Getting rid of rats/mice (merged threads)

Kimberley

They do indeed bite your feet and they love eating Ants

ormus

mice only want food.
make sure there is no food at all anywhere, open to the mice.
inc all scraps & crumbs.
leave some food outside the house, and they will go for that.

then get a cat.

(make sure all incoming pipe/cable entries are blocked off properly)
edit.
talcum powder will work as a giveaway as to where they are coming in.

Anthillmob

have a dog who dont do cat. if he saw a mouse he wuld go for it im sure but at night no one is down here and i couldnt bear the howling if i left him down here all night.

there are no incoming entries we are aware of other than the holes for the plumbing pipework. they must have come in via these. the pipework into the cupboard under the stairs is to do with the central heating i believe. runnng from the kitchen boiler.

ormus

remember that any very small hole is enough for a mouse.
if you can get a childs little finger, in it, then block it off.

paintpot

Mice can fit through the tiniest of holes - like the size of a pen top! You should check the permiter of your property for holes, even tiny ones and block them with mortar. These could be very small holes around the pipe entries. Similarly, internally, to stop them moving from room to room you can use all sorts to block holes e.g decorators caulk, polyfilla etc. A tip I was given was tin foil, apparently mice can't chew through that! Once they are in and can't get out they will die or be trapped. Not nice but necessary. Equally, if there is no food source then they will move on. It doesn't sound good for you that they are nesting so you need to deal with this quickly. I've dealt with mice "infestations" in my job and it is not pleasant if it gets out of control. Your house will start to smell if they die and decompose. Not trying to alarm you but get some traps down and deal with it asap.

As for ants, again, they come in from the outside like mice. Check outside, they tend to follow a trail from the nest. Find the nest and put ant powder down. Inside you can use nippon (sp) or similar but if you find the cause outside you are more likely to eliminate the source!

Good luck

caseystar

Anthillmob wrote: »

.do the council do anything for council tenants? i only want humane traps.

.

The council will come out free of charge, but they use rat poison. :rolleyes: They call back a few days later to check for dead mice.

We had the same problem a few years ago when the abandoned building across the road was pulled down. The mice had no where else to go so they all headed for the nearest houses.

Glad

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere (please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL]

andyrules

You have my sympathy - mice are devious little critters. We have them from time to time as we overlook fields. Sorry Ant, but the humane traps don't work - get several snappy ones - put a blob of peanut butter in each and leave them overnight. Site them near to where you think they might hide. Make sure you go down before the sproggies :eek: to clear out dem bodies.

My last visitors were so clever they manged to scrape the butter away with paw - even popped out and showed us how they did it!! The trap won in the end though.

Do this for a few days till remaining mice decide they don't like Hotel Ant any longer and you catch no more;)

Seriously - you can't mess about when you have babies crawling.

Soubrette

We had one mouse about 15 years ago - would find it's little poos in the kitchen and then it popped up from the cooker rings once:eek:

I put down a milk bottle with book steps and food in the bottle. First night I did the bottle at a too shallow angle and it escaped but got it the second night.

Let it go about 10 miles away as was a bit paranoid about it finding it's way home.

Never had any trouble again and when we redid the bathroom (complete gutting) we found that there was a nest behind the waste pipe so assume that was from the mouse.

Sou

ormus

i once fixed a cooker for a lady. had problems finding the fault.
when i took the back panel off, there was an electrocuted mouse!