Mice!

[photogman]

Last week my wife discovered a mouse in our basement of our three year old home in a rural area. Since then between traps and glue pads, I have trapped about 7 mice over a period of four days and it has me stressed to the max. I'm having the carpenter who built our home to come out and check it for leaks. I'm also going to have a pest control service come out and sign me up for their service. Other than this, what else can I do? Without thinking my wife had stored some birdseed in the store room to feed the birds. I got rid of that and also put the dogfood in the garage in a chew proof container. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm stressing out to the max!

 

[dave1949]

In years with high mice populations, they come in waves just about this time of year. It's nothing to stress-out about but it does require your attention.

You have to find their entry point(s), they can squeeze through very small openings or chew their way in even.

Keep trapping, get a cat? or rat terrier?

 

[yelbike]

I landscaped around my house with at least two feet (wide) of gravel on all side. When first moved here there was a huge mouse problem in the yard, only a very few inside the house. After the gravel was done I have maybe one or two per year which could come in from open doors from kids and the such.

 

[photogman]

I have a 15 foot 1.5" gravel border around my whole house for a fire barrier.

 

[breadtrk]

Cats, left to their own outside either become good mousers and other small critters exterminators or not. We have Barn cats and no mice in the house, no moles, no chipmunks and very smart birds.

And squirrels, lots of them, they mock the cats.

 

[oosik]

I've lived out here in the pucker weeds for 32 years and never had a single mouse in the house. One of the answers to this is keep all food in mouse proof containers. No food - no reason for them to attempt entry. Another answer is barn cats. I know my cats will catch, play their games with and kill at least 4-6 mice per day per cat when there is no snow on the ground. I've seen them lay next to a pocket gopher hole/mound all day and finally get them also. During the winter the cats move their mousing activities into my out buildings.

I've set mouse traps but its like trying to empty the ocean with a tea spoon. There is a never ending supply of mice, chipmunks and pocket gophers out here.

The only down side to barn cats is they will catch and kill anything and everything. Mice, quail, chipmunks, small birds, pocket gophers etc. Two of my cats learned the hard way that trying to take on a turkey was not a good idea.

Its certainly nothing to stress out about - it just requires attention to storage techniques and BARN CATS!!!

 

[Clint S]

They can squeeze in the smallest of cracks and holes. Any hole the diameter of a dime is an entrance point. I usually get 8 or 10 in the fall. Put out a bunch of traps and poison, then I get no more.

 

[Wooddust]

I use bait stations outdoors in 6 places around the foundation of the house. Poison them outdoors and they won't make it indoors. Doityourself pest control sells the baits and bait stations

 

[pmsmechanic]

We have no barn cats at all. We used to but they disappeared when the owls showed up. The owls have been the best mousers we have ever had. Maybe one or two mice a year in the house and a lot less in the rest of the yard. Two great horned and a family of screech owls.

 

[henryswe]

We had a bout with mice so I used poison in the crawl space under the house. I suddenly found my foundation getting damp so I called a plumber. He crawled under the house and found the mice had chewed through the pex plumbing causing leaks. If you have pex water lines under your house, and use a poison, be careful which poisons you use as the poisons that make the mice thirsty can cause them to damage your water line if they're pex. Plumbing bill cost $500.00 and I have splices in my lines,

 

[spitter]

If you put out poison put a bowl of water near .Poison makes them thirsty also water makes poison work faster.I put out poison to kill a rat he ate it like candy . Talked to a exterminator friend of mine he said the poison doesnt work without water .Best not to use poison around house the get into walls and crawl spaces and die and stink!!! I have best luck with regular spring trap and peanut butter.Or use glue traps and watch them suffer.He! he! HE!Happy hunting.Or as Metallica would say Kill em All!!

 

[square1]

You mentioned dog food as a food source for mice, it is in more ways than one. Reprocessed dog food (poop) if left in the yard is a food source for rodents. The previous owners of the house I have now had two huge dogs according to the neighbors. Renovating the house after purchasing it told my they also had a big rodent problem. I have one small dog and pick up after him. Haven't had a mouse problem since the first fall I lived here.

