Mice Season

Love mice and rats... No paintings of one though... Hmmmm new painting to do soon

I dont like them very much, but try to catch em and put them outside next to the neighbors house

they get caught in my rat traps, moles too. and i just found out we have owls in the area. i didn't think nj had owls. i heard an odd whinny sound and looked it up, screech owl. now i have to look for them. though they are small, i wonder if they still eat mice.

mice outside - no problem. mice inside... nooooo wayyy. and i'm the one who always sees them.


---Mike Savad

Owls are really cool to watch. Maybe they eat mice, and you can get a cool picture of the owl grabbing it.

hahaha

Oh man, thats worst than a bad nude

Cleaning out the downstairs and a dead one fell out of a bag into my wife's lap this morning.

We also have a lovely smell of a decaying one in the front hallway. My dog have been going nuts over creatures the past few weeks. Scratching at the walls, sniffing all around - inside and out.

The weather is turning cooler, so they should start their infiltration from the local fields and woods real soon. Always happens. We use the glue traps which are pretty effective.

Awww Christy.... My two rats looked like that once. They have gone now... Old age. I do miss them.

I once moved into a hotel for four days while my sister tracked down the mouse I'd seen in my kitchen. Checked in at 3 a.m., with an overnight bag and a laptop. They probably thought I was running from the law! ;-)

Luckily, I haven't had the pleasure of rodent guests for more than a decade.

It's alwYs day season here. Honey catches at least one a day. We send them off to the nearest landfill.
There's nothing adorable about pack rats that eat your irrigation system.

2 dogs + 1 cat = 0 mice (Ok, sometimes they bring one as a trophy.)

Have read that Peppermint Oil helps as a deterrent. Have some in the garage where I store my bird seed and haven't seen any new evidence since.

A few drops of Concentrated peppermint oil in a small glass of water in locations. Another benefit...garage also smelling very pretty. :)

Cheers!

Michel Soucy
Visit me on my Facebook fan page

Michel, I like the idea of the aroma of peppermint oil around the place. I'll research to see what else it can be used for. ;-)

Had one making a nest in my car engine last year. Yeah they are so adorable.

Rodents are a fascinating topic. Even more fascinating are the predators that prey upon them.

i find peppermint oil evaporates too fast. all the things they said that chased rats away only seemed to attract them. catnip plants - didn't work. animal away spray, nope. i forget what else i tried.

glue traps - avoid those, the mouse slowly suffocates, which is kind of mean. have a hearts work, but you have to drop them off some place. snap traps seem like the meanest, but they work fast. you might have to secure them though, i find the rat traps pull back as they flip if the thing is near it. peanut butter works well for those traps and if not that, then PB and chocolate syrup.


---Mike Savad

Have a heart means taking your rodent problem and dropping it off on your neighbors.

BTW - Fascinating doc on rodent control on National Geographic - http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/rat-attack-ani

Seldom, since we moved here 24 years ago, have we had a "mice" (or rat) problem - we have owls - barn owls, great horned owls, and barred owls - and we have snakes - "rat snakes", aka corn snakes, as well as black snakes, (an occasional water moccasin or water snake - rarely a rattler). Did I mention this neighborhood is also overrun with stray/feral cats. - very few mice or rats can survive the menage of predators.

I get them periodically. Got the little plastic traps with a door so I can deposit them elsewhere once they are caught. I've been mouse free for several months now, but since it's getting colder, I have to start looking for those little symmetrical black specs on my stove top....YUCK!

anyone with scorpion, rattlesnake or lynx problems? lol
If you have a hankering, come visit!

I will tell you that EVERY house has mice. You may not know it, but you do. I owned a nuisance wildlife firm and I was in plenty of attics, from the $40,000 house to the 3 million dollar house. Every single one of them had mice "trails" in the attic.

Cats don't get them. They will catch the young and stupid, but the ones IN the walls and attic can't be touched by a cat.

Home remedies will not get rid of them. Why would a mouse leave your warm and cozy home into the cold because of peppermint?

Snap traps are easy and effective. So are glue boards. There are some mechanical traps that do well and they catch more than one at a time but then you have numerous live mice to deal with.

When you set a snap trap for a mouse in the house you want the trigger (the metal part) against the wall where they are moving. Never put a trap in the open as mice don't like to be in the open. Set it so even if the mouse didn't want the food they would have to cross over the pan to get across your trap if they are running right next to the baseboard. Occasionally a mouse will learn to jump over a trap so a solution to that is to set three traps next to each other. Peanut butter is good bait but another good bait is a little cotton ball tied to the trap with dental floss. They like the cotton for their nest and if it is tied to the pan they will set off the trap trying to pull the cotton free. The nice thing is cotton doesn't attract bugs like peanut butter can.

