If you knew there was a mouse in your kitchen, how would you attempt to catch it?
Asked by
ibstubro (
18804
)
July 16th, 2015
I have 2 glue traps out on the stove & counter.
It’s living in the stove somewhere?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
62 Answers
I’d put out poison as well as traps. Sooner or later you’ll get ‘im, but in the meantime you’ll be frustrated. And if it’s living in your stove, be careful about turning it on. They can chew wiring as well as peeing and pooping in places you’d rather they didn’t if it heats up.
Oh, and maybe you can pull out the drawer below the stove. Clean it all out under there, and then place your trap.
I would move everything out of the way till I found out where he was hiding. Then I’d set my traps based on his hidey hole. It would consume my attention until he was gone.
I would just make sure it got our cats attention, and let it go, she would deal with it.
I’d secure it in the kitchen and call over a brave friend
Small Havart baited with peanut butter glued down with a
Trisket. Mouse tugs on Trisket in order to get to peanut butter. Doors snap shut.
Vaccum cleaner. Maybe hooked up to a sensor and a container.
The cheap old fashioned mouse trap baited with peanut butter.
I go after it swiftly and decisively. I use Victor snap traps that I store clean and unused, in with my bird food. The wood traps marinate in the bird seed and become irresistible to mice. I bait with sunflower seeds that I push into the bait pedal.
I put out at least a dozen traps at one time and change the orientation (facing the wall, parallel to the wall, facing into the room) so the critters do not learn how to defeat them.
When, not if, I catch the mouse I mark my calendar and continue with the traps for 2 weeks. If I get a second mouse within one day I will set out more traps. 16 to 20. The idea is to get them all quickly, before they have a chance to reproduce. I leave all caught mice for the fox that hangs around my property.
(I won’t get into tracking with UV light and thermal imaging tied to a dedicated PC running Yawcam as people here might doubt my sanity. Mice do not last long at my house. )
Aaah…glue traps are really cruel just use a regular mouse trap with peanut butter.
I love little rodents but, they have to go when are in the house, obviously.
We just caught TWO country rats in the SAME trap here not a week ago. They were under the deck/house and had been scrambling around during the night under the jacuzzi tub in the master bath at night.
It really was uncanny both of them in the same trap, they must have both been nibbling at the PB at the same time and they both got snapped across the head. Sad, our country rats are beautiful, fat and healthy with tawney golden brown fur like a hamster with white tummies and long adorable whiskers. :-(
@Coloma Two at once! That is a rare event. With all my trapping I have never been so lucky.
@LuckyGuy WOW! I almost feel sorry for your mice. Talk about decisive overwhelming force!
@stanleybmanly Shock and awe. I try to nail them hard and fast. I even use a thermal imager to look for nests. There is no point going about it half way. If you do, they reproduce so quickly you will be chasing mice forever. You need to get them all and keep at it for at least one full breeding cycle.
@snowberry Poison is baaad. Other animals such as owls, cats, etc. can get secondary poisoning if they catch/eat the dead or dying mouse.
Mouse traps. Use 2 since there are always 2 mice it seems. Put one behind the stove on the floor and the other behind the fridge on the floor. Use peanut butter.
@Coloma I totally agree with the poison thing.
Poison can be slow acting as well. It will find somewhere unreachable and die and you will have a smell.
I’d try to figure out if he is getting through a hole and fix the hole. It might be many mice. I’d set a trap, whichever trap, probably one of those glue ones. If you catch a mouse and then there is another mouse, you know you have to fix the underlying problem.
Try making mouse noises, it sounds stupid, but I’ve tricked a few into coming out of hiding, lol. Just reverse whistle as softly as you can (without sounding distressed), and even if they don’t come out, they will at least squeak back if you’ve done it right.
I agree with the snap mouse traps to kill the mouse straightaway. I bought two different types recently. First was an old fashioned looking wood and metal spring trap. Unfortunately this proved to be single use because removing the mouse from the trap meant having to touch the mouse. Not going to happen. That one went in the bin with mouse attached. Then I bought ones that are like a clothes peg that jam open then snap shut of the feasting mouse. The dead mouse can be held at arms length to release as the trap is opened by squeezing the end furthest away.
Peanut butter on the trap.
Fill up all holes with expanding foam
Mice also emit ultrasonic calls. Young pups emit distress calls that attract any mother within range. Males emit calls for a number of reasons. See attached NIH Paper The calls can be simulated to draw them in.
“Here, Mousey Mousey!”
Put steel wool in any cracks or holes in your cabinets, under the cabinets, etc.
Make sure, in order to not feed the creatures, you put rice and other grains in plastic containers. Don’t store food in the bags it comes in.
Don’t use poison as @cazzie said, you will have a dead mouse or mice in a spot where you don’t know about, and smelling and flies.
