mouse problems yet again

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lacey
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:41 pm
Location: SK

I read through the archives and still have a few questions about mice. It is the time of year here when they start to move and we have caught a few in the past couple days. Also, my husband made the mistake of listening to a dumb salesman that told him the mice wouldn't stink if they ate this certain kind of poison....boy was he wrong! and now we have a nasty aroma in part of the house.

I have a few questions for people with mouse problems....I know about sealing the underbelly....that is not an option to undertake here because the snow will be flying soon and I don't want to rip out the insulation under there. Has anyone had success using peppermint essential oil? How do you use it? Would it work if I soaked a bunch of cotton balls and placed them underneath the trailer? Also, my husband phoned an exterminator and they told him about some sort of packets that are pine-like smelling and they are used in motor homes and such...has anyone tried these?

I am open to suggestions....I have 8 cats roaming the farm here where we live and I don't think I need to have more and having them inside is not an option. I do have snap traps that catch them inside but I just would like to try to find a way to maybe make it less appealing for them to come inside.

Thanks
lacey
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Yanita
Moderator
Posts: 3369
Joined: Sat Feb 17, 2007 10:16 pm
Location: Eastern N. Carolina

Hi Lacey,

Making sure the underbelly is tight does not require that you remove the insulation. In fact it is making sure that everything is there and in place. Make sure that the skirting to your home is snug as well. Personally I believe that no amount of sealing will keep these critters from entering under the home.

There are only 2 reasons for mice to enter our homes, shelter and food. My property borders commercial fields, needless to say as the crops are rotated the mice run for cover. LOL, I think I have used every ole wives remedies and still have the occasional mouse. I keep the traps set, and my 2 cats have free access to under the kitchen sink. Larz caught one the other night!

I do suggest that you check for openings around your incoming water lines, under the vanities and sink area, plug with steel wool and then cover with a spray foam insulation.

We repeatedly try to tell folks not to use a mouse poison to get rid of these pest, you are suffering the results! Feel free to try what every remedies you here of and let us know how it goes.

Yanita
The difference between success and failure is who gives up first!
lacey
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:41 pm
Location: SK

Thanks for the response! We are on a farm so there is crop land all around and like clockwork spring and fall the mice move in. I guess a dead mouse caught in a trap is better than a live one!

I have sealed around all water lines, etc. did that when we moved in with steel wool and such....thought we had them all...lol probably not I guess!

As for the mouse poison....not a pleasant thing...too bad I read about the ill effects after the fact! :oops:

I think I am going to try cotton balls and peppermint essential oil...who knows if it works but I will sure try!

Thanks again!
mist1953

I don't mean to sound nosy, but what kind of ill effects happened when using mouse poisoning?? Only because we use poison packs around our place all the time.
Guest

Personally, I do not think that oils or smells will repel mice. Not even moth balls have worked for me except in concentrations that make me want to leave the mobile home too. The only thing that I swear by is snap traps (I use Victor Easy-Set with the large yellow triggers which can be set to "sensitive") baited with a small amount of peanut butter. Last year I caught over a dozen in the belly of my home and this year I am well on my way to equalling or exceeding that number. This is even after sealing every access hole I could find. It doesn't matter - they will get in.
I have also learned from experience to teather the traps to a solid object with a length of string, as a "wounded" mouse can easily drag the trap out of reach if it's set in the belly or near the water heater. Although many warn against poisons, I put one dose of D-Con under my home this fall and have since found 3 mice dead in my yard while leaf cleaning. So there is some truth in the claims that they will leave the mobile home after ingesting the poison to look for water before dying. I no longer use poison, however, because it has been so easy to trap them and I don't want to suffer the one mouse that dies in the belly somewhere out of reach before decomposing. They can be quite annoying, but if you keep a good amount of traps always baited and check them often, you will be able to keep them under control until it becomes too cold for them to continue house-hunting. Unfortunately, no amount of trapping will prevent you from having to do it all over again next year. Good Luck!
lacey
Posts: 21
Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:41 pm
Location: SK

mist1953 the ill effects I am referring to are the smells that the decomposing mouse makes. Not very pleasant at all! You know, never until this year have I had troubles with that. But I guess there is always a first!

MobileWayne I don't like those Victor snap traps cause I find them hard for me to set and they tend to cause the mouse to bleed. The traps that we use are called The Better Mousetrap, I think, and they are more like a large clip that closes and suffocates them. And to dispose of the mouse you simply just squeeze the clip open again.

