Mice keep dying behind the walls - is this avoidable?! 🤢

[PARunnerGirl]

Been living in rural Scotland for a year now and this has happened twice in the last few months. Omg the smell 🤢 It lasts 2-3 weeks and then goes away but it is so horrible at the time and also embarrassing if we have friends or family staying!

We have been around the perimeter of the house and sealed up any gaps we can see but these are such tiny wee creatures, I guess it is just inevitable they will get in? The good news is that I have never seen one, or evidence of one, inside the house itself.

Does anyone have any recommendations 1) to keep the population as low as possible and 2) reduce the possibility that they die while inside the house? Or is this just another part of rural living to accept?! 😩😅

A cat?!

I think I’d be getting an expert in to block up gaps I wouldn’t necessarily find.

We live rurally, backing onto a farm, and mice are an unavoidable problem in my experience. Apparently they can squeeze through holes as small as a pencil, though I'm not quite sure how! They can also climb and are determined little critters. We find it a problem in the winter mainly, I presume they are looking for warmth. We just have traditional mousetraps round the house. It's not nice, but they do die quickly and you have the bodies. The only time we have had real smell issues was when we used poison and ended up with rotting mice under the floorboards. As you say, the smell is repulsive.
I don't like killing them, I think the little brown field mice we get are quite cute really. But they are very destructive and unfortunately humane traps don't really work as they will travel miles back home so I think traditional traps are the best option. We also have ultrasonic repellents but I don't think they actually do anything!

Hi @MrsAvocet This is all quite reassuring because it is exactly my experience. Winter is also when we experience it more. We thought poison might reduce the population if we used it for a period of time but I think you are right in that they then die somewhere 😔 The humane traps were pointless and I don’t think those ultrasonic things do much either!

@WaitingForSunnyDays That’s what everyone says! 😆 I am not in the market for a pet right now though!

@Cornettoninja I did think about this but it’s quite a large, old property and these wee field mice are honestly so tiny! I’m not sure anyone could find every single pencil sized hole they could squeeze through 😔

This is what cats are for :)

Do you like cats? Mine seems to catch one or two every day and there is no chance of them voluntarily coming into the house! Although it is a bit risky as our other cat only catches butterflies...

@Heybearu @Paddleboarder I know you are right and this is how most locals deal with the situation! I’m not a huge pet kind of person and also travel for work loads 😩

Personally I think setting mousetraps is more humane than having a cat. One of my local friends has a cat and aside from the fact that it has a tendency to present her with mauled rodents, birds etc as gifts at inopportune moments they are not always dead and it seems to play with its prey before killing. I know that's natural cat behaviour but I think I would rather have my mice killed with a quick, clean blow and have to dispose of only largely intact bodies that I know where I'll find.
Plus we have chickens and I'm not sure they'd take kindly to a cat on their turf!

I have never known mice to smell for weeks. Couple of days at most and not that bad. What you describe sounds more like rats! 🐀

The snappy traps are the most humane. They die instantly, I won’t put poision in the house as they will simply die under the floor boards or something and stink thr place out. You need to remove the poison and use snappy traps instead.

No they stink for weeks as they decompose if you can’t get to them.

They can easily smell awful for a good week or so, no way a couple of days.

and the smell is absolutely awful and yes they are mice not rats

The first one I found was at rhe back of a large cupboard behind a lot of stuff. I honestly had never smelled that smell before, and had no idea what it was, by the time I found it, it had maggots. And was oozing. Behind a wall and it’s going to stink as long as it decomposes. Defo not a couple of days.