If you had a mouse in your house, what would you do?

Just wondering how compassionate people handle such situations or do some things need to be taken care of if it's in your house.

Do you peacefully co-exist? Humanely trap and hope it doesn't get back in? Kill? By what means?

No peacefully coexisting with them for me - too much disease.

The hamster is well fed and taken care of. The cats occasionally get curious, but typically stay out of that room as it is my daughters and she is afraid of my daughter.

:shrug:

I live in the woods and it goes with the territory - cold weather comes and they move in. It's not sensible to let them stay - they make a mess and reproduce. I use havahart traps and then let them go a couple of miles away.

But then, it would want a glass of milk.

:D

But I love If You Give a Pig a Pancake even more.

If I wanted mice in my house, I'd buy some and let them in.

One time the same mouse came back in 2 more times, the third time in the house, he wasn't so lucky (cat had a treat).

:puke:

if it was wounded i'd have to kill it. :( Hopefully they'd put it out of its misery before I saw it.

I plan on keeping them, it's hard to use the computer otherwise.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=4099163#4099459 :scared:

That's exactly what I'd do! (well, I'd call the ex and have him come down and do it :blush:)

That's funny.

I don't know why I think this is funny, but I burst out laughing the minute I saw this photo! Does that make me a sick person? Do I need ?

.... you'd need help if you didn't find it funny :)

I have done this several times though it isn't usually a whole mouse.:)

Or, at least that's what experience tells me.

Then I'd inspect the premises to see how the heck a mouse got in and full any holes that may have permited entry.

Once, when I moved to the country, I had mice eat the insides of my shoes, chew the upholstery and make a nest in the bottom drawer of my stive. (Yuck!) I got a cat. Problem solved.

the cats of war!!

and get to work. Knowing my cat, he'd mrrp, head butt me, lick my nose and go back to sleep.

A mouse rapidly becomes a house full of the little fuckers. You can't possibly trap them all. The only way to keep the house from being infested with vermon is to wipe them out and poison baits are the only thing that has ever worked for me.

If you humanely trap it and move it somewhere else it will simply die somewhere else. Animals can't be plopped down just anywhere anymore than a human can be dropped in a strange town and be expected to function.

Ours generally run the mice off before they have a chance to get settled. The few stubborn mice that tried to nest for the winter became cat toys until they broke or until I managed to get them away from the cat and dump them outside.

If you aren't allergic, I highly recommend getting a cat to deal with mice problems. The smell and presence of a cat will scare off most mice, and cats are generally both well equipped and highly motivated to hunt down and destroy the lingering mice. No human invented mousetraps work as well as a cat. (Plus, then you get to have a nice furry, purring creature in your house all the time.)

eating a mouse poisoned by another house that later got in my house. Sounds really bizarre, but my vet said she sees a fair amt of poisoned cats over the course of a year and thinks this is where it comes from.She said the mouse poison used nowadays is slow acting, giving the mice time to eat and move on and then die typically far from the original site of poison. I was fairly content to let my cats deal with the mouse problem until this happened. Now I try to get to the mice first. Just telling you in case you hadn't heard of it.

I haven't figured out how to get rid of 'em.

They are very quick, just a pain to set up.

I have a golden retriever that might eat a dead mouse. :scared:

They are usually baited with peanut butter, a favorite with rodents and canines.

We did use mouse traps and release the mice a mile away but they breed faster than we can keep up with them.
It sounds like they are gnawing right through the wall at times!

I've always been afraid the mouse might drop a piece of bait while it's running through the bottom of Frodo's cage.

BTW ~ Macaws hate mice!

The last time I allowed an exterminator in my home - my old golden started having seizures. It's not worth the risk.
After my last dog is no longer here, I'll get rid of the mice as much as possible. When you live in the country, mice are a fact of life.

And I'm getting to the inhumane trap stage. Damned thing eats my tomatoes, persimmons, apples, pears and any other soft fruit I leave out, but won't go into the humane trap to get the same food. He doesn't like peppers, though. Drug one to his hidy hole and left it untouched. It was one of the hot ones.

