planetdan

Sunday, November 19, 2006 :::

Again with the mice?

After a few weeks of living in what seemed like a perfectly mouseless house, we found fresh poops in the kitchen. I'm smack dab in the middle of an expensive professional extermination cycle, and they had warned me that the mice were probably not all gone yet, but I was still disappointed to discover that they are indeed still living among us.

I was hoping the "mouse repellent" that the exterminator sprayed around my yard would do the trick. It is supposed to be laced with "predator urine" after all, although they didn't specify which predator. I fear it to be human. Last time the exterminator made a house visit, I asked what was in the mouse-repelling mixture that he was spraying all over my lawn. He replied that it was a "secret concoction" he himself had mixed back at the office, and I just winced while imagining him evacuating his bladder directly into the spray applicator. So now not only do I have mouse poop in my kitchen, but I probably have a barrier of some random dude's pee around the perimeter of my house.

Last time I posted about trapping mice, I got a whole bunch of comments from people who were concerned about how humane some of the traps might be, but I say eff that. Once something starts pooping in your kitchen, all pleasantries go out the window. You can't train a mouse to spread its disease infested defecations somewhere more convenient. They aren't like dogs, after all. How much would you put up with? What if it wasn't a cute little mouse? What if some person just decided to poo all over your kitchen? Sure, you probably wouldn't catch him in a sticky trap and then drown him in a bucket, but you'd definitely retaliate...

::: posted by dan at 4:08 PM :: [ link ] :: (26) comments

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26 previous comments:

We had our first mouse sighting of the fall season. I was able to trap it in the bathroom then catch & release it outside. It is only a matter of time before more surface. I'm stumped. I can't let the cats kill them -- too gross. I don't want poison in the house. If you catch a mouse in a live trap and release it outside in freezing temperatures, you are essentially killing it anyway, right?

I don't know what to do either but I cannot live with mouse doody in my kitchen.

By

Anonymous, at 7:26 PM

drown in a bucket david sedaris style?

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Anonymous, at 8:15 PM

How interesting you write about this today. This morning my girlfriend woke me up by shrieking in the kitchen. A mouse, which has been pestering her some time landed his foot in the snap trap. He then scurried around the stove top for a minute, squeaking in horror, trap in tow.

So I come to fine a mouse, half dead, wrapped around the burner grill. My girlfriend has retreated behind her hands, stamping her feet in the living room. I take one look at the mouse and diagnose it a barnyard consultation. The whole procedure was terrible, which will probably give me nightmares until my late 30s. But for those of you who came to hear a story it went a little something like this...

I knew the little guy was on his way out so I thought the best thing to do would be show him to the door a little quicker. Not wanting to get bit, I put an oven mitt over my hand. I then grabbed a plastic shopping bag and attempted to dislodge the trap/mouse combo that was twitching under the range grill. Honestly, the worst part was feeling the warm little body wriggling against the hard, wooden trap base. Once in the empty bag I closed it up and hit it a few times with a newspaper. As soon as everything was quite I said a little prayer to St Francis.

Pest suck. Killing half dead pests sucks even more.

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Jay, at 10:03 PM

yeah, humane traps? eff that is right.

cold weather + warm house = mouse wants in. just releasing him "in the wild", i.e. "the yard" is no guarantee that he ain't gonna find his way right back in to the neverending food supply and cozy, heated environs. mice don't get amnesia in those traps... it's just a temporary setback in their game of food scavenging.

kill those bastards. post their little carcasses at all entries and exits as a grisly reminder to other disease-ridden fuzzy vermin of the psycho mouse killer who lives inside.

By

melissa mcgee, at 12:36 AM

I love you.

Are you available for hire? I don't mean in a prostitute sort of way. Ok, so I do.

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Anonymous, at 5:07 AM

My mother used to inspect our Halloween candy because she thought some of the popcorn balls could've been laced with predator urine too.

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J-Money, at 8:59 AM

Stupid mice and their stupid poop. Why do they have to be so damn fast??? I would hate them so much less if they would just lumber about like hamsters or guinea pigs. I wouldn’t even mind them being there if they moved slowly and poop in the toilet.

The “death squeak” is burned into my brain. Stupid mice and their death noises!

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Kristina, at 9:45 AM

Single-handedly, my worst mouse 'tale' was when I awoke one morning to discover one had taken a dive into the water bottle on my nightstand. So, for all of you P.E.T.A. folks out there, humane as drowning may or may not be...at least he didn't die thirsty! Incidentally, I always cap the bottle now...so, never the twain shall meet!

