will be destroyed just like the last lot were.

And I am with whoever mentioned the PTSD, I am still slightly twitchy about any strange noises now.

Well! no luck in catching the bugger! I've been blocking a gap under the lounge door with lengths of rolled up newspaper and it nibbled at that last night, obviously trying to get out! I don't think it has though. I've set a second trap and baited it with cooking chocolate, as I don't have anything else(I'd have eaten it anyway!)...This is soooo frustrating! Mice are horrible and breed so quickly. I'm hoping it's not a pregnant female. They are dirty things and I'm sure they do carry all kinds of diseases

My grandma used to say, "Where there's one, there's two, and where there are two, there's a family!" So true. Good luck catching and despatching, solo!

Thank you! I'm sure it's alone though. Just hope it's not pg! It's still in the lounge as when I went out I lodged the rolled up newspaper under the door and it's had another nibble, obviously trying to get out. There are no droppings in any other room either, so that looks good. Just got to try to trap it now, but it's avoiding the traps I've put down. I've bought a Rentokil snappy trap(plastic), so I'll put that one down too.

This is driving me crazy! I sat here last night watching the rodent running around my lounge, along the curtain pole and being very tempted by the Cadbury's double chocolate in the newest trap, but this morning, there is no chewed paper at the door, no fresh droppings and no sign of it. Do they ever just drop down dead perhaps from getting nothing to eat? anybody know?
I don't know what to do now. The last thing I want is for Dp to come here at the weekend and suddenly see a mouse in my house!(I haven't told him).

We had successions of mice - one summer we caught about 15 - but the actitvity patterns were really varied. Dh checked the trap every morning. Sometimes there was a mouse, other times just fresh droppings, and other times nothing. It was as if they only came near the trap every two or three days. They were living behind/under our kitchen cabinets and their only escape into the house was blocked off, so they can only have been going back outside. Perhaps they don't eat every night, or perhaps they go to different places to eat every night.

Alternatively, what flooring do you have? A mouse can get anywhere that you can put a pencil into, so if you have floorboards, then it may have got down by the radiator pipes or something and gone off somewhere else in search of food.

we tried everything,pest controller was good-ish,but in the end,gave in and got a new cat - he sorted them out. know it's not always an option though

My Ds saw it this morning and said he watched it chew at the door blocking paper. It's chewed the lining to one of my(very expensive)curtains, though I guess it could be worse, it could've been the curtain itself.
Got home tonight and no chewed paper, not many droppings either, but I've put poison down. I hate doing it for all sorts of reasons, but I just can't do this anymore. More luck needed please!

Hi Solo, hope you've managed to catch your mouse. I saw a really big one in our kitchen last week and it scared the hell out of me. We usually leave the kitchen door and our bedroom doors open at night (our son is 13 months old) so who knows where it's been. Dh spent ages looking for where it could have come from and blocked up a few spaces behind the cupboard. THen we bought a number of different traps from Robert Dyas and put a big black rat trap next to the fridge (we have an built-in one and there's a gap underneath). We caught one yesterday (not sure if it was a rat or a mouse), reset the trap, left others in the bedrooms and we've gone away for the weekend. Am not looking forward to going back !!

Message withdrawn

Hi, yes it's GONE!!!
I got back from a week away having put two lots of poison down - one in the lounge and one in the kitchen(don't know if I mentioned that it had escaped from the lounge). I also put one snappy trap down baited with chocolate next to the kitchen poison. It was in the trap on my return. Phew! I don't think there were any offspring and I wasn't wanting to try to see what sex it was before binning it, so I just hope it was a lone male. The smell wasn't great, but at least it wasn't in a place I couldn't get to.

Really glad to hear that you are shot of the mouse. Sorry about the curtains! I agree with other posters, that poison is best avoided though. When we went abroad for a couple of years our (otherwise exemplary) tenants put a load of poison in our loft, and it got everywhere when we came home and brought our stuff back down. Didn't know whether to vacuum or brush it up, and if to use a mask, or..? You know exactly where you are with a trap. And dead mice under the floorboards don't half pong. You have to wait weeks for them to stop.

If you feel that mouse murder is a bit extreme as a first response, box traps do work if you leave the top off and put bait in for a couple of days until it/they get used to feeding there and then put the lid on. Then make sure that you take them for a drive before relesing them - a least a mile or they;ll just nip back home.

If you feel that mouse murder is a bit extreme as a first response, box traps do work if you leave the top off and put bait in for a couple of days until it/they get used to feeding there and then put the lid on. Then make sure that you take them for a drive before relesing them - a least a mile or they;ll just nip back home.

We live in the country in an old house and had mouse problems, but finally sorted it by acquiring 3 outside living cats who came from a farm with good hunting pedigree!

I actually started to consider a cat and I just don't dooo cats!
Glad it's gone. I'd have been happy for it to leave the way it came in, but since it wasn't going to do that, murder was the only way...