Mice.
Unlike wild field and harvest mice, or the mice kept in cages as pets, feral mice living inside your home is not a good thing at all.
‘While the common house mouse is not as dangerous to your health as a deer mouse, they can still spread disease, such as hantavirus, salmonellosis and listeria through their urine, droppings, saliva and nesting materials’.
As well as stealing your food and leaving disease and droppings around, they also chew electical wires, and damage conduits and plastic piping in their efforts to get around inside your house.
I have been lucky since moving to Norfolk, but when I lived in London, I had a big problem with mice in various places I lived over the years.
I tried going down the poisoning route, but that never seemed to be effective, and I certainly never found any dead mice that might have taken that blue granular bait. So I went ‘old school’, and bought a job lot of retro spring mouse-traps. The shop advised using chocolate to attract them, rather than the old fashioned lure of cheese. So I baited half a dozen traps with Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, and put them in the places I had previously know them to frequent.
Less than ten minutes later, I heard the first ‘Snap!’ This was followed by a series of snaps in quick succession as three more traps were sprung. I waited a little longer, then investigated. Sure enough, four dead mice, one in each of the four traps. They had all been killed instantly by the thin metal bar that had dropped across their neck or body. I re-baited with chocolate, and put them back.
During the evening there were more snaps, and I found five more dead mice before bedtime. Within a week, I had no more mouse activity at all.
So if you get mice in the house, use the old-style traps. They really work.
What a wonderful selfexplaining mouse trap. Lol It seems here we have a deal with the mice families. Before we had our last cat, we also had problems. But now he hasn’t been around for about five years, and there’s still no mouse to see. Maybe they have been told about the hauntings. Lol Michael…
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Having a ghost cat is good. You don’t have to feed it, or take it to the Vet. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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:-))
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Yes i also
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Bu they are so CUTE! (kidding)
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I agree that they are cute. Kept as pets in a cage, or gadding about in nature. But in your house, they bring disease and damage.
Best wishes, Pete.
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AND Lyme disease!
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That’s deadly!
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We have the battle against the mice every winter. Sigh!
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I hope you win those battles, Jennie. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Most years we do!
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Four cats and three dogs = no mice 🙂
Although there are a good few in the barn, sadly goats don’t kill them.
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At least they are not inside. They would love to live in your straw walls! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I have to put the record straight on that one, if only because the straw bale community would never forgive me if I didn’t :), but once the plaster is on they would find it very hard to get in, and even if they did there is little food value to straw so they tend to steer clear. They would much prefer hay which still holds the seeds after harvesting, or my barn where I have over of tonne of oats to munch on 🙂
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I was only joking, but thanks for the clarification. 🙂
(They might find it a nice warm place to live though…)
Cheers, Pete.
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Great post 🙂 Have you had any more problems with mice since then Pete? 🙂 Anyway, keep up the great work as always 🙂
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Not since moving to Norfolk in 2012. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I don’t think any of us like mice. Occasionally, we encounter them outside but our three grown cats are always alerts.
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Three cats will keep them away, Arlene. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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We have an ongoing problem and use the snap traps. They had become very clever at removing the peanut without the trap snapping. Now my husband glues a little peanut on each trap. SNAP! The thing I like about those traps is that they are so cheap that it is possible for me to just throw the whole thing away if he isn’t around to get rid of the mouse and reuse the trap. My daughter had a dreadful invasion of mice in New York City. One winter she phoned us screaming that she had just put her hand into her winter coat pocket and hit a whole nest of baby mice. My husband had to go down and pipe that insulation that expands around all the pipes in the apartment which they used to cruise up and down the building.
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Glad to hear you are a fan of the snap trap, Elizabeth. Mice love modern insulation. They use it for nest materials, and also as a handy ‘ladder’ to climb up pipework. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I think that was why he sprayed in that plastic foam stuff.
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Oh yes. That keeps them out for a while, though when I used it around pipes in one house, they chewed through it in no time. They seemed to be obsessed with the wild rice that my first wife kept in a kitchen cupboard. 🙂
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Thankfully my daughter moved!
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I have a cat – no mice (except the ones she brings in as gifts for me!).
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I wouldn’t get a cat just for controlling mice. Not when the cheap spring traps work so well! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Oh, she’s not for that – controlling mice is a useful bonus,
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(1) Some rodents are fun. A few weeks ago, I was perched 872 feet above Kyle Canyon on the summit of Cathedral Rock, feeding numerous chipmunks assorted nuts and figs out of the palm of my hand.
