Our mouse issue is getting worse. Much worse.
We started with caerfully placed traps. Places where we could close a door behind them and not worry about a doggie or kitty paw getting caught in it instead. We caught some mice. Great.
We got MORE traps and baited them with cheese. We continued to occasionally catch mice.
I first started hearing them in the walls. When i got laid off in June, and was home during the day, I saw one scurry across the floor and up and onto the mantle above our wood stove. Cheeky bastard. I got the cat and showed it to him. The cat said "eh" and left. I showed it to Hobbes, who began to chase, but did not catch it. Then I started seeing trails of poop in the laundry room. I still see trails, I vacuum the laundry room every other day and am amazed at the amount of poop. We still have traps, but the mice poop around them.
The mice have been eating the plastic inside my washing machine. I have now seen them inside my dish washer. They have been all over the house, except upstairs in the bedrooms (thank god) Our cat does nothing.
We bought ultrasonic noise maker thingies - that just drove them into different rooms. I plugged up holes in the laundry room walls with steel wool. They just push it out. We shouldn't get more house cats, because I am allergic and the one we have already sleeps on my head and has given me asthma.
I am seriously considering poison. The drawback is that if a poisoned mouse dies i the walls, the house gets stinky. But it's already stinky from mouse droppings and urine. If a poisoned mouse dies in the house and a dog or cat eats it - those pets die an horrible death. Horrible. I doubt the cat will eat an already dead mouse. But Hobbes and Grish (and Atlas and Goliath) all think that mousies from traps are a great treat. I don't want to lose my pets. Not like this.
I researched mouse control options. They talk about traps (snap, sticky, live) ultrasonic noise thingies, poison. They talk about putting all your food in sealed glass containers (we have lots, but not all in sealed containers - dog food and cat food are in plastic containers) they talk about cleaning and keeping things off the floor so they don't have places to nest and hide. OK, larry, I need some help with the house cleaning activities here! They talk about poison. They talk about exterminators - one charging hourly, PLUS $125 per mouse caught. Man, I bet we have HUNDREDs, that would be expensive.
I want to blow up my house and go live in the barn. They are INSIDE MY DISHWASHER. Come on!! I want to scream. I really really want to use poison. But I don't want to lose my dogs. But these mice have got to go. DAMN my allergies, but it's not good for me to be asthmatic, either. I hate taking allergy meds every day because of Schroed, but I don't know what to do. We brought Marie into the house, but she hissed and spit at Schroed. That wasn't going to be fun. Maybe I have to suck it up with my allergies and get more cats? But Larry doesn't want more pets to feed. I don't want a trail of mouse poop in my house anymore, either!! HELP!!!
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3 comments:
OK, let's see what I can suggest.
Before I begin, a note of additional frustration. They're not all inside, already. You're getting a lot from outside who come in to visit. They're coming in not only for the food but for the warmth. With that in mind, let's walk through options - which are not (mostly) mutually exclusive.
The first thing I recommend is finding and closing the holes. This is going to be a fun one. Every place you find a hole, you need to block it. There are a variety of effective methods. I have a couple I especially like.
1) plaster or caulking compound mixed with stainless steel wool. This works much the same way as rebar and concrete. I use stainless steel wool as most of the caulk and plaster I've used rusts the other stuff, which causes the block to fall apart. As holes get larger you need a bracing element - I figure that'll be obvious pretty early to you but I'll mention it so you can plan ahead.
2) Shaped metal sheets. Surprisingly, a double layer of heavy aluminum foil works in almost all cases - provided you anchor it. A strong epoxy works well as an anchor material. Note that you can make a non-smooth but fairly good patch by fastening this to the backside of your hole, then finishing it with the steel plaster.
3) for larger holes, patch the wallboard. Or if your house is plaster and lathe, re-lathe and re-plaster.
4) Don't forget to look around your heating vent openings. You might need a finer grate for those as well. I use stick about a dime's equivalent in diameter to see if a mouse's head will fit, but some places recommend closing any gap larger than 1/4 inch.
With the easy entrance to the inside blocked, it's time to work on the population itself. I'm going to recommend glue- and live-traps given your circumstances, but I'm going to do so with a twist. Build some mouse-houses for outside. Picture somewhat oversized birdhouses (quarter sized entry hole) placed on the ground. The holes need to be at least four inches off the ground, and you need a way to open and empty the houses and then replace the traps and bait. Grain and feed are the best baits - peanut butter and cheese turn out to be far less preferred. Have a plan for emptying these daily, to include what to do with mice that haven't starved yet (which will be most of them). You will also be feeding and catching mice from the barn and the field with this - sorry.
After a bit the numbers caught will decline. At some point - say the first day that you only have one or two mice per trap - you will have reached a point where you're PROBABLY at diminishing returns. It's time for phase three.
Phase three is close the holes on the outside of the house. You (or Larry) will have wanted to have examined all the places you're going to have to work and make plans.
There are two general avenues by which the mice enter the house, and a third that's uncommon but still exists.
Avenue one is at the bottom of the siding - where it isn't snug against the part of the baseboard that's outside. The water barrier or mounting board (or both) has had a hole worn/cut/chewed into it, for example. The general solution here is to add a barrier where wood/fiber/whatever meets the foundation concrete. Fast, easy, and wrong is a thick bead of the steel wool caulk. The reason for wrong is - it might be wrong. It depends on vent requirements. Building codes and your professional knowledge will tell you better than I can.
Second avenue is "the floor". More accurately, anywhere from the crawlspace under the house where the mice can run up a wall or foundation pillar, run along wires/ducts/braces/etc till they find a gap. The places the plumbing and heating vents penetrate the subfloor are primary examples. You have two solutions here.
a) you can spot plug. Basically you're repeating the interior plugging techniques, looking for openings and sealing them.
b) you can install a floor barrier. Technically what you're doing is insulating your subfloor - do it at the same time by putting batts of insulation between the frames, then apply a water vapor barrier. Caulk/seal the seams and the places the barrier meets foundation.
I said there's a third, less common way. That's running the wire - powerline, etc - and coming in through roof soffets. This is so uncommon that I'd not bother unless you find an obvious entry point. It's more commonly used by squirrels and other tree-running rodents, and even then not typical unless you've nearby large trees.
Note, please: time, money, and no guarantees of success. Please doublecheck all my advice with a professional - I'm using experience and references and am NOT an expert.
And good luck.
Kirk
I know where they come in. Its under the front Deck. I'm really NOT in the mood to dissemble the front deck to put some concrete patch in the holes. (can't crawl under it)
The barn cats have solved the barn mouse problem.... I'm hoping if we kill what is inside, then they will keep the outside population down.
Mouse traps+peanut butter seems to work, got two this morning from what I set last night.
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