UGH - we've got mice...

Avatar for cl_phocid
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
UGH - we've got mice...
14
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 3:02am

I am feeling so defeated tonight.

All my best,
Danni

Pages

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2004
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 7:21am

Is it in your budget to have an exterminator come out? They might have better traps/baits, and they should come back and check all the traps for you so you won't have to do it.

Do you have any new construction going on near you? We have 4000 new homes being built near us, and we have already been told that mice and snakes will be showing up in our neighborhood as forests are cut down for these new homes. I'm not sure what I can do about the snakes, but for the mice, I've put those little electronic pest repellent things in every room in my basement and two in the garage outlets. I'm not sure if they work, but I got them at Walmart for about $5.00 each.

I'm crossing my fingers that your Dh comes home earlier than expected to help you.

Pat

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 9:04am

Oh honey, I can be your mice support group as well as debt. We've been dealing with them as well and last night was the first time I've gotten undisturbed sleep in a week. DH travels almost every weekend so I'll be coping alone as well. Here are my efforts so far-

1) Peppermint oil-you are supposed to put this on cotton balls and spread around the house. Mice supposedly hate the smell and will avoid it. I did not notice a difference but the house smells great.

2) Bounce softener sheets-see #1

3) No-kill traps. We started out with these and caught 0 mice despite having them out for 3 days. Plus, you have to take them several miles from your home.

4) Traps that electrocute-these have killed 2 and seem the most humane but were the most expensive.

5) Glue traps-I'm told these are the least humane but there is one that gets on my dresser every night and I hate it so I think I can cope.

6) Snap traps-we have these out mostly in our room but did catch 1 in the living room last night.

We haven't gone to poison/exterminator yet because of our kids and the possibility that they would die in the walls necessitating more repair work. I felt the same way you do about cleaning but since I've had the problem some of the cleanest people I know have revealed similar experiences. It's been pretty tiring actually to step some stuff up like washing dishes after every meal instead of lunch and dinner (I was skipping breakfast) and mopping frequently (versus once a week).

Taleyna

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 11:00am

Oh, Danni! I REALLY feel for you. I live in terror of having mice in the house. I actually am not technically afraid of the mice themselves, but we had such a bad experience with them when we lived in a rental duplex a few years ago, that I think the sight of a mouse would drive me out of my mind. I'd have the house up for sale in about two days, and you know how much I love my house!!

We had them in the kitchen, and the landlady didn't believe we had them. But they had infested our cupboards so badly, starting on the top shelf and working their way down, that by the time we finally got fed up enough to break our lease (at great expense) and move on, they had taken over nearly the entire kitchen. I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do is wipe the mouse poop off the counters and bleach the counters so I could use the kitchen. We stopped using the cupboards because they got into nearly everything and pooped on everything else. It was the most disgusting period of my life (the cockroaches infesting the duplex, which the landlady also did not believe were there, didn't help), and I've lived in some pretty gross circumstances (like the basement apartment where the landlord had put cheap new carpet directly on top of the old--damp--carpet "for padding" and where I had to sleep on a $5 couch from Goodwill because it was my only piece of furniture except the little plywood stand I had purchased for $1 from Goodwill, which was where I kept my books, which were pretty much my only possessions after my bedroll got ruined by the fact that it was resting on a damp carpet... oh and there were centipedes everywhere in that house, and gross old wet carpet in the kitchen and bathroom... but still not as bad as the mice and roaches).

Other than sympathy and the reassurance that it is not your fault, the only advice I can offer you is DON'T LET THEM FIND FOOD. If they do, then DON'T TAKE IT AWAY. Taking it away was the mistake we made--they took it as a personal challenge and moved from just the top shelf where the food had been down to the next shelf and then into the rest of the kitchen.

I've heard you can seal them out if you close off all possible points of entry. But that simply wasn't possible in that duplex.

Most people I know who have had mice haven't had as bad an experience as ours was, so you probably won't have as much trouble as we did either. Just know that I don't blame you for being overwhelmed by the problem. I hope you find a good resolution.

Oh, one other thing--mice apparently can't bear the smell of ferrets. If you can borrow a friend's ferret for a weekend and let it poop in your basement a few times, it will probably solve the problem. Of course, then you'll have a ferret smell in your house, but that will wear off. You could also just borrow someone's used ferret litter to place in strategic locations around the house. The pet store might be willing to let you cart off a bag of the stuff. We thought about doing that, but by the time we came to that idea, we had already decided to move and let the mice be the landlady's problem.

We did clean the cupboards thoroughly right before we moved out, as a courtesy. It took me five hours. :( :( :(

Anyway, good luck. And know that I'm feeling for you.

Blessings,

Heather

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 11:11am

Hi goingtodobetter,

Okay, first of all, let me say something I've been meaning to say for ages and seem to keep forgetting, so even though this is not the right place, it's where I'm gonna say it:

YOU ROCK. You are such an inspiration on this board, and I never tire of hearing your story. I am so glad you joined us.