Mice, unlike rats, are naturally curious. Just the site of something new in their environment (like a trap) will interest them. I have caught mice with no bait at all by setting it correctly against the wall. It can take a rat a few weeks to get used to something new like a trap in their environment before they will investigate it.

One thing we did with my company was to exclude the mice as well as get rid of them. A mouse can get into an opening about the size of a dime. We would walk around the exterior of houses and find as many possible entry points as possible. Common entry areas were:

Where the pipe from the A/C, electric or gas lines entered the home.

At every corner of a home, where the siding comes together, there is a gap on the trim piece that covers the siding edges. If you check the corner of your house you can put your fingers in this hole at the bottom of your siding. The mice can climb up in this gap and either get in where the exterior plywood sheathing isn't tight or even climb up into the soffits of the home and get in the attic.

These are just the two most common areas. You have to do a thorough check of the exterior to find potential entry points. Areas around chimneys often have gaps.


To fix these problem areas we commonly used expanding foam insulation with copper mesh. Copper mesh is kind of like steel wool but it won't rust and discolor the exterior like steel wool will. First you stuff the area with as much copper mesh as you can and then fill the gap with the foam. Mice can chew through the foam but will give up when the reach the mesh. If you have larger gaps you can use something called hardware cloth. It is just metal screen with 1/4 or 1/2 spaces. Use the 1/4 for mice.

Now this won't guarantee you will never get mice in your house but it can help. I was working on an old house and literally watched a mouse jump up the front stairs and run in the open front door. They can sneak in right under your feet and you won't see them.

This is for mice but it can work for other rodents as well. Red squirrels were common home invaders as well along with the occasional flying squirrel and chipmunk. Those we would live trap and then do the exclusion work when they were gone.

John, that cotton ball tip = Brilliant! I'll pass it on. Thanks!

"...glue traps - avoid those, the mouse slowly suffocates,..."


Nope, what suffocated them was the plastic grocery bag I deposited them after catching them on the glue trap, then tying the bag shut real tight. ;)

Tell me about your avatar. Are you into the nuclear/science field perhaps, and art is just a hobby?

Ben, we have ways of talking to each other on the forum. I think perhaps your comments are beyond normal argument and have slipped over into insulting a member. Please take time to read the site forum rules, linked at the top of the forums main page.

Everyone, Back to the mice... Or is that thread finished now?

On a personal note, cut out the discussions on animal cruelty now and how you kill animals. Most of the people here do not want to see it, including myself

Thank you, Abbie.


Back to the mice. I was just out in the garage getting food for the dogs, and caught a quick glimpse of a mouse running behind some boxes. Time to place a trap out there. We've had a bit of rain the past few days, so I guess that, plus the cooler temps are running them indoors now. On a side note, the dry dog food is kept in an airtight container, so it's not the food that is attracting them.

Here's a fact about rats that most people don't know.


They LOVE dog feces.

A customer had rats getting in their house and the technician told her rats like to be around water and they like dog doo. She didn't believe him so he took her to her basement and showed her the dog crap the rats have been stockpiling in her crawlspace.

So if you have dogs it's probably a good idea to keep their mess cleaned up.


Another rat fact.
They can chew into a building through cinder block walls. That is concrete! Imagine gnawing on some concrete. Does it make your teeth hurt?

John, I read that somewhere else concerning rats and dog feces. Maybe it was you that posted it in Mike's thread concerning rats, and I read it there. Good info to know though.

It could have been Mike's thread.

They like to eat the crap. It is like candy to them.

Another pest - now this morning I'm in the shower and I think someone is knocking on the door. Turns out is a woodpecker hammering away at the house! I had to fill in some holes with bondo last year due to woodpecker holes. Its not like we don't have an abundance of dead trees around for them.

Edward,

Have never had a problem with woodpeckers, but had our share of troubles with squirrels a few years ago. Had a couple running rampant through my attic, and they will chew on your wires and other items. Finally got disposed of those varmints, which I consider as just rats with bushy tails.

Woodpeckers are a real problem. Not because they are hard to get rid of (I know how you can catch them) but because they are federally protected birds and it is almost impossible to get a permit to capture them. They can do A LOT of damage to houses. Sometimes they will rap on the metal flues of chimneys and drive the people inside insane.

Squirrels were a common call for us. Almost always red squirrels. We had a house where we took out a 5 gallon bucket of acorns that the squirrels were storing in the attic.

They were fairly easy to trap and we always wanted to fix the holes they made to get into the house. We even had a trap with a one-way door that we could attach over the hole and catch them as they were leaving the house.

