i found a mouse!

[bookworm0550]

i was sitting around today, reading my book when i noticed something dark in the corner of my eye. i looked up and there was a mouse! it didn't register at first cuz i have never seen one in my apt before. i obviously freaked out big time. i was that screaming woman on the chair. i kid you not. my bf laughed at me later cuz i had called him and was crying hysterically in full panic mode and screaming when i saw it again. i laugh at myself now cuz you would have thought something truly bad had happened. anyway, it was eating some bird seeds the fids had tossed earlier. um, come to find out, mice eat seeds! i had no idea. i thought they just ate human crap food. argh. and now i think they must have got some good food supplies from my place due to my fids throwing everything out their cages onto the floor. i don't know how much more OCD i can get!

anyway, got some mousetraps. unfortunately my choices were the sticky glue ones or the snapping ones. i went w/ the glue ones. obviously, i don't want mice nor do i want them to suffer as they will w/ the glue ones, but i hate the snapping ones. i feel like i'll snap my fingers off.

i did some research online and they said that peppermint oil helps deter them so i'm thinking about buying some. i guess you put a few drops on a cotton ball and leave them around where you think they will go. now, will that be safe w/ the fids and milo? i mean, they aren't gonna eat or be near those cotton balls, but the smell? will that be ok? i read that rodents hate the smell of peppermint.

[Birkah]

Eeek! Mice are only cute when they're animated and singing (preferably doing housework or sewing couture ballgowns). My cats do a fantastic job of eradicating any and all mice or lizards that wander in our house.

They are coming from somewhere, and you need to figure out if it's from outside (fingers crossed), or if they have decided to move in (eek!). We had some in Tennessee that were living in the insulation around our dishwasher, and one that lived IN the vent hose for our dryer (nice and warm).

Try to ID the critter, and if you find ANY mouse droppings, wear a mask when you clean it up. Some rodents carry a rare but very serious disease called hantavirus that is caused by inhaling dried droppings.

[bookworm0550]

my bf came and inspected where i last saw it, which was by the heating vent so i think that's the access right there. i'm so jumpy. everytime i see my rabbit, i think it's a mouse. i almost squirted him when he came out from underneath the sofa. it was instinct. i really wish i had some hunting cats right about now.

[linda040899]

If you have located the point of access, this is what I would do.

Mice will not chew through steel wool, so I would plug what appears to be the hole with steel wool. That will stop entering at that point. However, keep in mind that mice are excellent chewers and a determined mouse will simply chew another hole. You can plug that one, too, but you can guess just what might happen next......

To be effective, glue traps have to be set along where the mice trail, preferrably where you find they have a stash of food that they are eating. Put the glue trap where they have to cross it to get to their food and you can bait it with either peanut butter or beef jerky.

Once you set a trap, make sure you check it every morning. Glue traps kill slowly unless you intervene. When I find a mouse stuck to a glue trap, I fill a bucket with very hot water and drop the trap, glue side down into the water.

I've also had traps completely disappear because not all of the mouse got caught and it simply took the trap with it until it finally got stuck somewhere where it could not take the trap any further.

It's always best to clean up seed on the floor every night, which I do. Mice will eat just about any kind of food they find but don't make it easy for them. My own personal rule regarding them is "outside or dead."

[bookworm0550]

I set some traps up! Everytime I look at the hole in the floor, it gives me a squeamish feeling. My bf said to kill it so it won't suffer, which is fine, but I can't do by hitting it on the head. I guess I'd rather drown it instead. I would assume if it's in my apt, it can get to everyone else's too right? Or do I just have a knack for attracting pests? I called my landlord to report it too and so far no one has seen a mouse.

[CompassionAk]

Ugh I hate mice! Just thinking about them make me want to run and jump on the couch! I never had problems with mice until I moved into a condo and the neighbor next to me went away half the year and apparently he had mice and they needed a new source of food so they chose me as their new home yay!

That condo was so full of holes I could never successfully close them all off and ugh I went through quite a few mouse traps.

I was glad most of the mice were down stairs and away from the birds so I could use the snap traps and make sure they were goners. I still cringe at the sound of the traps going off at night ....ewww!

Glad I am in a new building with no rodent problems now! I definitely am a lot more careful when it comes to selecting a new apartment/house.

