mouse deterrents..the ones that emit sound frequencies...

[HairyIrene]

any experience?
do they work?

saw one of our wee sleekit courin' timorous beastie friends and i dont like it..

any advice appreciated
tia

I'll be watching this with interest. We've tried the 'kind' traps which do not kill the mice. They have got through half a jar of peanut butter and we have caught two.

the mice get used to them apparently
we use traps (the sudden death type)

We had one mouse - caught it in a humane trap baited with galaxy - they love chocolate.

Friends' experience was that the noise deterrent did not work.

Borrow a cat for a week?

Have one in our shed as I saw a rat go in there in the summer . Cleared the rubbish off the floor in the shed and bought a noisy anti-rodent device and haven't seen it since. However I've found 2 dead mice in 10 days in the shed ... dh jokes that they died with their paws over their ears. So not sure that it works. had to switch it off now as moved guinea pigs into shed .... don't think they'd appreciate that!

We have used the sound emitting ones and they seem to have helped (cat also helps although she is not always entirely helpful).

We've got one outside to stop a cat pooing in our garden. Has been 90% successful so far.

Have yet to find a mouse trap that works tbh so maybe try the electronic device? Where would you put it though, do you know where hte mice are coming in?

We got one after I found a mouse in my oven - it didn't get rid of the established mice, which we had to trap, but [fingers crossed emoticon] we haven't yet had any new ones.

NB: if you do get one DO remember to turn it off when you are looking after someone else's pet rats...

No, they make no difference at all IME. I am using snappy traps and poison, but keep having new influxes of baby mice despite having a couple of those sonic things.

thanks peeps!

i saw one in my kitchen and its giving me the real royal horrors...
dh reckons they come through the internal building trunking and sneaking in here through the tinsy tiny gaps in skirting and washing machine..
our apartment block has a problem and we have meeting soon so wanted to suggest alternatives as obviously their half assed rentokil approach does not work...

I think I'm in much the same position as you Hairy. By a process of elimination the mice can only be getting into our flat through the gaps around pipework etc and some of them are going to be nearly impossible to block off. I have bought a pack of wirewool though and we're going to give finding all the gaps our best shot at the weekend.

And, not wishing to alarm you further, if you have seen one then you almost certainly have several, and it won't be that long before you are catching babies as well.

oh bran
its making me queasy...and i cant get rustybears oven mouse outta my mind...arrghh

completely agree, i sort of think if you've seen one then you must imagine hundreds

dh wont use the kill traps, and i really dont want to have to deal with the dead bodies myself (ol rabbie burns spinning in my head..)

wire wool sounds a good idea
dh said he would block all points of entry, so i will suggest that
hey, we're both set for a fun weekend ..

we pay a hefty service fee for little or no service though (rentokil comes when everyone, bar me sahm, is at work and even if their poison traps did work they dont come for ages to check..)

am building up to have a vent-o-rant for our meeting ...

The trouble is if there are poison traps around you shouldn't really use humane traps and release the mice back outside as they my have eaten some poison and be eaten themselves by some other wild animal. And anyway, you're not supposed to leave the humane traps overnight as the mice get distressed in the trap so it's not humane anymore. I really feel that the best way is a snappy trap as it's a quick death.

You might find (as I did) that seeing your child lying/playing on the floor fills you with such horror and hatred that disposing of small furry dead bodies seems less disgusting. [yeuch emoticon]

I filled gaps with a mixture of polyfilla & wire wool - apparently they only need a gap of 9mm to get in.

I don't think they work. From an advert I saw it seems that things like furniture block the signal so maybe that's why but we had several sound traps in our house last year and were out freeing mice on an almost nightly basis (no fun when 11mths pg with twins). Cats also useless (had 5).

Ours come through from the next door neighbour (it's always been a problem). The council come every so often and put poison under her floor boards but our house is privately owned so they won't come. We used humane traps but found they were useless. Had much more success sitting sill with a container and catching them, ours love dried spaghetti and look so cute when innocently sitting in the box munching on a strand. But I cannot bear to think of them messing about in the kids rooms or in the kitchen.