Chipmunks were a problem when we first moved in. A simple "chipper dipper" keeps them in check. Details are not for faint of heart.

I tossed an acorn in the general direction of the woodpecker and he flew off hopefully to find a more productive area to work. They must rattle their brains with all that banging. We had one hammering away at a stop sign last year. Maybe its a mating call.

We have a wood-sided home,and the squirrel(s) chewed a hole through the wood into the attic. Now, believe it or not, I used a live-capture trap to catch one of them, and released it into a field near some woods a long distance from my house. The other one would not fall for the trap method, and somehow got down into a wall between the structural studs. You could hear it trying to climb back out, and the scratching and scurrying were driving us crazy. How I finally disposed of that one won't be discussed here out of respect for Abbie's wishes posted this morning.

"...We had one hammering away at a stop sign last year...."


You'd think they would read the darn sign and Stop doing it. Sorry, couldn't resist. ;)

Ben has read the rules and all past posts are now in the past

Greg, Its no problem. Thanks for the comment though.
2 - Stewart Little's so far this week.

Yep, pretty much everything that was said has been said so there's really no point to continue with it further. Best to keep the blood pressure lower.

And to answer your question, yes, I have a keen interest in science. Particle physics in particular.

You're welcome, Kevin.

I have a weekend place... off-grid cabin in the woods (I have a youtube channel about it if anyone's interested)... we get mice... the eat the edges of the throw carpets... I catch very few... tried all the traps that normally work... I hate the little buggers...

but what I really really dislike it the red squirrels... we built a guest cabin a couple of years back... its built all out of wood and the only steel on the building was the roof... they started on the soffits... chewing the edges... so we covered those with tin... the chewed through three metal window screens... now we have a heavy gauge chicken wire over them... the eves... now covered in tin... seems as soon as we block a point of entry the make a new one... any place there is an edge... to help we pick them off with .22's but there are more of them then we will ever get... they are cute in the woods... in my cabins they are the devil incarnate

Chris, that's how they got in my attic, by chewing a hole through the soffit. Took forever to rid the place of them. I recently saw one near the far end exterior wall of my house the other day. I tried to scare it off but it literally ran up the wood siding of the house and onto the roof. Too many houses around me to use actual firearms, so am seriously thinking of purchasing a pellet rifle. We used to have a couple of bird feeders outside, which is what initially attracted them I think. Finally got rid of the bird feeders, which has really cut down on the "visitors".

Well, finally caught the new culprit. I was sitting in the living room watching tv and noticed my pup jump up suddenly and run into the kitchen and started snooping around. The glue trap I had positioned in the corner under a cabinet snagged the mouse. Hopefully it's the one I spotted in the garage earlier, and it's now taken care of.

Guess I need to call the exterminator. Woke up to these in my yard this morning...



This is 3 of the 8 we had. It's an infestation!

those are some big mice :)

John,

Maybe you should keep at least one of them around and fatten it up. Thanksgiving is just around the corner. ;)

It is a dangerous time of year for them to show their faces.

I always say I am going to a get a license and try hunting them. The problem is you have to get up REALLY early and I don't do that well. The first spring I moved here I did buy a license. On opening day I decided I would rather sleep in. When I finally woke up I looked out my back door and saw the same scene that is in this shot. I never did shoot a turkey. Their numbers have really grown around here in the last 10-20 years. Wild turkeys are one of the wildlife success stories that anti-hunters like to ignore. Hunters were instrumental in the growth of the turkey population around the U.S.

I've seen the same growth at our place... until about five years ago I saw few turkeys... now the local group tops 30-40... I get my license every year... and see them all year... except during the season... I only go out a handful of days... and its nice seeing something new at our property...

Chris,

Do you do the calls? I know learning to call them helps. I keep saying I am going to learn to call them.

Turkey would be the best thing for me. First, the season is in spring, when it is getting warmer instead of colder. There is a season in the fall here but I think they are easier to hunt in the spring. Plus I am a smoker so that doesn't work well with deer and their noses. There is also a lot less work when it comes to butchering the kill with turkey compared to deer.

We do... I use a box call... my father-in-law uses a slate... I get them to call back every once in a while... but it seems they stay way above our property (our place is on a 2200 foot hill we are at 1700 feet) during season... late november they come back down... its like clockwork last three years...

spring vs fall is different... in the fall they are all in a group... in the spring we see smaller groups or singles more often... and we do see them... just never been able to get one to come my way... I've only tried turkey season three years now... would like to get one but really just like the excuse to stay outside...

deer is my main season... we process everything ourselves and in a couple of hours can get everything into the freezer... I've done it for over 20 years now so its no big deal to do...