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ntrudr, at 10:13 AM

"And then peaced"? Do I even want to know what that means??

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june, at 3:27 PM

Just get a few sticky boards. That'll stop him in his tracks.

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Anonymous, at 7:04 PM

We are battling the little bastards in our basement right now.

There's nothing quite like folding a clean load of laundry, only to see a shower of little mouse poops as you shake out a bedsheet.

I've caught three, and have been searchign the outside of the house for their point of entry. Sump pump hose? Dryer vent? Some tiny hole in the siding? Who frickin' knows?

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Anonymous, at 12:40 PM

Mouse...that's nothin'...we had a rat. That little bugger somehow found it's way behind our cabinets and came out at night and climbed up our daughter's highchair to get some crumbs....that's where I found the poop. So we set the sticky traps in stragetic locations, and caught it the next morning.
You might also want to consider setting traps in your garage. I have had the unfortunate experience of having to repair wires and hosing in the car that was chewed through by a little critter who used the car engine area to stay warm.

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Anonymous, at 1:00 PM

I recently dealt with mice in my kitchen. Poop, poop, everywhere. I discovered the rat zapper (http://www.ratmousezapper.com/ but you can get it home depot type places). It truly is the most humane method of killing the bastards. You put the bait at the end of the box (dog food with a little peanut butter worked), the mouse walks in, and before it gets to the food, it steps on a metal plate, which instantly kills the mouse of a heart attack. Then a little light at the top of the box flashes to signal its death, allowing you to simply take the box and tip it so that the mouse falls into the garbage. No muss no fuss. I'd buy stock if it were a public company. Good luck.

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Anonymous, at 2:40 PM

haha - "secret concoction" - lol. if anything, that mystery human piss-spray will just keep the mice IN the house and not get them out... but don´t hurt em, they´re still cute, even though they can carry diseases and stuff. so can humans. and what a coincidence - "Rats! Rats! Rats!" from the Deftones just came up on my player. i think it´s a bit too heavy for you, though, Dan...

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Richard, at 2:50 PM

note to self: don't read planetdan while on lunch break.
Dan, what happened to the music? I miss the music. I think you might have said something about it a while back, but is there any way to bring it back? I was just thinking about your rockin' Christmas music last year ("Marshmallow World", etc--yes, I remember, because I went out and got the CD!) and it would be nice to have it back this holiday season. And you know what else that means? I've been reading your blog for over a year now. How the time flies!
And June: As far as I know, "peaced" just means "peace out", as in "he left".

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lola, at 3:35 PM

I lived in a trailer once that had an addition built onto the side. (It was an island full of hippies in the Pacific Northwest.) In the space between the two lobes of the living unit, I could hear the cat chasing, killing and eating the rats. Occasionally, they made it onto the roof directly above my bed. Those are squeaks that are disturbing for the visual image they created and the self-loathing I felt as I cheered for their deaths.

Also, the trap once caught a rat and must have severed a jugular because when I came home, half the kitchen (it was a small kitchen in the trailer after all) was taken up with a pool of blood. Another time, the rat tripped the trap, which wounded it but was making a break for whatever hole it came in. Luckily, I convinced my boyfriend's dog to catch it in its wounded state and take it outside.

As long as we're sharing, you know?

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PrincessMax, at 7:07 PM

Okay, okay... the BEST mouse eradicator(s) evar?......

Ferrets!

I think I might have posted about this before. We used to live in an old character home just off a river bank. As soon as the weather turned cold each fall it became rodent heaven - or hell.

We finally gave up on traps, and cats can only do so much. Cats can't get into small places and we used to lie awake at night hearing the mice scurry along the insides of the walls. But ferets can get into any place mice can. They make their kills quick (unlike cats) and most of the business is entirely unseen.

We would 'borrow' a friend's ferets each fall and let them loose in the house. They would disappear for days, weeks, until the job was done and they were themselves a wee bit fatter.

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Anonymous, at 4:38 PM

I am as humane as most, sometimes. Once I was on a job and found a mouse nest on one of the trailers. We proceeded to put it on a hill and covered it with gasoline. You would not think that fifteen bald baby mice could scream like when a match was put to them, but they did. However, they aren't pooping in someones kitchen now. Don't feel bad.