I think my cat has adopted it.

doesn't get it, trap and release.:shrug:

No, really... I have no idea. Haven't had to deal with that just yet.

If for whatever reason he didn't get the mouse, I would assume that he'd adopted it as a pet.

With whatever killin' tool is convenient. I'd try not to resort to gunplay though. :evilgrin:

An old abandoned factory three doors down from my house burned to the ground nine years ago. It was rat-infested, and of course the rats got the hell out of there when the fire got going and went looking for new homes. One of them found its way in here. We found the nest it was making in a bottom dresser drawer. So I got some rat poison, put it under the dresser drawer and forgot all about it.

A few days later, my 13-year-old daughter and her friend went down the basement to get some laundry from the dryer. All of a sudden there were bloodcurdling screams coming from there, and the girls were screaming for a male friend of mine who was here at the time.

He went to the basement, and came back carrying a plastic bag which he handed to me. It was quite heavy... I looked in it and just about had a fit. There in the bag lay a HUGE dead rat. I mean HUGE!!! It was the size of a large cat. The screaming was because the rat had died at the bottom of the basement steps, and my daughter didn't see it -- she had found it... barefoot. :puke:

THAT was a joke, BTW. We all know that the cat would probably kill me in my sleep if I ever even considered anything that horrible. He gets pissed if he can even see the bottom of his food bowl, let alone see it empty.

________

All joking aside, could you borrow a cat for a short time? I never encourage anyone to get a pet they aren't prepared to live with for the next 20 years. Just ask me sometime about the rescue "bitch-kitty" that lived with me for 17 years...



Laura

You can buy these humane plastic traps at most hardware stores that allows you to release the animals.

I bait them with peanut butter and set them in a nice dark spot to catch them. Make sure you check the traps often so if you do get a mouse, it won't die.

I have four cats, two of which are serious hunters who bring in their prey live and either let it go in the house for fun, or wait until I have to wrestle it from ther jaws of death. When the cats finally drop them I just grab them by their little tails and walk them out to the front yard and let'em go.

One of my cats let one loose in a bedroom under the bed and I wasn't able to catch it, so I've been feeding it nut and seeds until I can pick-up a humane trap and get the poor thing out of there.

About two years ago, our neighbors moved out and we inherited their vermin. We bought a bunch of the sonic repellers and also a bunch of traps. After eliminating that group, we have not had problems. The sound really does work, and on other pests as well. Some things just need to go, and I would put mice in that category. They are little more than furry roaches to me.

edit - spelling

is a 12-gauge

rent Mouse Hunt. They had some pretty good ideas.

Saw it again just last week or so. When we had some plumbing work done last summer we sealed up all the possible mousie holes...I think.

I love the sequence with Christopher Walken

I have caught close to 30+ mice over the last 2 months in my home. I use glue traps, snapping traps and I am about to use decon. I prefer to catch them in glue traps then with gloved hands I unstick them and toss them into neighbors yard...(more on this in a moment). A few have gotten squished in the traditional mouse traps but more often than not they steal the peanut butter I put there as bait.

OK normally I am a live and let live sort of guy but... 2 months ago I discovered that mice had eaten a hole in my large bag of dog food...there was mouse poop EVERYWHERE around broom closet that this bag is normally kept in. In 3 years this was my first time noticing any evidence of mice in my home. They had a chance to feed and breed before I discovered this. When I repaired problem by putting food in new plastic garbage can mice moved out into my house...first attacking dogs food dish then climbing onto my stove top and counter tops. How do I know this? They leave a tiny little calling card. I was finding this disgusting item on my stove top and on my counter top and in my sink!

So live and let live is out the window. To quote Bugs Bunny; "Of course you realize, this means war!" NOTHING, not even the toaster is allowed to sit unattended on counter-tops. All dry food and dishes and pots and pan are in upper cabinets as is the silver-ware. Dog dish is on a 1 foot high pedestal, (overturned flower-pot). Stove and counter-tops have been scrubbed and bleached and are armed with traps! Glue traps and snap traps got them under control. I caught about 35 or so over the last 2 months. I went about a week without catching any more mice or noticing any more of their droppings...I thought I was safe but then a snap-trap caught another one on my stove last night.