Thanks again for the responses! I did put a couple peppermint essential oil soaked cotton balls around....we will see if it works!
Guest

They can be hard to set at first until you've done a few and get the hang of it, but I've tried the plastic ones and found they don't always do the job. A couple of mice have managed to extract themselves from them and there's nothing worse than finding an empty sprung trap with the bait gone. Some here also recommend the D-Con round mouse traps that the mice enter and die, so can dispose of the whole trap without ever seeing them. I've tried just about everything short of the electronic repellents, but I've found there's a reason the old-fashioned ones are still relatively unchanged after decades of use - they do the job. Whatever works for you just keep doing it and as soon as it gets cold enough you can take a break - until next year anyway!
mobtek
Posts: 129
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:33 pm

This post may sound odd, and I haven't tried it, but a friend told me about a method:

Get a 5 gallon bucket and add about 4-5 inches of water. attach a flexible stick to the edge of the bucket facing inward and attach a lemon drop to the end of that. The mice crawl out on the stick to get the lemon drop, stick flexes, mouse falls into water and can't get out and drowns. He said that he has caught a dozen or more mice at a time that way. Sounds crazy, but if I ever have a mouse problem it's the first thing I'll try.

I would never use poison because the mouse dies somewhere under the house and stinks to high heaven.
1989 Fuqua SW
geraldk
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Feb 28, 2007 12:25 am
Location: edmonton alta

heres what i use round here, its a square box with a wind up spring that works a flap that kicks the mouse into another compartment that it cant get out of when it enters the trap .when you wind it up theres 12 clicks (notches) good for 12 mice put 1 piece of poison bait its bought @ your local farm center made of grain and poison (green square block ) mice seem to run to the trap and not my home.
i bought the trap at a extermination comp. works great mice stay in trap not in the belly
im not a dr. but ill take a look
Guest

mobtek wrote:This post may sound odd, and I haven't tried it, but a friend told me about a method:

Get a 5 gallon bucket and add about 4-5 inches of water. attach a flexible stick to the edge of the bucket facing inward and attach a lemon drop to the end of that. The mice crawl out on the stick to get the lemon drop, stick flexes, mouse falls into water and can't get out and drowns. He said that he has caught a dozen or more mice at a time that way. Sounds crazy, but if I ever have a mouse problem it's the first thing I'll try.

I would never use poison because the mouse dies somewhere under the house and stinks to high heaven.
works great on chipmunks also. instead of lemon drops just sprinkle sunflower seeds on top of the water. same concept, rodent goes up the ramp to get the seeds, falls in and drown's. I've also heard that some taxidermist will pay up to $5.00 for your decesed chipmunks (unconfirmed) to use in their wildlife displays.
Guest

Or...if you don't have a bucket handy and get mice on your kitchen or bath counter tops at night, you can also just balance an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll on the edge of a full sink with bait on the sink end of the tube. Mouse goes into tube to get bait and his weight tips it and....splash. About as cheap & easy as it gets.
Koiflowers
Posts: 80
Joined: Sun Jan 20, 2008 12:01 am

When hubby and I married his MH had mice. I would have thought we sealed all the incoming water lines until we moved the kitchen island. Under the "false floor" of the cabinet where the water lines came in through the floor were gaps that the MH manufacturer didn't seal up. There was no way to even see these. They crawled up the lines, got under sink and scurried out the opening for the dishwasher. Also we removed the panels from the "garden tub" in master bath and found more unsealed pipes. We sealed these from inside the house, not under the house. Absolutely no more mice at all. They can come in the smallest cracks.

In Maryland I lived in a 135 year old victorian. It had RATS. I tried decon and it worked like a miracle, until I put in an ornamental pond. Decon works like this -- when rat/mice eats poison, they go outside to drink, hemorrage, and hopefully die out there. After the pond went in they drank from pond, got a belly ache and hi-tailed it back into the house to die in the walls. Their water source was too close to the house. God the stink would make my eyes burn, and we had to rip out the bottom of the walls. We pulled out 8 stinking, maggot infested carcasses. Fortunately the dog could pinpoint where the smell was coming from and he was more than happy to find the rats for us.

Solution: I ordered a Rat Zapper 2000 that ran off batteries, and had an optional rat-tail that attached to the unit that you could set on a counter. Then you hide the Zapper in a dark place where you suspect rat/mouse activity. If rat-tail is blinking a rat is in the box.

Mice are easy to catch, but rats are quite smart and might take 2 weeks to go in the box. However I zapped 8 big rats in one night -- until the batteries went dead from overwork. It's much more humane that poison or glue traps. You shake out the dead varmint and reset it.

You can place these inside or outside. I swear they work like nothing else on the market. There is never one or two mice, they multiply quickly and will soon take over. I probably sound like a corny advertisement, but when you have lived with rats you get excited when something finally works.
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