Mice in our kitchen

[noisycrank]

No consolation at all but I once knew someone who had pine martens in the attic. lovely animals in the right place but ewww

[Domestique]

We've always found the super-cheap wooden traps (the kind that usually get your fingers a couple of times when you're setting them) to be most ideal for killing meece.

+1
These are the only traps we have used that seem to be effective.
Its also quite funny when someone is trying hard to set the trap without their fingers being caught and you make them jump   

[Wowbagger]

I forgotten who I was talking to about pine martens, in Scotland I think, at one of the B & B's on LEJOG.

These people knew of a couple who had bought a croft for summer use. They renovated it nut couldn't work out why the chimneys were blocked by balls of wire netting, so removed them.

Next time they went to visit the place, they found the reason. Pine martens had come down the chimneys and completely trashed the place.

[Jurek]

.... get some poison. The trouble is that if B & Q poison is as effective as its traps, then I'll be wasting my money.

Neosorexa from a traditional hardware store is what I used when I had rats in the garden a couple of years ago.
When he turned up, the council rat-catcher commented "Oh, this stuff is really effective - but my boss won't buy it, it's too expensive" 

Your fear of rodent corpses in inaccessible places may be unjustified. Apparently the way the stuff works is that it gives the rodent an insatiable thirst, so they go in search of water - presumably in drains / sewers etc - before expiring there.

[Pancho]

I've posted my tale of squirrels before.

The traps were big and scary. I could have lost a limb setting them carelessly. They also did not work.

Poison worked. Unfortunately, we did not recover all the corpses.

We did not realise this until I went into the bathroom one morning and found the floor covered with maggots - with more cascading down through the light fittings.

Mrs P was Not Impressed by this turn of events and the Rules of Engagement were changed to shoot on sight in the garden.

[Wowbagger]

Yes! Success!

Using one of these

That picture is perhaps not quite as helpful as it might have been.

[Kathy]

Yes! Success!

Using one of these

That picture is perhaps not quite as helpful as it might have been.

Yup, the same as we used to successfully evict the mouse from the kitchen cupboard a couple of months ago.

[Martin109]

Yes! Success!

Using one of these

That picture is perhaps not quite as helpful as it might have been.

That looked rather like a bag of sand at first glance!

Another vote here for the simple, cheap wooden ones.

I tend to use Parmesan rind; it's tough, and they like gnawing, so they'll set to work on it and set the trap off quite reliably.

[Wowbagger]

I've bought 4 different types of trap from B & Q in the past week. The cheap wooden ones recommended by Kathy are described as "bait free". You just put them up against the wall where you think the mice are running. My brother, who has had an infestation of long-tailed field mice in his loft, has used exactly the same sort, althoug he has baited them with peanut butter. He told me this morning that one of them caught two mice simultaneously.

[delthebike]

Yes! Success!

You should nail the corpse/s to your fence as a deterrent!

[arabella]

I got some plastic jobby (same idea oas the wooden ones) from Wilkos.
First night the trap sprang but no mouse .... until younger guy found it under a chair 2 feet away.  We concluded it had been damaged and attempted to crawl away to expire.
Nothing since though.  Maybe they have got tired of the smell of the cheese in there that still hasn't been eaten.  Either that or there was only the one (ha ha ha) or it was an advance party.  Ther've been mice further down the garden for ages now.

Apparently mice don't like the smell of mint.

I don't think the parallel with fox hunting is apt, myself.  The parallel would be putting a fox trap on the fox's route between den and supply_of_food_you_want_to_keep_it_away_from, then starting a thread on the effectiveness of said fox trap.
OT: Note I was amused to find an article in some newspaper (probably the Tgraph, it was lying around on a train) muttering that town dwellers are no longer as fond of foxes as they were ..

[inc]

Just to be the fourth person to suggest the cheap wooden traps, the ones I use are not bait free, they have different names but the current ones are called "little Nipper" I use peanut butter and smear it on the trip, it sticks like you know what,  sometimes the trip needs a bit of a fettle to get a hair trigger. I then put it where the mouse can only approach it from the front, never failed.

[pumpkin]

Some people have too much internet time on their hands. I'm told starvation is the best way (albeit slow) to get rid of mice but you have to be scrupulous about cleaning everything of crumbs etc and putting food in sealable containers.

[Ian H]

If they're field mice, the only permanent solution is definitely to find out how they're getting in and seal it.

[border-rider]

^This

Cats help too, not by killing what gets in but by introducing a general air of cattiness that stops the little chaps from coming in in the first place.  Our last (rented) house came with mousetraps in the kitchen drawers and the landlord told us we'd have loads when the weather got cold.  We never had a single one in the house, though there were Beasts in the roof.

We had an small invasion of woodmice in the garage at the last house one winter - again, letting the cats in there stopped them returning.

[Gattopardo]

Call in ub40......oh thats a rat in the kitchen.

How about humane traps then a mouse organ monty python style.

[David Martin]

I know where the mice live (in the compost bin) and I know how they are getting in (through the various bits of ventilation. Traps work well, keeping the numbers down to an acceptable level, and there is plenty of food in the compost bin so they don't bother us in the house. The chickens haven't yet, to my knowledge, caught a mouse but I am sure they would deal with it appropriately.

The cheap wooden traps are the best. But they can be very sensitive. We use peanut butter as a bait.

..d

[David Martin]

Oh yes, in the spirit of recycling and making good use of resources, mice trapped and killed are then placed in a bag in an old ice cream tub in the freezer. When that fills up they are passed to my colleague as food for his harris hawk.

The children know not to open the 'micecream' tub...

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

I had a mouse in my place.  I didn't set any traps, just made sure all the food supplies were out of its reach (mice can climb almost anything!)

One the food was hard to get it resorted to the flip-top waste bin and I watched as it pushed its way past the lid and fell neatly into the bin.

It was then at my mercy and just for fun I set a pack of hounds onto it I took the bin out and let it escape into the very large garden.

[Julian]

^ That works well if you have a single mouse. 

IME by the time you're seeing mouse tuds on the cooker, you have an entire colony.

[David Martin]

This is a mouse plague.. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/JH4EFgRB4bU&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/JH4EFgRB4bU&rel=1</a>

[Charlotte]

I suggest that Wowbagger acquires a decently accurate pre-charged pneumatic rifle, fitted with a scope and a powerful lamp and he sits up all night in the kitchen with a bottle of gin and a ready supply of olives and vermouth.

In the morning, just pop round with a pair of little trowels; one to fix the .22 calibre holes in the plaster and the other to dispose of the little splatted mouse bodies.

Repeat until your vermin problem is no more 

[Wowbagger]

I suggest that Wowbagger acquires a decently accurate pre-charged pneumatic rifle, fitted with a scope and a powerful lamp and he sits up all night in the kitchen with a bottle of gin and a ready supply of olives and vermouth.

In the morning, just pop round with a pair of little trowels; one to fix the .22 calibre holes in the plaster and the other to dispose of the little splatted mouse bodies.

Repeat until your vermin problem is no more 

You are Havermeyer AICMFP!

[Ian H]

Repeat until your vermin problem is no more 

As above (some way above) if they're coming in from outside - not house mice - you could have a job for life.

[Rapples]

Are you suggesting that you'd be tolerant of hamster microwaving just because you're okay with fox hunting?  

Maybe we should just stick to controlling vermin, unless of course you are just trying to avoid the question.

Edit: I'd suggest that someone who microwaves a hamster has some mental health issues, so presumably you're OK with mocking loonies