Oh No! Mouse Sighted in My House - What Do I Do?!

[dymplz8]

I live out in the country and my home is surrounded by fields, so mice running through our house are a common thing, although after 3years, I still can't get used to it. I unfortunately have a husband that believes the snap traps are the best way to go. We've found that peanut butter works well, but they also seem to love tootsie rolls too!! I feel so horrible when I hear those traps snap and I have never been able to go and look at them. I always make my husband take out the traps. We did however one year get THREE Mice Snapped on ONE TRAP:yuck:

 

[janetupnorth]

Blech! My mom used them all of the time. She thought they hid the smell of ciggarettes. Ugh, nope. :yuck: :yuck: You just have a nasty mix of moth balls, ashes, and butts. She would add them to the sweeper bag, and sprinkle the flakes in the bottom of the trash cans.

Because of her using them so often, I hate the smell of moth balls too, but it's worth a try to get rid of these guys!

ROFLOL!!!! This is killing me today! Balls and butts...what a combo...

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

The early bird gets the worm.But the second mouse gets the cheese.

 

[erinyourpclady]

EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! Electrocuted and burnt to a crisp. I need to go shower...I am SO creeped out.

 

[pampered.chris]

Uh-oh. This may be a problem! My dad has two old and very well loved (worth a lot too) cars in our garage...he is planning on moving them in a month or so when the weather is warm and dry. Never even thought of this...he may open up the one (that's covered with a car cover) and find nests! The other car, I can see inside, and I don't think they are in there.

Kelly, Don't forget to check the engines for mouse nests. When I went in for my last oil change a while back the garage cleaned my air filter and found popcorn, chicken and raisins in my car's oil filter. This being the car I drive every single day. The mice were hiding in my garage. Mouse nests can wreck major havoc on a car engine, open the hood and look for nests before you start them up!!

My dad always said to give them instant potato flakes....this is gross...they eat them and they are salty so they go look for water and they drink water and the flakes expand and they explode from the inside out...sorry for the grossness. I use snap traps.

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

Hmmmm...less danger for pets, too.

 

[wadesgirl]

I have had plenty of experience with mice inside and outside. I had car issues and after $300 worth of tune ups, they couldn't figure out what was going on so they dug into my engine and found mice nests but no mice. They had bite into my electrical wiring which was making my engine misfire. Nice!

I had one in my last apartment. The trick is to find the route they take and set the trap along that. I noticed one running along a certain wall so I set some traps along the way loaded with peanut butter. Just as I was about to fall asleep that night I heard it snap. It was really gross to hear it shaking in the trap but then it was gone. I had to get gloves on and not even look as I picked it up!

I think I would rather have mice than what we have in our place right now! We have some kind of larger animal in our bathroom. Hoping it's a stray cat that found a way in from the floorboards but possibly a racoon or a possum! I really don't want to go home tonight and I'm freaked out to be in the bathroom by myself. Long story but we just made the discovery this morning when we thought the cat was getting in to the food bucket that was stored in the bathroom cabinet. Until my husband saw the cat behind him!

 

[myinnerchef]

I don't live in a rural area and we still have mice. They went away for a few years when our new neighbors moved in with several outdoor cats. Those cats were very good mousers. Last year, two of their cats died and our mouse problem has returned.

We use the poison pellets, hidden discretely behind the stove and fridge where the kids can't get to them. We don't have furry pets so that's not a concern. And I never saw them on my counters. I think I would have to wash down the whole kitchen with bleach. Yuck! When the kids were very small, we used the glue traps but the first time we trapped a mouse in one of those, it squeaked and squeaked and I thought I was going to be sick. I had DH go out immediately and dispose of it and I switched to poison the next day.

I'm campaigning for adopting a rat terrier, but DH is against it. If it gets really bad this summer, I'm overruling him.

 

[Kitchen Diva]

OH! I am sooooooooooooo freaked out right now! Two nights ago, I saw a mouse in our living room. I was looking for my DSS lost library book, so I went to move the couch and it ran along the baseboard. DH and I tried to look for it to get it out of the house, but couldn't find it. I put out those sticky boards behind both couches out there. Nothing has stuck to them yet...


Then, just a minute ago, that little creature was on my KITCHEN COUNTER!

What the heck am I supposed to do now?? We have a dog, Evan (3 years old) and an obviously LAZY cat....so I am concerned about using poison. Plus...don't they go somewhere and die then and then STINK?

EEEWWWWWW! I am sooooooooooooooooooo grossed out!



Please tell me we can take care of this ourselves and not have to pay for an exterminator!

Eeewww. Gross. Yuck. Goosebumps. Cooties. Blegh!

Most people don't know that dogs are better at catching mice than cats. I learned that when we had a FAMILY of mice living in our crawl space.

The most sanitary way to get rid of them is not with those torterous glue pads- but little black enclosed traps that kids and animals can't get into, and you just need a little bit of peanut butter, pull back the trap, and close the little door. Once it snaps, go to the trash, and pull the lever and you don't ever have to see or touch the mouse.

