Comments on: DaniGirl versus the Mouse, round 1

By: DaniGirl versus the Mouse, Round 2

DaniGirl versus the Mouse, Round 2 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:18:12 +0000

[...] discovering the extent to which they’ve wreaked havoc this fall. I told you about the kids’ Halloween costumes, and I also threw out our almost-expired newborn car seat when I found it full of mouse [...]

By: Project365: 300 days and more than 10,000 shutter clicks!

Project365: 300 days and more than 10,000 shutter clicks! — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:34:09 +0000

[...] party at Chuck E Cheese in Mississauga. This picture is particularly funny if you think back to this post about our recent vermin [...]

By: Batman

Batman — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:33:44 +0000

I hate meeses to pieces.

Good job on getting the mouse. I’m a little worried about the lost trap though. If you’re missing a trap, it generally means something set it off. Hopefully there’s nothing still stuck in it. You wouldn’t believe how bad something so small can smell when it’s dead.

I have a lot of experience with mousing from my time living along the river (in a house not a van!). The riverbanks were a summer hotspot for mice and the little buggers liked to vacation indoors during the winter. I used to have three traps set up around the third floor of the house to thin the herd. I had better results after I tied a string to the trigger on the snap traps and cut the ends short. Then I’d smear it with peanut butter. Bingo! Best bang for the buck…

Oh…from my experience…there is no such thing as just one mouse. Amy is right…they are legion.

By: Amy @ Muddy Boots

Amy @ Muddy Boots — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:13:59 +0000

“he is Legion.”

“tiny demon claws scrabbing against the gates of insanity here”

“six hundred and sixty six good reasons NOT to open the door”

Dani! YOU ARE ON FIRE! Great post.

By: Rev Dr Mom

Rev Dr Mom — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:35:36 +0000

Shudder….It was just about this time last year that I had a mouse invasion, including the mouse that TRIED TO CLIMB IN MY BED WHILE I WAS IN IT. Shudder.

I confess that I went straight for the mouse poison. I have neither little kids nor pets to worry about, and in the end, the only place it was consumed was in the garage, so I knew right where they were coming from.

Ugh.

By: DeuxHirondelles

DeuxHirondelles — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:09:12 +0000

Yup, peanut butter and spring traps. We prefer the ones with the yellow ‘cheese slice’ bait platform.
A house we bought in ’07 for our future retirement had had a mouse problem for years. How could we tell? There was a package of baking chocolate, partly gnawed, left in a lower kitchen cupboard. The package design was no longer current and dated back to the 80′s if I remember correctly. Once we had blocked all access routes, it took us 6 months to be certain we had caught all the mice. One mouse tried to reach onto the bait plate to retrieve the PB with his paw. He was caught by his shoulder only and dragged the trap 11′ across the room before succumbing to his injuries. I suggest you expand your search radius.
We also had a rodent problem in our suburban Ottawa house. We slowly whittled down possible access points to one corner of the house. The sill plate bolted to the top of the concrete foundation wall was improperly joined and had left a small hole. Once we blocked it, it took about 6 weeks to get rid of all the mice.
One uninvited guest was a vole. He could run across the trap and not trip it. I ended up using a stick to trip the trap while he was nibbling, then broke into tears. I recognize the necessity of ridding our living space of the critters, but I still feel bad about it.

By: Jody

Jody — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:01:26 +0000

I feel for you. We had mice in Connecticut, and we used the white “clamp/clip” style trap that sounds similar to what you’re describing. It always worked, and we always caught our mice in threes, and once, when we opened the door to the attic, a little group of dead baby mice fell down on us, presumably because we had killed their mama earlier. My karma shriveled a little that day, but: MICE. NOT HYGENIC.

We had a guy here in the new house to clean our ducts and he found a couple of old glue traps under the rafters, both featuring … well, what’s left of mice in traps that were set at least five years ago. (Shudder)

By: Amber

Amber — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:07:43 +0000

You have my sympathies. Those mice are WILY, and they are hard to get rid of. I wish you the best of luck, and a lovely mouse-free home.