I may escalate this with WMD. I have a couple of unopened boxes of de-con. I believe one shall go up in my attic and one shall go under my dishwasher. I am not fond of this but I am even less fond of this infestation. I also discovered their entry way into my house...this has been sealed of course. Next step may be to bring out the big guns and call in an exterminator.

So if you are like I was and feel the need to trap the cute little mouse and release elsewhere fine...please understand that there are limits. Finding mouse poo in my silver-ware divider in a closed drawer changed me into an enemy of any mouse who may enter my home. Cats would be an option my dog would agree too but I already know that this pitt-bull's intentions for a cat are different than my own.

Ok about that neighbor:
I once wrote a post about my neighbor from hell so I will keep this to just the highlights. On my block this 40 year old female is known as the crazy lady. She lives next door to me with her almost normal mother and her almost normal kids. Again, I am a live and let live kind of guy but now and then.... well the mice is a great example.
This crazy lady is on par with that god warrior lady...hell they might be cousins.

She is constantly putting up posters in the windows facing my home...these posters have everything from hangman's nooses to bible quotes to requests that I stop spying on her and tons of other craziness. She also likes to place plastic skulls in her windows facing my home with paper arrows pointing at these skulls and a big letter "U" over them. She has placed a camera and flash arrangement in the window facing the back of my house so I get flashed, perhaps photographed whenever I go from my house to my garage. If she spots me leaving to walk my dog she goes to her gate and slams it then enters her house and slams doors repeatedly.

I could maybe still accept this but she loves to catch the neighbor on the other side of me, (a friend) and stop her from entering her home all the while accusing the 2 of us of stealing her mail. (She has ransacked my garbage and my recycle bins looking for this mail).
Her kids leave their trash in my yard. In the summer she places speakers in her windows and blares radio music at me...usually gospel.... There is more...much more and the poor guy on the other side of her has a similar problem with her. He calls the cops on her regularly! (He has known her longer than I have, he suggests that I do the same...).

Her kids spent last 4th of july throwing M-80s at the neighborhood dogs in each of the dog's own back yards...the neighborhood dog owners have signed a petition against these kids and submitted it to the police dept. Kids have also been caught rummaging around in my garage. The whole family likes to play street basketball sometime all night long. (It is easy to get annoyed at the sound of a basketball being bounced on the pavement at 3AM on a weeknight). (I have seen them doing this in mid winter in a rain-shower in just their t-shirts). Oh and did I mention the knock-em-sock-em screaming matches they have over there about once a month?

So back to my tossing an occasional live mouse in her back yard...after 3 years of her nonsense forgive me if I take a little satisfaction from doing this one evil deed. Maybe I am just a mean little man. At least the mouse is far happier this way then getting caught in a traditional snap trap.
c

it's the only way to be sure.

Oh, and that might get rid of the mice, too. (Your neighbors sound less appealing than the Aliens.)

Mice carry parasites.

And if the blue tomcat gets out of line, I'll bring in a grey bulldog to set him straight.

Many dead mice when the cold weather comes out here to the country.

Old fashioned snapper traps and a lot of them. I even get a smug satisfaction when I hear them snap.
I like animals-but mice are disease ridden pestilent creatures I have absolutely NO tolerance for.
Every year, as soon as the crops are harvested around us and the temperature dips it is a full on assault, as the mice are looking for someplace warm to nest. I take no prisoners.

Put a copy of "The Chicago Manual of Style," or something equally heavy on top of that, and when the hubby gets home, point to it and demand that it be removed from the house.

Then leave the room for another part of the house so you don't have to hear or see anything.

Imagine the little mouse living happily with his/her relatives back in their "country mouse house."

PELLET GUN

;)

:shrug: No biggie.

...It lived for about 30 minutes. Unfortunate, because it was kind of a cute thing, but- went out, bought a glue-trap, laid on floor, went in the other room. When I heard rustling across the floor in the other room- went out, took glue trap (confirmed capture), looked the other way and did a swift, hard shot to the head with my wooden cane (HUMANE, in my eyes- I didn't want it freezing and starving to death outside), disposed of in garbage bag outside in dumpster. Haven't seen another one since (this was 3 years ago).