You will see their tail sticking out of the trap however. We caught about 6 or 8 in our garage before I realized that they must be somewhere in the house that is level with the garage foundation....and sure enough they were eating and living high off the hog in our crawl sapce. We never go there it is just storage. They ate through 2 Eddie Bauer sleeping bags, lots of clothes, fabric, crafts, books, tapes, stationary, decorations, baskets...

After setting traps in the crawl space and in the closet leading to the crawl space, and along the walls in our lower level- we haven't see one since!

I named them as we killed them. #1 was Chalupa Larry...Then Taco Bob, Burrito Betty, Churro Lucy...you get the idea.

Best of luck. I got those black traps at a hardware store for about $1.89 per piece.

 

[Kitchen Diva]

I will try the peanut butter thing Vanessa...

I have NO IDEA where they are coming from. We live in a mostly rural town, and have fields very close to us, so mice are not new around here...just freaking the crap out of me!

We live in a suburb, but have wooded areas, parks and tall grassy fields within 2 blocks of our house. That's where they come from. In the winter I take the dogs for a run thgough those fields, because with the snow and tall grass, it is quite the leg workout for man and beast...our female retreiver will stick her nose in the snow and come out with a mouse. She's amazing.

We didn't have food that was drawing the mice to our home- we had their version of the Ritz Carlton!

Funny story When I worked for Wells Fargo doing mortgages I worked in a bank. I had one of those really nice tower laser printers. Well one day I came in and ALL my jellybeans were gone from my candy dish. The bankers were little candy whores, so I just figured they waited until I had left for the day and chowed down on my entire dish of jelly beans.

So I get all settled and am preparing to print a Good Faith Estimate and fax it off to someone and my printer won't work- it made this terrible noise. So I pulled out the bottom drawer and ALL my jellybeans and quite a bit of mouse poop was sitting in the bottom paper tray! I had such a laugh. Those little critters HAD to be hard at work all night because there was a good 2 cups of jelly beans in that paper tray! So I moved the letter sized paper to the top tray and the legal sized to the bottom, and that kept them out of my printer. All candy had to be taken off my desk, and they blamed me for the mouse problem- I was upset because I was not the only one that ate at their desk, and I'm quite clean.

Other times I'd find the foil wrapped chocolate Santa's all over my desk with little teeth marks in them, and other foil wrapped candies, depending on the season. I finally got a candy dish with a lid!

Fast forward a month or so, and the guys bathroom starts having plumbing issues- Yup, you guessed it- they were nesting in the wall by the plumbing in a closet, and the PVS plumbing pipes and the sheetrock and the closet had to be replaced.

THat'll teach them to tell me that me and my jellybeans are causing a mouse infestation!

 

[dianevill]

Hmmmm, think any of these tips will help me find the hermit crab that's lost in my house?

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

The best mouser is neither cat nor dog, but a ferret. We had one for awhile, and Squeaky was single-minded when he got on the trail. He even ate them - except for the heads. Not real nice to step on in the middle of the night, but better that, I guess.

 

[rennea]

Eww...neither do I! I had an aunt that used them ALL the time and I grew up hating them...

I don't like the smell of moth balls myself but I would rather smell moth balls then leave with disease ridden vermin:yuck:

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

If you have a critter in your home, like a possum or a 'coon, just call animal control right away. DO NOT fool with him, yourself.Having been bitten by a raccoon, I can tell you that spending the night in the ER is not only less than fun, the cost of rabies treatment is the down payment on a new Cadillac.

 

[Kitchen Diva]

If you have a critter in your home, like a possum or a 'coon, just call animal control right away. DO NOT fool with him, yourself.

Having been bitten by a raccoon, I can tell you that spending the night in the ER is not only less than fun, the cost of rabies treatment is the down payment on a new Cadillac.

And about as painful as that down payment is...

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

Actually, it's not that bad. The old-fashioned needle that they used to use is long gone. But I will tell you that I got one in each arm, each leg, each butt cheek, and several around the tooth holes. Since those were in my finger, and there are a lot of nerve endings in fingers, that was not real comfortable. But not as bad as it was a few years ago.

 

[Kitchen Diva]

Actually, it's not that bad. The old-fashioned needle that they used to use is long gone. But I will tell you that I got one in each arm, each leg, each butt cheek, and several around the tooth holes. Since those were in my finger, and there are a lot of nerve endings in fingers, that was not real comfortable. But not as bad as it was a few years ago.

That's good to know! I had a friend back in the day that had to get quite a few of them in the abdomen area. Is that how they used to do it back in the 80's?

BTW- I just read in several places that of the average household pets, that dogs were better mousers than cats. I guess they figured that not too many people had ferrets!