By: UberGeek

UberGeek — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:29:39 +0000

Go with the Peanut Butter option.

I will also offer up a large white cat, Known mouser, likes to deliver his catches as proof of his prowess. errr loves children and dogs, yeah… and doesn’t shed. I can drop him off tonight, well actually how about right now.

oh yeah, Fill the garage with traps as well. and check under the bathroom sinks.

By: alison

alison — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:11:12 +0000

I have *so* been there. I think mice can smell or otherwise sense the presence of a cat in the house. We lost Elvis in Feb 2007, and that fall and winter, mice moved in. Then we got Max, who killed 3 or 4, one spectacularly during Easter dinner with friends over. I blogged it of course. My suggestion, same as the first poster. Time for another kitty.

Oh, and screen captcha: Stephen inspired. Your fears were Stephen inspired, lol.

By: Guillermo

Guillermo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:05:40 +0000

Oh! I just fond this a second ago… It looks like it ran out of the lab!

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/11/03/1450211/Scientists-Build-a-Smarter-Rat?from=rss

By: Guillermo

Guillermo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:04:02 +0000

That guy must be strong… I can imagine the f…er in a dark corner of your laundry room, removing the trap out of his body like Rambo in the cave… Time to move washer and dryer upstairs and lock the place forever! let the next generation deal with it!

By: Chantal

Chantal — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:55:47 +0000

Oh I HATE mice. When we lived in the country, in a century home, we had so many of them in the walls it made me squirm. Honestly it was one of the reasons i listed when I insisted we had to sell. The house was too old to seal up entirely and both myself and D are allergic to cats. We have had a mouse in our town house (got in through the garage door) but we caught it fairly quickly (although not humanely ).

By: Kerry

Kerry — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:10:01 +0000

Hey Dani – My dad also baited my traps with peanut butter. You know, I had to go to therapy about my mice issue. They come in when it starts to get cold, and they are very crafty buggers, thus the peanut butter (which is hard to snatch off the trap and smells good. The only thing with the PB is that you need to change it every couple of days.

Two years ago, in my old house, my dad trapped while I was away in November. He got many many mice. I looked for a new house the next spring.

I liked the black traps. Really really fast. They killed my mice so fast that their eyes were still open. Boom. Dead. Gross, and I wanted to have a heart attack, but dead nonetheless. (PS – I also got rid of the broom that I used to sweep the mouse and trap into the bag so I could take the package to a garbage can away from my house. Yes, I’m that lame.)

Best part of this post? My Captcha is “massing tonight”. The mice know you’re after them…

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:09:42 +0000

the mice probably knew the cat was gone and there was no more threat to them running around and getting into everything. the same thing happened to my mom so she put down all kinds of traps. she hasn’t seen one since.

By: Valerie

Valerie — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:51:36 +0000

LMAO, Dani – beautifully written, just beautifully!

When I was young I complained to my dad that there was a mouse between the floors. He wouldn’t believe me, but let me get some traps. I got good at it and hauled about 10 mice out in maybe a two week span before he went looking for a hole to plug! What worked for me was a piece of cheddar stuffed/stuck under the bait area, then smeared with peanut butter. They LOVED peanut butter. Sometimes I put two traps close together so they would step into one while trying to avoid the other.

May I suggest you keep your dog food in a big Rubbermaid bin?

Good hunting!

By: SC

SC — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:40:34 +0000

I am having a good laugh right now Dani! It actually brings back childhood memories for me, as we had mice on multiple occasions, and my Mother was deathly afraid of them. One morning at like 6am, while my Dad was working away from home, she woke us up and shipped my sister and I off to the neighbours as she had spotted a mice – and we weren’t allowed to go back to the house for 3 days until my Grandpa came and did away with the problem. We still bug her about it til this day!

Its nice to see that you are putting on a brave face for the boys… however, I am thinking boys love little creatures, they could probably do your dirty work for you (although not my best health advice for children!!).

I hope the problem goes away soon… might be grounds for a new cat though, one that has a little more pep in her step, and likes a challenge!