Our dog catches more mice routinely than any cat we've ever had has done (at least knowingly). Even hamsters are not safe.

Kill mousy

i tried humane traps but learned quickly that a field mouse humanely trapped at midnight will chew apart a plastic trap by the a.m.

now i use the old fashioned neck breakers. i tie a piece of dry cat food to the spring arm with copper wire so it doesn't move or fly off and i don't have to bait it everytime. then i found where they come in and set the trap so its perpendicular to the wall near the entry point. mice and rats will run along the baseboards for cover so if you place it properly you don't even need to bait it. if you can "bottle neck" them into running across the trap it works really well also. after a big storm last year i caught three mice in 8 minutes, my neighbor caught 14 in 6 hours and we live in a nice neighborhood.

i don't like to kill them, but i know what they can do very quickly if left unchecked.

when i first bought my house i was eating take-out, but decided on a friday night to make my very first home cooked meal in my mostly empty house. i was quite excited, made a quick noodle casserole and placed it into the barely preheated oven. i went outside to do somehting and came back in 10 minutes later to find the entire interior of the house smelled like hot urine. the mice had been nesting in the insulation inside the oven and once it reached a certain temp it went airborne. it took days to clear the smell.

eom

I live with all sorts of critters. I love watching them; that's why I live in the country. However, they belong OUTDOORS.

Any mouse that the stray cats around here don't get will get some free peanut butter .... on a trap.

yearly fall mice trying to come in though the cats usually caught them. But cleaning up headless mouse bodies and bodiless mouse heads was yuck and worried they would decide to gift us with one in the bed. :scared: Then my ferret vet told me to put some ferret poops outside near the house. Not a lot, just one here and there. Haven't had a mouse since. Now we do this every fall and also around the shed way back in the yard after finding out a nest ruined a lawn mower. The neighbor borrows some for her barn to keep mice out of the horse feed safely. Works on all mice, rats and squirrels according to the neighbor.

Except sometimes they leave little bits around.

with me. I can't kill anything, well save for roaches and even then I hate doing that.

and is leaving "calling cards" in the cabinet under the sink?

other than find the body and dispose of it - which ZombyWoof will get to do :evilgrin:

Any mouse - or spider, or other moving thing - that comes into my house has a death wish. I have three very large, very predatory cats who will work together on anything they regard as prey. I'm not sure I'd want to stay in the house for long if I ran out of kibble - I'm not that big.

and send it home! :)

the little bugger outside and let him go.

Then again, it is winter . . . maybe I'd cage his little butt and keep him warm until Spring :)

What can I say, I'm a softie when it comes to critters.

:shrug:

that just sounds dirty.

Lots of it. Spread many boxes around.

Sometimes you find a dead one but usually they crawl outside to die, so I'm told, looking for water as the poison dehydrates them.

I've found traps to be useless.

They're home invaders so they deserve to DIE!!!!

in my opinion live trapping mice is pretty pointless, either it will get back in or die whereever you turn it loose, possibly slowly. Take responsibility and kill it fast. "Coexisting" with household rodents is inviting disease, filth and destruction into your home. (other than in a cage as a contained pet)

get a Dachshund. Weiner dogs are death incarnate for anything up to twice their size, and as mousers stack up well against a cat.

It's too much of a disease and allergy risk to be allowed in my house. And with winter well under way here, a snap-trap would probably be more humane than putting it outside.

Any other time of year I'd let it escape, though. We've got lots of nice parkland near our house, as evidenced by the skunks that seem to find our AC oddly threatening on a summer night.

I freak at the sight of them....not good. I once moved out of an apartment that was infested...only after spending many, many nights at the Marriott.

Evita doesn't like other small critters in the house. So far she's killed 2 birds, a bat and one mouse and this cat lives totally indoors. She's just got some skills on her with nabbing critters

Two elderly yet healthy indoor cats, declawed before I got them. Would they know how to handle it? They'd surely try.

Plan b: Trap mouse & toss outide. The neighborhood cat definitely knows what to do.