A Mousey Mystery

[Bealman]

No, Malc.... it's my wife that roams around the house for midnight munchies 

[NinOz]

his is not the first time Chez Bealman has had mice over the years. You are quite correct - forget the cheese. I've never tried fruit cake, but Cadbury's chocolate worked. 
I tried to get the old wooden mouse traps which I have always found to be the most effective, but all you can get now are the covered plastic 'safe' models.

My wife is really fuming.  Found today that mice made a nest in our bed at country house, poo and wee everywhere and they chewed the hell out of her new Sheridan sheets plus other bedding.
Haven't touched the rodent baits so mechanical traps baited with chocolate were deployed.

Bunnings claim to stock traditional traps:  https://www.bunnings.com.au/gotrap-wooden-traditional-rat-trap_p2961777
Will try to get a couple this week.

[Bealman]

That would do it!

[woodbury22uk]

Last Monday the owners of the land that backs onto our property have started felling diseased ash trees. The bonus is no more ash keys to block gutters, downpipes and soakaways. On the other hand, we have had a sudden influx of rats whose nests have been disturbed. I have two old style mechanical rat traps and currently I am scoring between 4 and 6 deaths per day. It is almost a full time job sending the corpses back to where they came from, but the magpies seem to like them.

[Jon898]

Another good bait for small rodents is peanut butter, if that's available to you (ubiquitous here).  For groundhogs (woodchucks) and opossums, canned peaches worked a dream.

Jon

[Jim Easterbrook]

For groundhogs (woodchucks) and opossums, canned peaches worked a dream.

How do they get them open?

Seeing all these posts makes me feel less alarmed about the small brown thing that ran across my living room floor a couple of weeks ago. I bought some poison and a bait station, but there's no sign of nibbling so far.

[AlexanderJesse]

Bacon and Ham are also god bait for mice

[N_GaugeModeller]

although we do hear them scurrying around in the loft at night, sometimes they are so noisy you would think they are playing football wearing hob nailed boots.

I'll do you a deal. You tell your team not to play any more International matches in Leitrim and I'll tell my lot not to issue any more invites. 

Deal 

The Bazaar thing is, when they are running about with their boots on we do hear what sound like a ball rolling about as well, it sounds like a large marble rolling on a hard wood floor.

I tried just about every type of bait/poison I could get and none of it ever shows signs of being touched. 

I have been on Youboob watch videos of mouse catchers and the most successful trap seems to be one of the simplest, a tall bucket with 3 or 4 inches of water and a spinning roller across the top with some peanut butter around the middle and a rump upto the edge of the bucket, Mr Mouse runs up the ramp, tries the cross to the middle of the roller which suddenly spins dumping Mr Mouse into the water, in one video they had 25 mice in one night.

Obviously its a lethal method so don't tell anyone what you are doing as the Smashed Avocado Brigade will be up in arms.

In my case we have a boxed in section covering pipework and I think they run along their rather than in the actual loft so cant actually get to them with traps or poison.  Perhaps I need some more fish bait that attracted them last time and I should mix the poison with that.


NGM

[javlinfaw7]

My mouse catcher is efficient  at catching them but unfortunately she goes out to catch them then  she brings them home.

[Papyrus]

Our mouse catcher used to do likewise but she is now retired and in declining health. (She used to give the corpses to the dog, but that is another story...  ) Fortunately we have not been troubled by rodents indoors for many years now - we have rats in our compost heap from time to time but we can live with that. Our problem indoors is slugs  . We have been trying for years to find out how they get in but we sometimes come down in the morning to find a silvery trail across the rug. They have also been found in the dog-food cupboard. We can't put slug bait down with dogs in the house, so we are at a bit of a loss. Ho hum....

Cheers,

Chris

[acook]

For Slugs use Salt.
Won't stop them coming in, but they won't do it twice!

Alan