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Anonymous, at 8:32 PM

I'd say get a cat, but my cat would hide from rodents (the few chances he got to be a mouser, that is). Sure, he faked it and all, but I knew he had no intention of catching the thing.
I think the new kitten we got might be a different story though. That crazy shit will kick the ass out of a jelly bean, let alone what it would do to a rodent.
Maybe you should get a pet python.

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Monkey, at 12:38 AM

My husband and I returned from Thanksgiving vacation to find a clawed at chocolate bar in the dining room, along with the evidence of the poopy trail in the kitchen and underneath the sink cabinet. Apparently, they were coming in from underneath the cabinets. At night during dinner, one came out. We trapped him in the dining room, set a Victor trapped and about 20 minutes later, he was caught. It was a bit gross because he was ccaught on his face with the metal bar going across his eye. But he was dead on the spot. Just before he was caught, I went upstairs and pulled the comforter back on my bed and found the most horrific evidence of all.... the mouse slept on my pillow! and left poopies!! How disgusting to think that the mouse was in your bed. I had to strip the bed and put new sheets and pillow cases on.

We found Victor mouse traps to be the best with a dab of peanut butter on them. We bought 4 glue traps, but the mice never went on them.

After the first night, the 2nd mouse was caught underneath the sink. He left a little blood, but some disinfectant and bleach will clean that up. The second night, we set up more traps. Be sure to inspect your entire house inside to find out where they've been and not been. We didn't have anything in the basement, although we placed one trap there knowing that the dryer vent and furnance are sometimes entryways.

We placed more traps around the kitchen sink/cabinet area because that is where the majority of the poop was. The next morning, two more mice were caught, but not so bloody this time.

The traps are helping us find where the hole is. We can now block the pipe hole into the cabinet underneath the sink to prevent them from coming in there. But now, we can to go underneath every cabinet and find where in the flooring is an opening. Use caulk, steel wool, or anything right away like a rag) to stop them from coming in. However, the best method is to find the hole from the outside first to prevent more from coming in.

I thought about humane efforts to rid of them, but that completely changed once the mouse pooped in my bed and slept on my pillow.

Prevention: Clean your kitchen! We now disinfectant the countertops with Lysol every night and sweep the floor. All food is put away and dishes left in the sink are at least rinsed free of food. Every morning, we look check the traps and look for poops. However, this is only the 2nd day for us with 4 mice dead.

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Tiffany, at 1:38 PM

Amen to that -- I was so sad at the thought of killing a cute little mouse until I found mouse poop in my favorite teacup, mouse poop in my son's toybox and mouse poop under my bed. In the trash went the humane traps that weren't catching them (they were getting the treats out, but not getting caught) and in came the snappers. Sorry, cute little mouse -- learn to use a toilet!

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Cherylanne, at 12:32 PM

Question: HOW DO MICE GET UP ON A COUNTERTOP THERE? I UNDERSTAND THEY COME INTO THE HOME THROUGH OPENINGS. HOW DO THEY GET UP TO THE COUNTER ONCE THEY ARE IN THE HOME?

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Anonymous, at 6:38 PM

In answer to the question about how mice get on counter-tops - they climb and run up walls. Rats too.

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Anonymous, at 2:52 PM

I was just sitting on my bed with my laptop and I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye and there was a mouse sitting in the middle of the floor! Argh! I'm scared to go to sleep now. I have no idea where it is and I'm terrified. Will it nibble my toes or come into my bed? I'm not totally afraid of it, I just don't want it to come anywhere near me! I'll actually die! I might go into my mums bed...!

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toglis, at 8:19 PM

yeaaaaaah. I just went into the kitchen of my apartment about 20 minutes ago after hearing some noises that shouldn't be there when everyone else is asleep. I saw the little bastard right as it was scurrying across the counter and it dive bombed into the stove top. Though I resisted the immediate urge to turn on the gas, I really didn't want to deal with the smell if I actually caught the little bugger. My dilemma is that I live in student housing and I'm not really sure how competent the "RA" of my building is. I want to get rid the the little buggers, but I really don't want to deal with walking into my kitchen some morning and seeing a dead mouse as I turn on the coffee pot. I could get glue traps, but they tend to work better if you lay them flat and then I'm still stuck with seeing a dead/dying mouse first thing in the morning. It's not fair to see these kind of things before coffee. So here I am at 3:30 in the morning too afraid to go to sleep because I'll dream about that little mouse. I'm just glad I didn't scream.

By

Hey you... with the books, at 3:32 AM

Oh, and did I mention it crapped in my sink.... in my favorite coffee cup?

By

Hey you... with the books, at 3:33 AM

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