Comments on: Weekly Roundup – A Mouse in the House Edition

By: Marci

Marci — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 04:21:20 +0000

oh yes – I 2nd the nail it down part… if you nail it on the end of a long 1×2 board you can then shove it back where you want it, and bring it back out when you need to.

By: Cel

Cel — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:17:02 +0000

My cat took care of the problem maybe a week after I noticed the most.

And to the comment above about a cat being a mouser or a birder, I had a cat who caught birds, mice, snakes, and squirrels.

You could always get one of those humane traps where the mouse gets caught in a one way tube. But then you have the issue of where to let him loose.

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:10:56 +0000

I third the peanut butter! Just be sure to fasten down the trap so they can’t crawl off with it. When I was first married, we lived in a mobile home, and the little critters would come up through the floor near the sink pipe in the kitchen. We stopped counting at 30-something mice before my ex finally got the hole adequately sealed up, and peanut butter with the trap nailed down worked the best. The cat we had at the time was an indoor cat and was more scared of the mice than I was! We then adopted a stray who was more than adequate in not only mousing but birding and snake-ing and bunny-ing, you get the idea, and that was despite the fact that we were feeding her and considered her a family cat, not a barn cat. (Strays and barn cats that aren’t fed regular cat food are very focused on making sure they have food for the day and don’t often let a mouse get away.) In fact, at about 16 years old, this is the first year that cat didn’t get a bird in the spring, although she still enjoyed chasing the squirrels.

By: Cam

Cam — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:37:32 +0000

Try peppermint oil. Mice strongly dislike the smell of peppermint. Your garage might smell like Christmas, but at least the mice should flee We have a mouse problem at work, and I regularly dab a bit of full strength peppermint oil in the drawers – I’ve had people on either side of me hit by the mice in search of food, but mine’s been completely left alone.

By: Froogirl

Froogirl — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:18:12 +0000

We ended up caving in and bringing in an exterminator. What we learned was that oftentimes the holes and cracks the mice enter from are underground and can be so small as to be invisible to the naked eye. We first tried to deal with it ourselves with glue boards and poison pellets, but it was apparent they were outsmarting us.

Our cat was useless, though he did alert us to a mouse stuck on a glueboard.

Good luck.

By: Havana

Havana — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 14:43:04 +0000

OMG We had a huge rat problem several years ago and we tried *everything* to get rid of them. We tried those little mouse traps (which work horribly, btw), we tried cage traps (eventually, a lot of them learned not to get near them– that was another challenge, that we were dealing with pretty intelligent creatures), we tried gas, but nothing was too terribly effective.

We eventually tried these boxes of poisoned kiblets of food and after that, we never saw another rat. Maybe you guys can try something like that…

By: Tall Bill

Tall Bill — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:59:41 +0000

Get the cat STAT & have it hang out in the garage for a month or two without feeding it (keep a bowl of water out) & the problem will go away – at least it did in our location.

Good Luck!

By: Frugal Dad

Frugal Dad — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 02:14:24 +0000

@Marci: Thanks for the tips! I crammed brillo pad into the hole and spackled over only to find the hole reopened in the morning–persistent creatures, those mice! I’ll give your steel plate idea a try. If they chew through that I’m moving!

@thatgirlblogs: You’ve piqued my curiosity…do you remember what the exact mention was? A friend TiVo’d the program, but couldn’t find a mention for “FrugalDad.com.”

By: Marci

Marci — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:23:38 +0000

I 2nd the peanut butter. Creamy, not chunky.
Smooth just a little on the flapper – not a glob of it. Buy a 6 pack of traps and set them all with peanut butter.

They sticky pads work, but then you have a live mice on your hands and that is kind of a heart-breaking situation to handle.

If you are ok with poisons, then the D-Con and the One Bite I will both recommend – but not around little kids and pets.

For repairs, stick brillo pads in the cracks – they won’t chew thru them. Repair the chewed board with metal screwed into it. A little steel plate works well also.

Good luck!

By: thatgirlblogs

thatgirlblogs — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:09:38 +0000

I’m watching Friday’s Oprah and I think she just referenced this blog? Awesome.