Okay, now for the issue at hand--don't do anything about the snakes. I know they're kinda scary, but they are your best defense against the mice and, except the poisonous ones which you have my blessing to kill if they enter your property lol, they will not harm you or your children. Without them, you will have a mouse problem of epidemic proportions. With their help, the mice will probably never be a big problem. We actually considered getting a snake to live in our kitchen cupboards when we had our problem, but we didn't really have any way of keeping it around, and didn't want to make the poor guy unhappy anyway, so we decided against it.

As for traps (this is in response to the next post, actually), I've heard that the snap traps are actually pretty humane. They kill so quickly the little bugger doesn't know what got him. They're kinda gross to have to clean out though. The "humane" traps are actually not--mostly, the mice will just come right back, and when they don't, they'll probably die in the woods anyway. The kind of mice that infest houses are a different species from the sort that live in the wild, and they cannot survive in the woods. They'll die a horrible death out there. So just use a snap trap and be done with it. They're cheapest anyway.

Okay, down from my snake soapbox. :)

Blessings,

Heather

Avatar for cl_phocid
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 11:22am

Ladies - thank you all so much for your posts.

All my best,
Danni

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-02-2004
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 11:29am

I've got an obnoxious mouse-killing feline I could loan out for a few days...

Just let me know--I'm sick of him bringing me dead rodent gifts. I almost stepped on one barefoot the other day going out for the morning paper. GROSS!!!

Only kidding.....

You DO know that having mice in your house has nothing whatsoever with your housekeeping abilitites? Mice are usually coming indoors to get away from something disturbing their habitat, like construction, or to get out of bad weather.

Good luck with it. Hope nobody steps on a snap trap.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 12:20pm

"Heather - my goodness I had no idea what you've been through in terms of living conditions."

LOL Well, the wet apartment was the summer before graduate school, so I didn't mind. It was my first apartment :). I was just glad to be on my own. Okay, I minded enough that I moved out as soon as my three-month lease was up, but I was a resilient kid in those days. Sheesh. I can hardly believe it's been ten years. I used to eat ramen every night in those days, too, and I'd add a little ground beef with onions and potatoes if I felt like splurging. I had $3000 to live on that summer, including summer school tuition of a little over a grand and all my moving expenses, and I was determined not to use it all up.

As for the duplex--now that was a nightmare. The landlady actually lived in the other half of the duplex, but she was 80-something and deaf and half-blind and asleep by six every evening, so it's no surprise she didn't notice the mice and roaches. And it was her agent, one of our neighbors, that was the real nightmare. It was when he sent us a nasty note about cleaning up our yard or he would do it and charge us for it that sent us over the edge. Our lawn was neater than hers (which we often mowed for her while doing our own), and my small garden plot in the back was carefully tended, but the grass was a little high (though no higher than hers), and I had bags of compost leaning against the raised beds, which he apparently objected to. But the note was totally unwarranted, especially when, if he had a problem, he could have just stopped by and mentioned it casually. That was the straw that broke our backs. If he had actually been the landlord, we wouldn't have left on as nice of terms, but because it was her property and we liked her, we were really nice. We left her our deposit by mutual agreement, left the duplex super clean (cleaner than when we moved in and including a nice paint job in the kitchen), and left the $600-deck we had built on the side of the house, even though another neighbor had offered to buy it from us for $150. What were we thinking??? LOL

Anyway, I guess we've lived in some pretty rough circumstances, but maybe that's why we're SOOOO grateful for our marvelous house. I think it's sort of like debt. When you've hit rock bottom, it's a lot easier to appreciate when things are get better.

Heather

Avatar for cl_beckymk
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 1:40pm

EEK!!!

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2004
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 3:42pm

Heather,

Thank you soooo much for your super sweet compliment. This board has helped me more than I could have ever imagined. :-D

You just made my day!

Pat :-D

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-05-2004
Fri, 10-21-2005 - 3:50pm

>So far the only thing we have had to deal with is ants
>and those are bad enough as far as I'm concerned (and
>easily taken care of with just DH putting stuff around
>the outside of the house and then they are gone!).

Are these fire ants or normal ants? :-D The reason I'm asking is that we get big ol' fireant hills here in Georgia, and I used to treat each individual hill, just to watch the ants build another mound just a few feet away. During our last annual Termite inspection, our exterminator said that if we treated the whole yard using a spreader, the ants would have to move elsewhere, which in this case is our neighbors' yards. I just use the jumbo bags from Walmart, walk around the yard pushing the spreader (I call it exercise ;-D), and by the time the ant hills are really getting large everywhere, I start noticing that they build their hills right on the property lines between us and our neighbors, but never in our yard. Very neat to see! :-D I think I pay less than $15 a bag, and it treats my whole yard (.51 acre).

Pat :-D

Pages