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

Ferrets are a riot! They are so flexible it's like they have no skeleton at all. When they run, their hind feet are right behind their front feet, so they resemble a running horseshoe. Most of them like shiny things, and will steal jewelry and metal things. Their booty gets taken to hidey holes, usually under a dresser or other piece of furniture. Squeaky (he was named for the ferret in the old Budweiser commercials) didn't care for shiny stuff, he liked plastic. If anything of ours was missing, we'd just go look in his usual hiding places.The best ferret toy ever, though, was 15 feet of dryer vent. He spent hours running from one end of the tunnel to the other.

 

[reba515]

I had to laugh when I saw this thread. Although I haven't seen any in my house for a few years , today while waiting in line at Home Depot one ran right across my foot!
Yes I screached (maybe a little too loud )

 

[KellyTheChef]

Guess what I just caught?

Yep! I should take a pic and upload it, but I don't want to spend time on it!

I found him in my stove drawer, then he took off. Later on, I heard him in my bottom cupboard, so I moved some stuff out of there, and put in one of those sticky traps with peanut butter on it. Within 2 minutes I could hear the little guy squeaking! Right now he's outside on top of the garbage can. DH is here and wouldn't drown him. I told him, that it would just come back inside if he got off of there, but he said no way. I said, OK, but if I catch ANY MORE they are getting drowned! I'll just throw the entire thing in a bucket of water upside down.

Ewww! I hope it was just a freak accident and he got in here and was stuck... I can't stand the thought of more of them running around getting into our stuff!

 

[KellyTheChef]

BTW- I *will* keep setting the traps! I want to be CERTAIN that they are gone! I know, when you have one, you normally have more than one!

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

They travel in pairs. At least in pairs. If you captured one, you have more.

 

[Kitchen Diva]

I think those glue traps are cruel. Better to make it quick and painless- snap their necks with an enclosed snappy type trap! Sorry- as much as I hate mice, I think they are cute and would prefer they die quickly, not slowly and in pain...

 

[merego]

Eeeks Kelly...
We back up to woods and we had a mouse problem and I was like the lady from Tom & Jerry, up on a chair with a broom screaming. My DH tried to take care of the situation himslef but I got tired of that and seeing the little"presents' the mouse was leaving so I called a pest control company and we have not had a mouse since. Now, If I could only get rid of those snakes in my garden. Good luck Kelly

 

[janetupnorth]

Love ferrets! I have too many people/critters/instruments/PC stuff in my small house so not adding ferrets! However, I used to pet sit for friends with 2 ferrets...they were so much fun! ...and if litter trained usually pretty clean. They love to play hide and seek and are VERY curious animals.We have some great ones that visit work. It is a great pet for kids ton the mice, yes Kelly, they ALWAYS travel in pairs!!!! So I couldn't figure out from the post...did he just go in the trash or is he actually let loose to come back again?

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

The snakes in your garden eat bugs. I wish I had more snakes in my yard!

 

[merego]

The snakes in your garden eat bugs. I wish I had more snakes in my yard!

I'll send them all your way then, because I don't want them. I swear they are telling there snake friends to come over and play in my garden and they all laugh as I run screaming through my back yard.:yuck:

 

[Intrepid_Chef]

EEEEKKKKK!!!!!

I had the same problem almost every fall in my house. (It was solved after we put in the glass block windows ... one of my windows was covered by paneling and we didn't know it was broken!

I also use peanut butter in my traps. But those mice are crafty! I woke up several times to find my trap licked clean and un-snapped! So I got a toothpick and shoved peanut butter under the "lip" and that did the trick.

Remember where there is 1 mouse there is a family, so you will need to set out several traps. I found the ones I put INSIDE the cupboard under the sink were the most effective.

And meanwhile ... make sure there is no food package they can get into in places where you see their "evidence." One year, a mouse got into my cocoa container and scattered it all over my cupboard! I spent a lot of time scrubbing the tops of my cans that year ...

 

[KellyTheChef]

Love ferrets! I have too many people/critters/instruments/PC stuff in my small house so not adding ferrets! However, I used to pet sit for friends with 2 ferrets...they were so much fun! ...and if litter trained usually pretty clean. They love to play hide and seek and are VERY curious animals.

We have some great ones that visit work. It is a great pet for kids too.


On the mice, yes Kelly, they ALWAYS travel in pairs!!!! So I couldn't figure out from the post...did he just go in the trash or is he actually let loose to come back again?

I wanted to drown him (quick, um, er death) but DH thought that was mean. I didn't want him to get free and come back in. So, DH set him on top of the trash can outside, and he actually died within 10 minutes or so. Poor thing probably gave himself a heart attack trying to get off of the sticky stuff!

 

[merego]

You can get no kill traps, then DH would drive the mouse across the street to the other set of woods. We were told if you relocated the mouse to another location, he wouldn't come back, however, the idiot who told us that forgot to mention that where there is one mouse, there are 2 or 3 or a family and they multiply so they never go away unless you kill them all. DH said they were cute, tiny little things, I think they are gross and nasty!! Little mouse poop in my pantry or drawers is not cute. I was bleaching and scrubbing cabinets everyday, I am a clean/germ freak and I wasn't having those mice take up residence in my house.