[linda040899]

Oddly enough, you usually don't see the mice, just evidence that they have been there! Hopefully, there's only one (most likely not, though) and you will catch him/her with your trap. I would probably seal the access hole and pray he finds another one in someone else's apartment........

[Pips mom]

We get mice here every winter.....it's the cold that usually forces them to go inside houses, and I also notice that they come in more when it snows out too. Mostly they stay up in the attic and I can hear them up there, but I've seen them many times in the house. When we had the dog, they used to go after his food. The ones we get here I think are field mice and they're brown and they're cute little things and they don't really freak me out too much......that and I never have the heart to kill them! Plus I won't have any traps that snap or are sticky with birds in the house! We have had the kind that snap a couple of times set up overnight while the birds were sleeping when the mice were getting bad......I fell asleep on the couch one time and heard this noise.....I woke up and got up and followed the noise and the darn mouse was in the bottom of Ivy's cage eating food from her bottom tray! and Ivy was just sleeping like nothing was going on! The mice have never even caused any night frights with the tiels either, but put a fan on or their papers on the bottom moving at all, and that will do it every time, but it's funny, the mice never seemed to scare or bother the birds at all, even while they're sleeping.
I would be very careful using those sticky traps with birds in the house....wasn't it Jeremiah who's lovie got stuck in one before?? I get the humane traps where the mouse goes in and the door shuts and traps him in there, and then I just take the mouse far from the house outside and let it go. I have found that these traps don't work perfectly......if you're there in the room though and hear the trap go off and get it soon after, it works fine, but if you set it, and go to bed and don't hear it when the mouse gets caught, they can sometimes manage to get back out again, but I like these traps because they are safe to use around the birds and I don't have to kill anything.

[linda040899]

To be honest, I've given up on traps. The place I get mice the most is in the 4" space between my lanai aviary and the house and it's hard to get traps in that small of an area. I just get bags of rat bait and feed my guests well. They will breed behind the aviary structure and then I don't have just one or two mice. I have a whole army of them! :omg: Occasionally, I've found a body back there, but not often. Again, my rule....outside or dead.

It's amazing how mice can get into the bottoms of the cages and not disturb/scare anyone. I sure don't want them there so I leave all the "good" food behind the aviary wall so they find that before they go looking for seed.

[bookworm0550]

Yikes! It was in ivy's cage?! That's scary! Mine are sorta high off the ground though I know mice can jump. The lowest height of one of my tables where the fids are is 17 1/2 inches. Hope that's high up enough.

No mice in any of the traps this morning.

[bookworm0550]

Pip's mom, they didn't have those but I'm gonna go to a different target and see if they have any of those. I used them before but never caught any

[Pips mom]

I have caught quite a few in those humane traps.....the trick is to sleep on the couch that night when I set them so I can hear them go off, and YES mice can and will get into cages, no matter how high they are! I don't know how they do it, but I've seen it firsthand, so it really doesn't matter how high the cage. They've never actually gotten into the cages themselves, what they do here is they have gotten into the bottom tray, underneath the grate......Ivy's bottom tray is separated by alot of space between there and her grate, but I've even seen one on the bottom tray of the tiel's flight cage and when I heard it and got up, the thing just jumped back down to the floor! Yeah, mice can pretty much go wherever they want! the one good thing though is I think they are pretty happy with whatever food they find in the bottom tray and I highly doubt that they would try to actually get inside the cage when they have a decent supply of food on the bottom tray.

[carrier]

As a city dweller, mice are pretty much unavoidable. We used to have them in my mom's condo, and we called in an exterminator, who placed boxes around the house, wherever the droppings were. The boxes contained poison that the mice would eat, and it would make them thirsty, causing them to go outside for water. Once they drank, the poison would activate and they would die outside. It was a pretty effective way of ridding the place of them, and we didn't need to be a part of their deaths. Occasionally one would try to come back and die in the walls, which DID stink, though...

[Chickobee]

I have little plug in things that emit high pitched sounds that rodents don't like so they go live somewhere else. I started using them years ago when I had rats underneath my manufactured home in the crawl space.

They are supposed to work for spiders, etc. also. I think they do work because I haven't had problems with insects (except ants) or mice or rats since I've had these.