I think of glue traps as cruel. I can’t imagine having to see and deal with a live mouse writhing about in pain, stuck to a glue trap. Snap traps are quick and probably painless.
Consider getting a cat.
I’ll just comment generally, as I can’t keep up with individuals.
We find that the mice around here are adept at licking peanut butter off the trap without tripping it. A piece of stringy meat works well because it requires tugging and hardens as it dries.
Poisons today are a joke. I don’t know how many nests of blue mice poison I’ve seen, and they eat it and poop blue. If it does happen to kill them, they stink. I too worry about the poison mice being in the environment.
I like glue boards. If I catch a mouse on one I simply flip it into the toilet, mouse side down. When the critter is dead, I toss the trap.
I live in the country and we deal with mice constantly. Lately with all the heat and water (and some new construction up-hill), we’ve been dealing with a fair amount of snakes, too.
^^ Glue the peanut butter to tray in Havahart with a Trisket.
One of my neighbors drills a hole in pieces of feed corn and wires them to the snap-trap bait pedal. He places these all around his barn. He even has some screwed vertically to the poles near the ground. The mouse tugs at the corn and… it’s lights out.
As a kid we had mice infest our house. I second taking care of this quickly and brutally. I found that simply placing old school victor traps in their traffic areas is the most effective way to get them. Use lots of them, like dozens. It’ll work, especially if you tweak the springs to be a hair trigger. No need to even use bait.
Deploy a non-lethal trap, then, once secured, relocate them outside.
Or put them in a cage, as a pet.
NO, YOU MUST KILL THOSE FUCKERS
Only if you dress up as a mouse.
A 20 Gauge shotgun would work, but the collateral damage might be a bit much.
Unless you drop them off far away, greater than 600 meters, relocation does not work. There are plenty of studies that show how mice return from as far as 1900 ft!
Relocation unloads the problem on someone else. (It is also illegal in many communities.)
I relocate them – permanently – in the neighborhood fox’s stomach.
Ah. Get a pet fox! That would be awesome. And/or an owl. Like Harry Potter. Super cool. I live in a semi rural area but never see rats or mice. When I lived in town there were rats. Big ones.
I bought three electronic mouse traps. It worked like a charm. Put some batteries in it and some peanut butter for bait and voila no mouse problems. If you have one, you probably have more than one. I put two on either side of the bottom of the stove and one on the counter. next to the stove. Place them along the sides of the walls since mice like the security of a wall.
On the counter sprinkle ground cloves in a straight line. They won’t go past it because the smell is so strong that it wrecks their sense of smell for a long time. I found the hole on the outside where my a/c pipe is attached and filled that in so I won’t have future mice come in. In all. It caught 7. I thought I had maybe one or two. But it was 7. I haven’t seen proof of them since then. I think they always come through the stove because the opening to gas pipes can leave a gap big enough for them to chew through and make a bigger hole.
Oh, and the electronic trap is much more sanitary, safer if you have pets or children, no chemicals, and mice won’t be partially amputated or left half dead suffering. They die in an instant. And I threw mines out in the back for the stray cats and turkey vultures. They would be gone in less than a day. So they could eat the mice without being poisoned.
Heh! @LuckyGuy
I have one of these, and they’re awesome. When you catch a mouse they look entirely different. I just ordered a 6-pack for $10 plus shipping and sales tax, or about $17 bucks.
I’m looking for a deal on the Victor Electronic Mouse Trap, @Pandora. They would be ideal for the basement, which we use certainly areas of a lot, but is fairly dimly lit.
Tempting, but I need another $15 or free shipping. Same ole, same ole on the mole control. I was hoping there was something that could fry those little boogers, too.
I had several very small mice living in my stove at one stage, I figured it was like a high-rise apartment building to them. Some of the mice I caught using the old fashioned style mousetrap on top of the stove. One of the mice was unlucky enough to fall in my sink and couldn’t get out, at the time the only way I thought to deal with it was to hit it hard with a cast-iron saucepan, that did the trick.
I have had a mouse or two in the kitchen from time to time. I don’t worry about it. I make sure to keep food in the refrigerator or enclosed in sturdy plastic or metal containers, and any mice go away in time.
On the other hand, when I’ve seen one come out in the open and start to roam, then I hunt it down and kill it with blunt force.
But the squirrels in the attic are starting to annoy me, though…
Why are we worried about being cruel to a damn mouse?
Mice are freaking rodents and way to over populated,they also bring and spread disease,while I do not believe in poison because it could make a good animal sick or dead,anyway you can eliminate it, do it.
Cruel to a mouse SHEEEEEEEEESH!
Your lack of respect for life disgusts me.
While we are at it:
Humans are overpopulated and carry and spread disease.
Would you be fine with a mass culling?
