How do you go about getting rid of mice in your house?  My upstairs neighbor
just called to let me know one walked by her when she was drying off after
a shower and she thinks it is coming through a hole that the repairman left
in the floor.  She said it looked fat.  Since we have not been knowingly
feeding the mice, they probably go in and out of the basement.  There are
broken windows which we put cardboard over.

12 responses total.

We have had mice in the walls of our house since we have lived here. Now and
then one would die and there'd be a big stink for a while. I got tired of this
so I trap them in a pipe cupboard to which they have access. I haven't been
able to find a hole by which they get into the wall spaces from outside. I
have now trapped some 20...and counting. I'm not happy doing this....but it's
them or us. 

How do you trapthem?  Jim baited 5 mousetraps with almonds.  He says if he
uses peanut butter they just lick it off without springing the trap so he has
embedded sunflower seeds in it.  

I checked the cellar windows and there is a lot of missing glass.  We stuffed
insulation in where the panes are missing, other people have nailed up
plywood, both easy to chew through to get into a warm winter home.  I keep
the door between my end of hte basement (with bathroom) and the back end
closed, but the mice seem to be climbing the plumbing into the top floor
apartment.  No signs of them here.  One year I found a dead mouse in my
sheepskin slipper, before I started to keep that door closed.  

Let's hope the aluminum plug works.  The neighbor says dried fox urine kept
the mice away.

I use cheap spring mousetraps. They fail after a while because the staples
pull out, but by then they are somewhat soiled with "mouse". I use peanut
butter, but make sure to get it into the rolled over end of the trigger.
Even if the mice manage to lick off the exposed PB, they then get greedy.

Jim set five traps.  Today two were full of mouse.  In the basement.
Now the neighbor reports hearing small running noises in her dining room
ceiling and wants Jim's help setting her traps.  Whatever she put as bait,
or wherever she put the traps, has not worked.  The mice must all be moving
in for the winter now that our warm spell has ended.  Used to be just the
small red squirrels that colonized attics.

You have to find the holes... mice can get in through dime-sized holes,
apparently.

One of them apparently got through a dime-sized hole in my desk leg and died
in there because it is rather stinky around the leg.  The hole is 2' up from
the floor.  I read that rats are also very good and squeezing through very
small holes.

We will have to remove a computer and three monitors to get off the desk leg
(or maybe tape it over and try to forget about it until it dessicates?).

The stink was from the dead mouse, which somehow got in through the top hole
and then fell down and could not get out the bottom. Jim shook it out after
taking the leg off in the middle of talking someone through installing XP
(which we have not even used, let alone installed) on a speaker phone.  There
were lots of long pauses.  Then he found a fourth mouse in the trap he reset
yesterday, caught by the hand, almond still there.  Four down.  THe upstairs
neighbor said they owe us a lot of snow shoveling.  

We also found about 10 years' worth of dust and lost objects under the desk.

I suspect that the mice that died in our walls finally got too old to climb
out and then died. We would hear scurrying in that part of the wall for some
time before. I didn't think it was worth it to cut holes in the wallboard to
remove the corpse(s). Trapping them in the pipe cupboard seems to remove them
before they get senile.

Someone just dropped us off three rat traps, larger versions of mouse traps,
which Jim may want to try on the squirrels that ate all his pears last summer.
If he puts them in the tree (to avoid cats and skunks) what would he bait
with?

Carrots. I live-trap groundhogs with carrots, but sometimes catch squirrels.

WOuld a black walnut work?  We could crush it first.  

I am lucky. My cat is a really good mouser even though she is declawed. 
Every now and then a mouse comes inside and she kills it. Otherwise, I 
think she scares them off since I have only seen evidence of a mouse 
one time in five years. I found some droppings on my counter once and 
then a few days later, the cat brought me a dead mouse. Otherwise, I 
just get "presents" from her without seeing any mouse evidence first. 

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