 

[txdon]

Mice hate peppermint. I put some on cotton swabs and put them in my gate opener and they no longer considered it home. Rat snakes are also good, but after the mice are gone you still have a reptile to find, and if you don't they smell just as bad as dead mice.

 

[photogman]

So far I have been using spring traps and glued boards. Got the dog food and bird seed in garage in mouse proof containers. Just purchased a rat zapper on Amazon. Going to remove a sheet of unfinished Sheetrock in storeroom to check behind it. Will call Orkin or some equivalent today. Will have carpenter come and check house this coming weekend. Will build a bucket trap whereby they fall in water and drown. This is stressing the #%^* out of me but that doesn't get rid of the mice.

 

[RobA]

We had a house built and 2 months after we moved in we had a mouse problem. I set traps and caught 6 in a few hours. They kept showing up so I had an exterminator look at the house to figure out where they were coming in. He said house was tight as a drum and they must have come in when the house was being built (lame answer). A few months later I was under the porch and saw that the builder didn't seal where services entered the house (PVC pipes, gas pipe, etc). Problem solved.

 

[Boiler74]

Do you have a sump pit with a gravity line to daylight? I have gravity fall for foundation drainage, but my county required a sump pit. So I had a 4" line that ran to daylight from the sump pit. A mouse figured that out and got into the basement. Once I covered that line with hardware cloth I haven't had any more problems.

 

[JerryK]

I fight them year round, specially in the fall. I live out in a thick woods and used to get into my pole barn and into the house. Finally sealed everything up so they can't readily get in. But if they are around the foundation at night, they are still trying to get in, that's what they do.... I moved all my wood piles 400' from my house, and don't keep anything outside anywhere near the house they can nest in. Have two 1020 Havaheart traps set up 24/7 year round next to the foundation. In the fall and early winter, I put out a couple snap traps screwed down on a piece of plywood. The unbaited, yellow plastic type... with the yellow plastic trip pad closest to the foundation. It's like everything else in life, no quick fixes, you have to put in the time and effort.... Once you get the population down, not too much to do but maintenance trapping... Same thing works for skunks and raccoon, with a bucket trap..

 

[Paddy]

Photoman,

We live in a poured concrete home. When we discovered mice in our basement, I knew it had to be the basement garage door. You didn't mention if you had a garage door in the basement. If you really look closely at a rubber gasket on garage doors, they are bad at sealing air, let alone mice. It's the corners. The door actually stops at about a 1/2" above concrete. This is to allow for the gasket to be compressed semi flat. but if you take a 1/2" dowl, you'll see you can poke it through the corner. I could see where mice had chewed the gasket.

I don't go through the garage door very often, just when I pull the tractor out. I stopped them by cutting a stick 3/4" by 1-1/2" by 10 ft. I lay it across the front of the door, pushed tight against the rubber gasket. All the mice see is; Stick, Al garage door, wood jamb of door. NO RUBBER GASKET showing. I leave set traps at the inside of the garage door corners. They stay empty until Fall comes and I have forgotten to put my stick back. I eventually permanently attache the stick with tapcons.

 

[jix]

Adjoining my acreage is a poplar/scrub birch forest of hundreds of acres. It gives haven to many kinds of rodents, in great numbers. Caulked the sills under my house with expanding foam in every crevice. Rodents will not chew it, therefore they do not enter the house, to my wife's great relief.

But under the snow, in the winter there are Voles that make tunnels you cannot see. They eat your lawn leaving brown grooves that show up in the spring, but you have no grubs. Voles and mice like antifreeze to drink.. One plastic 3 gal pail with about 2 inches of glycol in it..out in the brush... tethered to a tree and closed with a tight lid to keep canines out of it and that has a 2" hole cut into . Enuff said.

 

[nybirdman]

It's that time of the year,critters are looking for a home for the winter.Trap early and that controls them mostly for the winter.I don't use poison because if they die in the walls you are reminded for about a month.
I have more problems with chipmunks than mice.We feed the birds all year so that doesn't help.
I have live trapped and relocated at least 50 this year.