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Yet again, the cold weather thas come in, and we have mice.

Now, i secretly love them, they're small, furry and cute, BUT they smell!! And i'd quite liike for them not to be eating my chocolate!...and i don't want to kill them either.

1. Put everythign edible into air tight containers

I spent nearly a whole day cleaning and deponging my caravan before the BGG thanks to the little b****rs having set up home - terminate with extreme prejudice (or a large brick!)!

3. Mouse trap - it kills them instantly.

However if they've got a choice between a lump of cheese in a trap or a bar of choccy..........

create an eel-trap style affair with an ice cream box and an old sock. cut majority of the foot off the sock.
cut circular hole in the side of ice cream box that's fairly small. poke and old sock through so the long bit lies on the inside of the box. tape or glue (hotglue works well) the short bit outside the hole.

place copious amounts of chocolate in the box, place lid on top.

put in mouse social gathering place and wait.

mouse will in theory go down sock, sock will deflate when mouse is out of it and mouse wil be trapped in box.

5 buy a humane trap, bait it with peanut butter. you can get the kind that does not kill the mouse.. then release it several miles from your house.

6. get a cat. the presence of a cat can deter them moving in in the first place (having said that we have a cat and mice...)

7 be really tidy in the kitchen, keep dry goods in air tight tins, dispose of your compost, empty your bins... helps to not invite them in (I'm not good at this bit either)

8. get a hold of some cat poop, or used cat litter... I don't know how you would go about this - theory being, if you put this some where in your house, the mice will smell it and scadaddle... you might need it for a few days before you clear it out.


A sobering thought... a pair of breeding mice can produce up to 144 prodegy within a year (can't remember where I got that factoid), they are incontinent and pee everywhere they go... they are homing animals and, if they know where there is food they will go back there, even if it is a few miles away...

IMHO either get a cat or kill 'em.

Kill em. It's the only way. We got 23 in two nights after trying other methods. 2 * Little Nipper traps bought for £1.35 each. Stick them in the pantry and snap snap snap snap! Never got much peace - always having to empty and reset the traps, but they are gone now!

mine didnt want to go in the humane traps we only caught one - they seemed to prefer the little nippers and my GSD/Lab(alike) is just too big and lumbery to be a mouser

10. fill in all gaps where they could be entering (pref with wire wool which they wont chew through)
11. then get a 'pestclear ' or other plug in device - very low energy take and does some sort of UHF noise that makes them bugger off elsewhere (fingers crossed it appears to have worked so far)

I had one of those ultra frequency things once., It lasted 3 weeks - the first week, i didn't sleep, the second week i slept, then third week, the mice started talking back to it!!

Don't use poisen, it's just expensive mouse food.

I've had mice in a student household so such an extreme level that I started sleaping with my food in the bed with me.

I concluded, the only way is to kill them. Use traps, if the taps don't kill them, which they often don't, smashing with a brick is allot less messy then using the cleaver. Sorry to be so unsensative.

bear in mind a mouse can fit through any hole bigger than the diameter of a biro.

capture them and train them to walk a tightrope...then you can earn lots of money from the bleeders

be careful though, they can bite HARD.
i once got told off by my pet mouse Dani for holding his tail. I wasnt holding him BY his tail, i was just trying to keep him in one place. i swear the little bugger hit bone!

Don't bother with cats. Mine just bring the blighters in and I have to catch them and put them out again.

I use the cat to flush them out of their hidey hole then chuck a margarine tub over them. Slide a piece of card under and throw them outside into the road. Preferably in front of the number 24

Zoe