DH lost his temper finally last year and I think caught the last one on a sticky trap after it went on a rampage in the kitchen (cooker/units etc). I say think because he would not confess what had happened to it and by then I was about to drop and had bigger concerns. So far this year I haven't seen/heard any but next door tells me she can still hear one in her bedroom so I guess it's just a matter of time.

muchos gracias, you guys

Mice and the Various Hideous (and largely unsuccessful) Ways to Get Rid of Them - by Someone Who Knows.

1. The sound thing - loada rubbish. It said innaudible to human ears but I must be a mouse cos it drove me mad. Finally gave up on it when we found mouse poo right next to it.

2. 'Humane' traps do catch mices but are not humane - they say int small print that trapped mice must be let out within 6 hours or something. So that means you have to get up in the middle of the night and check if you got one, put yr slippers on and pad across the road(s) to the park where you release them only to have them a) be murdered by rats or b) use their very good homing instinct to come straight back for more oven/toaster/cupboard fun. Option c is when you have not discovered them for 12 hours and their tiny frames are covered in sores/peanunt butter grease and they can barely stand up straight with shock. Release them to fates a or d) dying of exposure.

3. Snappy traps - effective on yr own fingers and that's about it IME. Friend had one that caught a mouse by the back leg - it screamed for 2 hours (how she could listen to it for 2 hours???) until she killed it when attempting to prize it's broken limb from trap (how???)

4. Poison - works but f**k, the stink of their ickle rotting carcasses under the floorboards...

5. Blocking up all the holes - Mice can fit in a space the width of a pencil. Our (victorian) house has about a million pencil sized holes. After fitting a 'bristol strip' (oo-er) to the bottom of the front door, I gave up.

After exhausting all these methods and several years of mouse abuse later, we finally relented and got the ONLY THING THAT WORKED

6. A Cat - warm and beautiful and curled on my lap as I type but evil Mouse Killer Extraordinaire for the rest of the time. She even has a star chart on the fridge for how many mice she has killed - 21 at last count (plus 1 coal tit and 1 starling but the less said about THAT the better). We loan her out to neighbours - she got one out of Mrs Downstairs' bath tub the other day. She do torture them most horribly though. Tis a miserable sight. However, a lot better than mouse shit in yr grill.

scarlet
i got so hopeful reading your post
but
now feel quite dispondent...

we are not allowed pets here and our beautiful much missed cat (she was with us 14 years) was retired to the country and is now curled up on mil's lap in her mouse-less house...

what to do..?

they aint got the grill
...yet...

Ours are in the garage (lured in by guinea pig food). This morning the beautiful white cat next door shot through the garage with one in his mouth, so now I've left the door open and am hoping for carnage!

oh sherbert
i am gonna cry
my cat was beautiful white and a great mouser...

good luck with carnage if that doesnt sound too odd!

had a bad mouse problem. bought those sound thingys as they were on special offer in aldi. got three. (one plugged in the hall, one in the kitchen and one in the lounge). Have not seen a mouse nor evidence of one since. Don't know if they work but all the time i'm not seeing one then they're staying put!

Oh gawd, I sympathise. I think everyone else has mentioned most of my strategies (main one being the cat) but one extra thing; you could also try to be completely anal about food. Keep everything like flour, pasta, cereal etc in kilner jars or tupperware, buy a breadbin with a tight-fitting lid, sweep up all crumbs and hoover kitchen daily, get a tight fitting lid for the bin, keep oven door shut tight, put all food in high cupboards.

It's not infallible but mice thrive better when there is something for them to eat and if you reduce the incentive as much as possible it does help. (although in the absence of any food "my" mice have resorted to greaseproof paper. Yum)

oh, re the sound things, you have to be careful as some people can hear them, especially children and it's mighty unpleasant.

I've got one and not sure if it works or not but haven't seen a mouse since getting it . Haven't seen many tigers either though.

tyv
before i found evidence (mouse shit) i actually cleaned my cupboards and did all that to my food (packaged in tupperware etc)..the cupboards were fine so for that i am eternally grateful..

i am quite anal about kitchen cleanliness generally and found that they are behind the fridge mainly and are coming up through pipe work onto surfaces which is too much for me to take..

we are hole blocking this weekend and i might try the sound thing (thanks cherub!) but i suffer from migraines so am bit in two minds..