Meeces!

[Adrian]

I still think there's nothing better than a cat...

Way too much information

[Jurek]

I still think there's nothing better than a cat...

Way too much information

Keyboard, screen and tabletop replacement please!

[Martin109]

But they don't need to die . They can stay. I like having mice. Every now and then you catch one peering at you curiously, waiting for you to do something interesting, they're cool. Everyone else knows that we never do anything remotely interesting.

I'm afraid I read that as 'you catch one peeing at you curiously...', which might be true, as it's well-known that they dribble pee all the time, not in organised batches, like us (most of the time)!

[Jezza]

This is a real mouse plague:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/r3RLmErp43k&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/r3RLmErp43k&rel=1</a>

[Tiger]

Mice breed faster than anything and by the time you have noticed you have 'a few' around the place you may well fing you have a really serious infestation.
When I was a student we had a few - and frankly I wasn't worried because I too thought they were cute. Then suddenly they were everywhere and evrything was coverd in mouse shit. They were in the draws, behind the cooker, any dark place. All the cutlery was shat on, all the cerals shat in, anything left out for a moment got footprints and turds on it and the flat started to smell of mouse piss. They were nesting in the mattresses, sofas, behind skirtings - bloody everywhere.
Every time you wentintoi a room and turned a light on they would be there or scuutling about.
We had to move out, throw out all the furniture, get the council pest control in and it was horrid. I was so pleased to move on because the place smelt bad afterwards. 
So I say don't make a home for them and as soon as you see one you know you have a few weeks to act.

[Butterfly]

Well, I caught it last night. The munching in a bag in the bedroom woke me up and I grabbed it and emptied the creature outside. Hopefully he'll be happy enough out there and not find his way back in. Now we'll see if he had a family...

[Charlotte]

Never seen the point of humane traps for anything, unless you are going to look after that thing for the rest of its life.   In a mechanical trap, it is dead in an instant, job done.   In a humane trap, you'll release it far from its own territory where it will starve to death or be predated upon rather quickly.   Humane trapping makes you feel better because you don't kill the animal - it still dies though. 

I've got to agree.  I'm not into killing fluffy things unless it's absolutely unavoidable, but if it's their well being or mine, the best I can do is to take responsibility for their necessary death and make sure it's as clean as possible.

[Julian]

IM(sadly extensive)E, once you've seen one running across the floor, you've got an infestation, and nothing will get rid of the little bastards.  Moving house can help.

Our Islington house ended up smelling like a vagrant's armpit, mouse poo everywhere, you couldn't leave a bag of shopping out for half an hour without finding a bloody mouse in it.  They woke me up by prancing round my room all night (underneath the sonic repeller thingy), ate my flapjack, chewed the oven cable so we had no oven, and crapped in the microwave and I still don't know how they even got in there.  

They regarded humane traps as a a little rodent version of Challenge Annika, were perfectly capable of retrieving Mars Bar from a non-humane trap without getting caught, learned to love peppermint oil, danced the night away to the vibrations from the sonic repeller, and bred fast enough that the poison didn't have much effect on their incredibly fast-growing population.

The only thing that worked was glue-traps placed cunningly across their usual paths, but that really is cruel so I didn't like to use those.

[bikenerd]

We had them in the attic a couple of winters ago.  I thought I could hear something but my girlfriend dismissed it as "birds on the roof".  We went away for Christmas and when we came back heard them gnawing through *something* in the attic.  We then knew something had to be done.
That something was Murder Death Kill on a grand scale.
24 hour poison x 2
Mouse traps baited with Nutella x 4
Number of mices killed in 48 hours: just 8 bodies recovered.  I'm sure that there's little mouse skeletons left under the insulation.
Really, it's the only way.  They are pretty little creatures but are a hazard to your health and sanity!

[border-rider]

I've just met a tiny teeny ratlet.  Ever so cute, a little ball of fur 3-4 cm long with big brown eyes...and a naked tail about twice as long as its body

Luckily it was out in the yard, and though it was young enough not to be frightened of me, it soon scuttled off into one of the old barns

[Cunobelin]

Mouse traps don't always kill instantly either. I remember the kids and Mrs Wow being upset when a trap caught a mouse by the leg and it screamed and screamed until Mrs. Wow whacked it with a shoe.

Hire out Ms Wow as a Hit Person?

[rae]

I've moved onto moles if anyone needs assistance.   

I am the mole-reaper.

3 in one week-end. 

[clarion]

Ooh dear.  Either it's got back in, or we have another...

[Julian]

By the time you see one, you've got hundreds.  And they're breeding.

[clarion]

Not necessarily.  We have caught one at work, and the activity is down to a minimum.  Rentokil chap said he thought that it was probably only one in the first place, so the fact that one spoor has been found means that we maybe have one left.

[Wowbagger]

When I were a lad and worked on a farm, we had a load of rodents. The farmer put down a load of warfarin for the rats and poisoned several farm cats through the Warfarin Recycling Scheme.

I remember one hen-house seemed to have a number of mice. The farmer had used a paper chicken food sack to block up a gap in a partition between the two halves of the hen house and I saw a mouse run in there. II tore the sack down and many dozens of mice came tumbling out, running around pursued by hens. If a hen caught one, she ate it. Very impressive!

So there you are, Clarion: get a hen. She'll eat the mice and you might get some eggs.

[clarion]

Well, a hen is one idea...

[clarion]

They've overstepped the mark now.  I've had a mouse in my Carradice chomping on a chocolate bar I'd put aside for this morning.

Could be revenge for the trap I bought that they are carefully avoiding...

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Can I borrow Mrs Wow and her shoe? The mice are back in my flat. One was having the time of its life exploring this morning.

[Malandro]

I've moved onto moles if anyone needs assistance.   

I am the mole-reaper.

3 in one week-end. 

One of the most disturbing things I've ever seen was about 30 dead moles strung up on barbed-wire beside a field in the Scottish Borders....like some sort of warning to other moles.... 

[bikenerd]

We have mice again, as well.  Two dispatched so far!

[Regulator]

We have mice again, as well.  Two dispatched so far!

With your avatar, I have this vision of you swooping down on them from above, before swallowing them and regurgitating their bones.   

[rae]

One of the most disturbing things I've ever seen was about 30 dead moles strung up on barbed-wire beside a field in the Scottish Borders....like some sort of warning to other moles....   

I've seen that sort of thing - never really sure what the point is.  I've dispatched 6 of the buggers now.

The mice are coming in for the winter - we have about 10 traps set in the attic, and I empty them weekly.  I've been sorting the insulation and boarding it over.  The amount of mouse shit is amazing.

[Tiger]

The cold snap and teh central heatring has triggered mouse action at our place. The cats are now working nights again. They line the corpses up each morning - 1 per human. Very touching except the dog blunders over and scoffs them.

[clarion]

I'm pretty certain we left the wee beasts behind when we flitted.

And there's no new evidence at work, either