Humans are even worse than mice, because mice do not have the habit of destroying entire environments and driving whole species extinct.
@SQUEEKY2 Everything with a nervous system is subject to pain. iI you must kill anything doing it as humanely as possible is the moral thing to do. No need to cause extra pain, suffering and terror.
I do see where you are coming from, but over a rodent? I guess I will just have to live with the fact it has caused me enough suffering with it’s droppings and mess that I could care less how it goes out of this world.
Guess I won’t win the saint prize this go round.
So guess I have no morals when it comes to rodents, sorta on the same level as a Republican towards the poor working class.
“sorta on the same level as a Republican towards the poor working class.”
Now THAT is something to aspire to!
@anniereborn I wasn’t aspiring I was only comparing,so people would understand on that moral high ground.
I have the same feelings or morals for a rodent that has invaded my kitchen, as Republicans do towards the working poor.
Get the idea now?
Okay, I have a great story to tell.
Day before yesterday I was at my computer (behind the fireplace from the kitchen) and I hear a tapping noise. I get up, walk into the kitchen, and what do I see? The mouse has managed to upend the glue trap against the iron grate of the gas stove and licked the peanut butter off the center! The only mark on the glue was from the grate, and maybe a tiny fur mark. Time for the big guns.
Next day he met his maker when he tried to get pulled pork off of the single snap trap. We have better luck with stringy meat than with any other kind of bait.
humans are not like this
This is why you take care of it early
I’m not overly squeamish about mice, @ARE_you_kidding_me, and that gave me chills. Imagine the woman walking on the living bodies of the mice. Arrg! I’d think they could shock the mice and feed them to the pigs.
Do as the idle rich. Make friends with it. Give it goodies. When it trusts you completely, close your fist as it feeds from your hand and crush its skull.
You could call Caesar the exterminator. He has a very good track record, but there was that one time…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziPAPWBYU5A
I just found a dead mouse out by the goose barn this morning, courtesy of the worlds best mouser pussy, my little siamese cat “Mia.” Get the mousie! lol
@ARE_you_kidding_me Oh man!!! Image how much mouse waste is getting mixed in with the feed.
Those mice are also chewing wires, shorting out electrical equipment and disabling farm equipment.
I’m going to put fresh bait in the traps right now!
this will not make you feel better
I went down to my storage unit to get some items and check on my stuff and there was a dead mouse right under the roll-up door. All of my boxes in storage were packed within 5 days so I wasn’t very careful about what ended up in the boxes (candy, mints…stuff like that). It’s going to take me forever to go back through all my boxes and pull stuff out, so in the meantime, what should I do about the mice? I don’t want to poison them and have them die in my storage unit and if I put traps down but can’t get back to the unit the next day, I’ll have the same problem of a dead stinky mouse in a hot enclosed space. Any suggestions?
The only thing I can come up with is to take my little dog over and let her try to seek them out, just while I’m going through my boxes.
One day is not a problem.
If you put out a trap during the day the mouse will likely find it and get caught at night as they are mostly nocturnal. You will be there the next day to find and dispose of it. There will not be any smell.
Since this is a storage unit filled with stuff you care about you must act. While in the unit the mice can live and reproduce undisturbed. You need to put out waaay more than one trap. Put out something like a dozen and be sure to spread them around. Before use make sure to air them out and keep them in your bird food or cracked corn container. That will make the wood smell delicious and act as a further attractant. When I set traps I wash my hands well and rinse really well. Then I stick my hands deep into the cracked corn bin so they come out covered in corn dust .
That’s when I start setting the traps.
3 sightings and 3 glue traps failed.
1 snap trap baited with ‘stringy meat’ pulled pork killed the critter.
I still think there is a proactive way to mouse elimination.
Snap traps work. They are the proverbial “better mousetrap.”
They are cheap and effective – when you use the right bait.
Okay, I was stretching the truth a bit about crushing the skull, but the rest I sort of did once. I had a clever mouse which kept outwitting traps. I left it gifts. I made a place for it to expect to find food. When it became comfortable with returning to the same place, I waited for it to show. I had an old rug ready. It was not very jumpy. It had become complacent. I threw the rug over it, took it for a walk to a field a respectable distance away. Problem solved.
If you want quick and easy, you can kill it. If you want it to live, that requires more effort.
@cheebdragon The poison makes them very thirsty. They won’t die in there because they’ll head out in search of water.
@cheebdragon you need to work through the storage as quickly as possible, if you value the items. Re-pack what you really want into plastic storage bins and be rid of the rest. Moisture drawn from the concrete is as deadly as the mice and bugs, long term. We’re a disposable society and our stuff deteriorates very quickly.
Good suggestion from @ibstubro. Containers are about 4–5 bucks at a store like Walmart. Worthwhile investment.
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
