Getting rid of rats/mice (merged threads)

thistledome

Please don't kill it if it's a Field Mouse that's come in for a warm. Get a humane trap and set it free somewhere. I've caught two of these, one in a humane trap and one in an old net curtain (just chuck it over Mouse then gather up, but keep your hands away from their sharp teeth) and set both of them free. Neither one ever came back.

red_devil

thanks. It wasnt a kitchen by the way it was a back bedroom what do you make of that? Its upstairs in the house! i have asked agency to ring me.

BrunoM

Hi,
We have mice ground floor terraced flat and our neighbours have had bad mice problems and recently had council/Rentokil out. Around the same time we saw one in our kitchen and then hall, bathroom and the spare room sharing an internal wall with those neighbours. We aren't entirely sure how they get in but it could be under back door, or through plumbing openings into bathroom/toilet.

We tried just being rigorous with leaving food or crumbs accessible and so on, hasn't seemed to make a difference right now.

So - can anyone advise what we would get from going via council/pest control (and paying around a hundred quid) vs buying some traps ourselves? Is it worth the extra cash/house invasion/etc?

Any experiences or advice welcomed - thanks

Rotor

Personally I would go for traps. These are cheap ( look in pound shops etc - 2 or even 4 for a pound) and easy if you're not too squeamish about picking up a dead mouse. Use a nut or chocolate to bait with.
Don't be too alarmed if you catch several in the first few days : numbers will drop quickly
too be rid properly though you need to find and block the entry points - if it's wide enough to put a pen top in then a mouse can come through as well. Look for gaps around pipes, under doors and ventilation ducts. Roof spaces are also popular especially if you or the neighbours have plants growing up the wall

Errata

I used traps. I set up a little feeding station next to the cooker for the beggars, baiting it with chocolate and biscuit pieces and cheese crumbs for 3 - 4 nights then started putting the bait on the trap (mind your fingers). Caught about half a dozen in the end in a week.

pimento

Please use the instant death traps on a spring. It's quick and the mice don't suffer. The sticky paper jobs mean the mice starve to death or eat their own limbs to escape if you don't check them often enough and no animal deserves a death like that.

I can tell you that peanut butter works a treat in the traps though

Apricot

Use traps if you are not squeamish. it is quite horrific trying to release a mouse once it has been dead for a few hours - I ended up just throwing the whole traps out. Hot cross buns seemed to attract them.

However, we must have had quite a serious problem (derelict building next door) and we just seemed to be trapping more every day so in the end we went to the hardware store and bought poison. It wasn't expensive and after about 7 days of use we never saw any more. Apparantly they take the poison back the nests with them and die there - luckily for us the nest was next door but I have heard of people who have had to live with the smell of decomposing mice for a few weeks!

Does anyone have a cat you can borrow for a few days?

dacouch

On a similar vein, a good tip if you have problems with moles in your garden is to catch them and then bury them alive

pimento

Bury them alive? How could you? It would keep me awake at night. :O

We had two cats and mice. Both felines were useless mousers. Ironically, the mice were stealing the cat food.

Rotor

dacouch wrote: »

On a similar vein, a good tip if you have problems with moles in your garden is to catch them and then bury them alive

Yep good tip. With sparrows you should live catch and release them in the neighbours garden