what to do about mice in the house

[unsped]

i woke up couple weeks ago to something going through my cliff bars, turns out it was a house mouse.

i then mouse proofed all my food etc.. and cleaned up to they wouldn't have anywhere in my room to eat/nest. all was well for awhile, then recently i noticed some mouse poop in my room. i disenfected my carpet and removed the poop and set out humane traps this was 3 days ago.

in the last 2 nights ive caught 2 mice and gone for a walk at 4am to release them elseware.

the problem is, i don't want to kill them, but its coming to a point where i should tell my landlord and roomates (who i know will put out kill traps or poison).

tonight im gonna see if i can try to find where they are coming in, although i suspect they are coming underneath the main door to my room as its the only place i could imagine.

ive heard the electric traps are fairly humane, what i dont want is a snap trap to miss there necks and maim them leading to a slow painful death.

p.s. its a clean well kept house, its just out in the country

 

[ElFenix]

see the movie 'mouse hunt'

 

[sixone]

If they're in the building, they will find a way into your room. That's just how they are.

You need to tell your landlord, so that he can check the foundation for entrance holes. Kill traps and poison won't stop new ones from coming in, and there is an endless supply out there, just waiting to find you.

 

[Jeff7]

I've found that using dried fruit with a tough skin in snap traps ensures a good strike. I'll unfold the trigger with a needlenose pliers, and put a dried cherry in there, and bend the trigger back down so its teeth dig into the cherry's skin. This holds it in place very securely. That, combined with the toughness of the skin and the sweet smell of the cherry, ensures that the mouse will be quite insistent on trying to remove it, really get his head in there and muscle around. Trigger trips, but his teeth are still locked onto the cherry, so there's no chance to pull away. Snap, perfect hit. And the cherry's probably still intact. Here, one cherry has already caught at least 11 mice over the course of a year, every one a perfect neck-breaker, and most of them still had their teeth in the prize. I don't know how they get in, but they don't last long once they find the free fruit stand.

The best ones were kind of like something out of Stephen King - I put traps in the "attic" above the garage. This attic consists of thick plywood laid across the rafters. But the traps were near the edges of the plywood. Here we also tie string around mouse traps, so that if there is an off-target hit, the mouse can't wander off to die in a wall somewhere with a trap around its leg. So anyway, when the traps were sprung, they flipped over the edge. The next day, we're greeted to two dead mice hanging from the garage ceiling. My mom saw them first and just bust up laughing.

 

[jadinolf]

Just sprinkle little pieces of cheese around the house. They love it.

 

[MmmSkyscraper]

Landmines, cluster bombs, shotguns, air strikes, miniguns, flamethrowers, tanks and ICBM's are your friends.

 

[0roo0roo]

snap traps. live traps are a joke for mice, where are you going to dump it? sticky traps are as good as death, probably rip the things skin orr or break its bones tryint to remove it from that, so you end up having to dispatch em anyways.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: jadinolf
Just sprinkle little pieces of cheese around the house. They love it.

Then you'll have to deal with Wallace's all over the place.

 

[mrzed]

Know any cats you could borrow for a few days?

Seriously. Cats work. I read recently that the slightest hint of cat smell raises cortisol levels in baby mice. They'll get the message.

When we got our first cat, we used to have mice living under the foundation in the downstairs bathroom. Not even in the house itself. We put the litter box in that bathroom, and within a few weeks, not a mouse to be heard. They just cleared out.

 

[unsped]

2 cats supposidly live downstairs, which is why the mice are upstairs now hehehe

i also know i can't prevent them from getting into the house, but i can probably keep them out of my room let the other people deal with em.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: mrzed
Know any cats you could borrow for a few days?

Seriously. Cats work. I read recently that the slightest hint of cat smell raises cortisol levels in baby mice. They'll get the message.

When we got our first cat, we used to have mice living under the foundation in the downstairs bathroom. Not even in the house itself. We put the litter box in that bathroom, and within a few weeks, not a mouse to be heard. They just cleared out.

I guess my cats didn't smell right then. The mice didn't seem to care that we had cats. Even after one of my cats would catch and kill a mouse, the rest apparently figured, "Damn, one's dead. Breed faster! And stay out of the light!"