eek! A mouse!

[Siylvat]

I just watched a mouse crawl acrost my floor! We live in the basement and they have been known to sqeeze under the door...but we just put a doorstop in so I have no idea where he got in. My Fiance is waiting for him to make a run for it and catch him.

Ya know. We just caught one last week. We took it way down the road and let it go. How far do you think a mouse would travel back? Could it be the same one?

I'll post a picture if we catch him. lol .

 

[AZChins]

Oh no. I don't think a mouse would make it back if you let it off somewhere. The problem isn't that, the problem is that if you see one mouse, there are more around. When I lived in an apartment I had a mouse that was getting in through a hole in the bathroom vanity. After weeks of trying to figure it out, I saw him wriggle his way out of that cabinet under the sink and jump up on my bathtub to look for water (or that's all I can figure he wanted.)

I hope you can catch him...and I hope he's the only one.

Where I live now I never see mice due to our abundance of barn cats that kill anything small that moves.

 

[ChinchillaSteve]

You could try one of those live traps.

 

[tunes]

I don't think a mouse would make it back if you let it off somewhere.

Oh yeah, they definitely will. You have to reallllly take them far away if you want to keep them out. Their families, nests, offspring are there. They will home in on them in nothing flat.

As Susan said, there is no such thing as "a" mouse. You need to set some traps and get them out of there.

 

[Siylvat]

As Susan said, there is no such thing as "a" mouse. You need to set some traps and get them out of there.

Yeah, I am going to have to get some traps. Thing is I don't like to kill them, and have never really had luck with the live traps.

 

[AZChins]

But, Peggy...if you get them a mile down the road, they will probably get distracted by someone else's house!

 

[tunes]

I would consider a mile "reallllly far away" for a little mouslette. Most people think if they catch them and put them in the backyard or the field behind their house it's fine. But I had been told years and years ago, you have to go over at least a half mile for them to lose track of their home.

I don't like killing any animal, but I have to weigh the safety of my house pets against the disease that wild rodents can carry. I use regular mouse traps. The sticky things make me want to vomit and poison is vile. At least with a snap trap it's fast.

 

[AZChins]

I've always taken them up to a riparian area (place where there's more water) up the road at least a mile away. They could be coming back, but if they are the kitties are disposing of them.

You can't put a rat or mouse out in the backyard, they know how to get back in the house! They are brilliant at getting into the house.

I hate the sticky stuff, too. It seems really wrong to do that to any living creature with the exception of flies because I really do hate flies. I have little live mouse traps that work great. The problem is that when I put them out and go back in a day or two there would be 6 in there. Peanut butter in the desert must be amazingly powerful...

 

[3CsMommy]

Considering the size of his wheel, my pet mouse does 3-4 miles a night as exercise. 1 mile from his home territory is probably about how far he forages for food. You might want to take him for a longer drive next time.

 

[Mystic]

We used to have a couple mice in our basement (hopefully the problem is fixed for this winter) but I used the no-see mouse traps. It has some kinda spring loaded trap inside it so you don't see the mouse when they spring it. I used to use the sticky traps, but it's so horrible when you go to throw it away and it's still alive (and the fact I think they are inhumane too)

 

[Olallie]

What are the mice attracted to? Is it the Hay from the chinnies?

 

[Siylvat]

What are the mice attracted to? Is it the Hay from the chinnies?

I actually havn't seen them in the chin room at all. I have just seen them squeeze under the door of our main room in the basemet, run down the side wall, turn around and leave again. I havn't seen them interested in anything. not sure what they are after.

 

[rach_leigh]

Get a cat or a trap! I know it's inhumane, but field mice carry disease and I don't want my household infected

 

[Siylvat]

Get a cat or a trap! I know it's inhumane, but field mice carry disease and I don't want my household infected

Yeah, we picked up some traps. As much as i don't want to.

 

[3CsMommy]

Mice will show up wherever there's a food source, which generally means human food storage. They're primarily grain eaters, but love sugar and grease/fat. That's why commercial peanut butter works so well as mousetrap bait.

 

[lilchinchilla]

If it is the spring ones that snap back to kill them, just be aware sometimes they are still alive on those ones. When I was a child, we had some come up a vent into the house. We used those and sadly it did not kill all the mice. It was very heartbreaking to me to see a live mouse with the bar right across their midsection. :cry3: I've never used those since to trap mice.

I used to just catch them myself with a hand made trap(that was humane and wouldn't kill them of course.), and keep them as pets (they do get tame after a short while.), and then they weren't disturbing the house or any pets all the while not being killed either. I didn't mind keeping them as pets. They didn't go near other pets and they didn't bother no one once they got used to everything. They actually could be quite friendly and sweet.

 

[Siylvat]

I used to just catch them myself with a hand made trap(that was humane and wouldn't kill them of course.), and keep them as pets

HAHA. This is exactly what I told Dan we COULD NOT do. That is why we took the first one we caught down the road. He wanted to keep it.

 

[lilchinchilla]

It isn't so bad. I trained mine(I found them smarter than your average pet store mouse.) to follow my hand up and down my neighbor's fence, to scare her. She really hated mice. Especially wild ones.

They would chase after my hand, and scare her so much. After a couple years, she did lose her fear over them though and let them climb up into her sweater sleeves and play around. They are really smart though and as pets, I find wild mice are pretty good. I haven't had one as a pet in years though. I was maybe 12 years old or so? when I had them as pets.

 

[Brittney]

We had a mouse who came into our garage and always tried to chew through the plastic tote we have the dog food in. If we left a bag of unopened dog food out over night, we would come back to a hole chewed into the bag and tiny poopies everywhere. I think I found it later when I was cleaning the garage and I found a dead mouse in a tall container. Needless to say I about puked.:vomit:

I have a soft spot for small furry animals though. Today I was down in SV on the Army base with my boyfriend. There was a rat trying to get inside the dining hall and it let me get about 3 inches from it. I wanted to pet it but my boyfriend reminded me how nasty wild rats are, so I kept my distance.

I would keep a rat or mouse that I caught if I could.

 

[Siylvat]

I would keep a rat or mouse that I caught if I could.

I thought about it, but then I thougt that it might not be happy, and I didn't know if it had a disease or somehting. So we let him go. He was cute though. Had a cute face.