They don't bother the birds, and I can only hear them sometimes if I really listen. Unless I'm actually down there trying to hear them I don't notice them at all.

You can't use these if you have rodent type pets like guinea pigs or hamsters. I don't think rabbits fall into the rodent category, do they? They definitely have some similar characteristics.

[bookworm0550]

No rabbits aren't rodents, I've googled that.

[bookworm0550]

i saw it again just now!!! argh!!! nothing in any of the traps that i set up! i even have bait in two of those traps. the rest are sticky traps, which are not out due to milo being out right now. the mouse climbed up jada's cage to get food off the bottom of the grate. her grate is underneath her cage by a few good 5-6, maybe 7 inches. all the birds are currently out when i noticed something dark on the floor. i looked up and watched it climbed up there. i automatically started to spray at it really hard and it ran back. looks like it likes to run behind the tv so i'm gonna stick a sticky trap there.

[linda040899]

Mice usually trail around walls and behind furniture. Check behind the TV to see if there's an access point back there. I've had much better luck with bait than I have with traps. Mice (and rats) are smart critters and will avoid anything they feel is suspicious.

Like Carrie said, the mice/rats eat the bait and it makes them very thirsty. Mine usually go outside to find water and I find the corpses outside rather than in. Occasionally, I've had one die behind the wall of my outside bird room but not very often.

The noise emitters work, for a while. I tried them, too, and the mice became accustomed to the sound and they didn't work anymore. I've found that I can block entrance holes with steel wool but rodents are excellent chewers so they simply make another entrance! >: It's outside or dead around here!!!

[Chickobee]

I've used the snap traps with great success before. I would put a small piece of cheddar cheese on the bait hook and then melt it with a match. Melting it makes it harder to get off so they can't just grab and run. Peanut butter is another good bait, and I've also used both together. Or, you can put on a tiny piece of apple and smear peanut butter on it.

I'd try doing this in the corner behind the TV. Position the trap so that the end with the bait is against the wall. This is with the trap perpendicular to the wall, not lengthwise along the wall. Then they can get to the bait when crawling along the wall from either direction.

Good luck.

[bookworm0550]

so i heard that peanut butter and baking soda is something else to try cuz i guess mice can't pass gas so the baking soda kills them or something like that. i made a mixture of it so we'll see how that goes. it showed up again today. i saw where it likes to hide underneath the tv set so i put a trap there w/ a mixture of peanut butter and baking soda. baking soda should be ok around rabbits right? guess i'll have to google that one

[linda040899]

Last night I discovered that I have a new "guest" behind my bird room wall....... He's too big to gain access to the aviary itself and I have plenty of available goodies for him to fill up his tummy. I doubt that he will be there very long!

Not sure where this one came from, as there's no food outside but that doesn't mean he wasn't an unwelcome guest at one of my neighbor's homes. That's alright. The buck stops here! :evil:

[thebubbleking]

Yup be carefull sunsine lost almost all his tail feathers to a glue trap! grew back fine but freaked me out!

[bookworm0550]

Yup be carefull sunsine lost almost all his tail feathers to a glue trap! grew back fine but freaked me out!

yep, the glue traps are put away when the birds and bunny are out. but during the day when i'm at work and at night, they are out though no mouse :( a maintainance guy came and fill up these little holes w/ this foam thingy. so these holes are filled, but he said that's not a permanent fix. i feel there could be more holes in the heating vents so i'm making my bf check for holes this weekend. i am not gonna go poking around by myself.

[bookworm0550]

i caught a mouse tonight. i saw him lurking underneath the stand where hermes, chomper, evie, and pan are on. he must have realized i was still there cuz he then he made a run underneath the tv stand. i took my broom and tried to scare him out, but then w/ a flashlight, i saw he was on one of the sticky tapes. i couldn't even look at him, in fact, i'm still shaking. it was just so disgusting. yuck. i'm totally that lady that jumps on a chair w/ a broom.

[linda040899]

Once you catch a mouse on a glue trap, the kindest thing to do is to end the suffering of being on that trap quickly! I usually fill a bucket with hot water from the tap, take that bucket out to the garage and then drop the trap into the bucket so that the trap lands glue side down in the water. It's over in a very short time. While I don't want mice inside, I don't want them suffering a long drawn out death, either.