Nibble, Nibble Like a Mouse
The scene above looks like our kitchen for the past two weeks. After having not seen a mouse all summer, one day, they were just there. And not just one or two, but a lot. On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. B walked in to the kitchen, and three of them were having a powwow on the…
The scene above looks like our kitchen for the past two weeks. After having not seen a mouse all summer, one day, they were just there. And not just one or two, but a lot. On Saturday afternoon, Mrs. B walked in to the kitchen, and three of them were having a powwow on the counter. As yesterday’s article in The Times points out, the common house mouse “weighs about an ounce, has a two-inch-long body and can slip through a hole just a little bit bigger than a pencil.” So the biggest preventative measure you can take is to seal up as many holes as possible. We had someone come in last winter and spray a hard foam-like substance around (steel wool is another DIY option) but in a house like ours, there’s really no way to cover all your bases. Traps and poison are the two standard remedies; if you’re going with the former, the article recommends, you gotta go all out: If you’re not starting with a dozen traps, you’re not serious about catching mice, said one expert. As for bait, forget about cheese and go with peanut butter.
When Mice Move in to Spend the Winter [NY Times]
Photo by viralbus
I’m just glad to know that it isn’t just us having this problem…I was beginning to get a complex! It’s never been like this before, so why now does everyone have this issue? This is the first time that it seems like everyone’s having the problem at the same time.
Anywhowevah, I HATE the glue traps because I hate seeing them stuck on those things. Yuck! How can you lift those things with the animal stuck on them, staring at you, still wiggly? Double yuck!! I found two of those glue box mouse traps, and they caught one this weekend. I loved it because I couldn’t see it, just heard it squeaking. Dear fiance took it outside. The regular flat glue trap caught another one. Fi disposed of that as well. So we’ve seen and caught a total of two. I hope that this is it..but something tells me I’m kidding myself.
peanut butter alone never works for me. they lick it off. stick a raison on there [attached firmly] and put some peanut butter on it too…
snap!
If your cat doesn’t hunt mice, get one of the opposite sex who does…. once the territory issues subside (yes, that might take a while) they will get along and the mouser will teach the non-mouser what to do. My mouser would take the mouse into the bathroom and play games with it for hours while the non-mouser, vaguely aware that this was something cat-related he ought to be interested in, hung around outside the bathroom door and literally jumped out of the way whenever the mouse escaped (mouse never got far, the mouser cat was always in hot pursuit). Evenually he got the hang of it, but it was very entertaining to see a cat afraid of a mouse.
Get a cat. Not just for the mice, but for you. A well-socialized cat is a licensed therapist and a great hand warmer.
if you don’t like cats, get a mouser dog like a min-pin or rat terrier. mouse control with a heart of gold…
If you don’t like cats, consider feeding the strays if they hang out in your yard (good to get them spade or neutered too). It makes a world of difference. They keep the mice and rats away.
Mice and rats are coming back from summer vacation. They are hellbent on getting inside, no kidding. I have had a problem and all my neighbors are telling me that they are stuggling with the same problem. One tenant complained about seeing a mouse in her place and I got a guy who came in and went through the entire house pulling back appliances and crawling around every possible entry point, stuffed the holes with copper mesh wire and some other stuff and caulked all around the these spaces. My contractor left all kind of little entry places, it seemed when he did the renovation of the tenant’s apartment — mostly around pipes, the back of the refrigerator, pipes in the bathroom. The mice are skinny to begin with but flatten themselves and squeeze through to get in. Sure if you sterilize your living area and never ever ever drop a crumb or spill anything maybe they will put out an APB to forget your apartment, but the deal is to find the holes. This tenant by the way, maintains a pristine apartment and kitchen. Once they are in there, you can do all kinds of things to kill them: mouse traps, sticky traps, poison. All of that means that you have to finish off the poor suckers which is gross or that they croak somewhere and have the temerity to decompose.
About rats, the other day I opened the door to the backyard when I startled one which darted from one side of the yard to another. It almost ran into the house. He was the first of several I saw out there and none of the neighbors have a garbage problem and I don’t. They run from yard to yard and this seems to be new with the fall. I got my trusty guy back who looked for holes (he said that if you really have an infestation in your space, he can find burrow holes where they nest.) We didn’t have that problem, but it was the returning from summer vacation problem of looking for entry. The guy set several large traps. The second obvious thing is to be especially careful with garbage can lids and to tell tenants to make sure to do that too.
The guy who helped me is Guido from Bravo Extermination Inc. 212-465-7579.
If you ever lived in the country you know that when the weather gets cold, the mice try to get in the house. This is as true in Brooklyn as in the sticks. And a cat is foolproof. Try one you may find you will lke them!
I heard the mouse zapper works well. Its an baitable and reuseable electric killing machine that works without a mess.
One kind here.
http://www.nixalite.com/ratzapper.aspx
Funny, I’m a landlord and lately I’ve been getting many more mouse complaints than usual.
The exterminator has been baiting the basements and offering it to tenants, but there sticking around.
What the hell is going on? Is NYC being over-run with cats, or what?