(2) As a maker of mouse traps, Victor is no loser.
(3) You killed a lot of mice! But you still disappoint me as a serial killer. All snap, and no crackle or pop!
(4) The Great Mouse Detective will eventually track you down, Pete!
(5) It’s commonly known that your screen name was Pistol Pete back when you starred in those Disney cartoons with Mickey Mouse.
(6a) Overheard: “That’s one small snap for a mouse. One giant leap for mankind.”
(6b) NASA wants to ship mice to the moon. “Let them eat cheese!”
(7) John Steinbeck initially wrote a book entitled, “Of Mighty Mouse and X-Men.” But his editor said the story was too cheesy, so it all got changed.
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I liked the ‘cereal killer’, David. Feeding rodents from your hands is enjoyable, but having them use your house as a toilet is not to be encouraged. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete/
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I found peanut butter works good for bait.
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I have heard that, Don. But I don’t like it, so never have any on hand. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Amen! Warmest regards, Theo
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Thanks, Theo. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Pete, my Mom was a good “country girl” growing up. When she came to visit a few years ago, a mouse got into our house…impossible to find, but a few days later we came home from work and my Mom said “I took care of that mouse”. My wife said “oh, is it OK?” My Mom replied, “you can’t really rehabilitate them.” Boom!
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I’m on your mum’s side, John. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Back at our house in MA we had a problem with field mice getting into the house. I made Tom try the humane traps at first but grudgingly had to cave when they didn’t work well enough.
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Unfortunately, the snap traps are the only answer. 🙂
Luckily, mice are far from being an endangered species.
Best wishes, Pete.
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oh thank God we don’t have them. it could be a nightmare for me. 🙂
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My wife is terrified of them too. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I hate rodents! I have the perfect way to rid the property of them….MoMo….she is my hunter seeker…..at last count there were 12 mice…..6 wood rats….9 moles….2 ‘possums”…..with cooler weather she is back at the hunt…..chuq
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Ollie has shown interest in moles and water voles, but I am not sure if he would hunt a mouse. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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MoMo is constant hunt mode…….she even captured a dove….for some reason she allows pigeons to feed in the property…..no idea why she likes them…..chuq
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Ollie leaves the garden birds alone. But he will chase pheasants and partridges when he is out walking.
Best wishes, Pete.
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MoMo just only chases doves…..for some reason….chuq
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Well, that’s one little creature pest that we luckily have never had any problems with😊 Think that’s one of the advantages of living twelve floors up😊
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They can and do get into high-rise accommodation, Michel. They use all the internal wiring channels and shafts. They also like to use the cladding and insulation materials for nest-building. You are lucky to have been spared a mouse invasion. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Haha…yeah I definitely am. I don’t think I would enjoy that very much, in fact I’m pretty much convinced about that! 😂
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The mice that lived under my shed that I would photograph moved out and never came back. Phil misses them. They never came in the house though.
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I have seen evidence of mouse activity in the shed, but never seen a mouse. Like yours, they never came into the house. But if they had, it would have been ‘trap time’! 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Mice are horrid little things when the invade your home, I agree completely with you. We have ongoing issues with these rodents, when we’ll find on in a trap, every day, for a while, and then none. Until they’re back again, and the bait trap (we use peanut butter), then empty trap, and bait trap again thing goes on again.
Our dog shows zero interest in catching these unwanted pests, she prefers to do her hunting outside, going after birds and reptiles …
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I think small terriers like Jack Russells might go after them, but I doubt Ollie would bother either. He would probably try to play with them. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Missy obviously thinks mice aren’t worth hunting …
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My family would kill me if I used these traps, Pete… I had to get humane traps, where you can release the offenders outside. These were for outdoor mice brought in by our cat BTW…
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I can see the difference with the mice brought in by cats. But house mice can bring in disease, even though they might look cute. And they breed so prolifically, you have to get on top of them before you get overrun. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Our cat always brought tiny shrews or dormice in, and I couldn’t kill them…
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I wouldn’t kill those either. 🙂
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The cat thinks like you, Pete. I think he brings them in to keep them warm.
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But if you release the mice they can just come straight back in.
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Not if you release them several gardens from yours!
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