Help! Mouse in the house!

[TheZue]

I hate this time of year because I know it is just a matter of time before I come home from work to find mouse parts throughout my house. I am a complete neat freak. My house couldn't get any cleaner and guess what THE MICE DONT CARE. I have put all food items in tupperware. But they eat the cats food - she returns the favor.

Seriously though, one day last winter I put my hand on our landing to yell upstairs and happen to look down....and saw a mouse head next to my pinkie. OMG OMG OMG DH flew down the stairs probably certain someone was being murdered in our home and took care of the mouse head.

I couldn't pet my cat for a month.

Ours work out perfectly lol. My little ninja cats catches them, then the other one steals them and eats them hahaha. We don't even get gifts

 

[KAMKIM]

Ours work out perfectly lol. My little ninja cats catches them, then the other one steals them and eats them hahaha. We don't even get gifts

The funny thing is about a year before that I found a mouse tail - she switched sides I searched both times for the other "half" and never did find it I'm praying she swallowed it...nasty cat.

 

[sunnyday123]

I hate this time of year because I know it is just a matter of time before I come home from work to find mouse parts throughout my house. I am a complete neat freak. My house couldn't get any cleaner and guess what THE MICE DONT CARE. I have put all food items in tupperware. But they eat the cats food - she returns the favor.

Seriously though, one day last winter I put my hand on our landing to yell upstairs and happen to look down....and saw a mouse head next to my pinkie. OMG OMG OMG DH flew down the stairs probably certain someone was being murdered in our home and took care of the mouse head.

I couldn't pet my cat for a month.

I feel ya. I found a mouse head outside my bedroom door one morning. I was late to work-had to wait for my step-father to come and remove the head, and looked for the rest of it. I went to work and called the vet and they laughed at me.

I bathed my cat and brused his teeth and clipped his nails shorter than I thought possible.

 

[MIGrandma]

Having lived in the country, on a farm, for the past 34 years mice do not bother me. We have had them in the house occasionally over the years and we would either get them in the traps DH set, or the cat would get them and then deposit them proudly at my feet.

It's practically impossible to keep mice out of your home, they can find their way in through the smallest of holes/openings and once the cold weather comes, they want to find a warm place for the winter. And they do not care one bit if your house is clean or not, all they want is warmth and food.

All you can do is set some traps. Or get a cat.

 

[Imzadi]

Obviously Mice don't care about affluence!!

Actually they do. There is a better quality of food in the affluent houses.

Mice & rats are attracted to FOOD, not to money.

I would call Terminex and get them out to my house asap.....

Sorry, I disagree here. Don't call Terminex. Terminex is for BUGS. Mice & Rats are not the same as Bugs. They aren't even in the same classification of living things.

I was renting a house - also in an affluent neighborhood, come to think of it. Across the street, they were doing construction. The vibration & pounding stirred up the rats in the neighborhood. Somehow one got into my home. The landlady comes the the generation where women were dainty and liked to be victims and have problems. So of course she'd call a BUG specialist: Terminex.

The Terminex specialist set out cheap sticky glue traps we could have gotten from the dollar store. He also charged my landlady $300 for the visit and the traps.

Sure enough, that night at 3 am, the rat got caught on the trap. I could HEAR it struggling and trying to get off the trap. I knew it wasn't dying. Just caught on the trap.

I didn't know what to do.

I thought about hitting it with a cast iron frying pan. But I feared spattered rat blood guts all over me and the kitchen more than I feared a living rat. Who knew what diseases would be all over the rat guts. Plus I just didn't have the stomach to smash a rat.

I tried to cover my head with a pillow as I heard for 20 minutes the rat struggle & shriek to free itself. YES, after 20 minutes, it got free. Now I had an ANGRY rat on the loose - and with sticky glue all over him and a big patch of fur missing. That was scarier than before the trap.

Terminex would do nothing else. After a couple weeks, I finally had to call the County Department of Health. They sent out a rat inspector who laughed then went --> about the glue traps. He said those are useless for rats. (He could tell by the size of the feces how big the rqat was.)

So much for the BUG experts.

 

[luvmy3]

OP, does your townhouse share walls with neighbors? If you see a mouse in your home, chances are they are all over the building. You can can call a professional to come in and seal up all the places they may get in, but honestly if your neighbors don't do the same, you will see them again. Its truly amazing the spaces they can fit We had mice one year and found where they were enetring in our utility room, and we filled the hole with steel wool, and then looked for any nook and cranny that they could get in and did the same. We also have 2 cats, of course one is so fat and lazy she would probably let a mouse walk right on by.
Anyway, I would just make sure you seal ANY spot they may get in, and ask your shared wall neighhbors to do the same.

 

[englishteacha]

We live in the country and get mice in our pantry (it's attached to the garage). We keep DeCon in the pantry now and keep the pantry door to the house closed. All the food in the pantry is now kept in a metal cabinet or in Tupperware. We've also had mice in our attic that DH used traps on. We only get mice in there now when the DeCon runs out. Stupid mice.

A friend had a very ambitious, clever mouse and her landlady used a no kill trap that the mouse kept getting out of. My friend ended up buying a "no view" trap so that when it snapped shut and killed the mouse, you couldn't see it. If you're queasy about dead mice, that's probably the cheapest way to do it.

 

[KAMKIM]

We live in the country and get mice in our pantry (it's attached to the garage). We keep DeCon in the pantry now and keep the pantry door to the house closed. All the food in the pantry is now kept in a metal cabinet or in Tupperware. We've also had mice in our attic that DH used traps on. We only get mice in there now when the DeCon runs out. Stupid mice.

A friend had a very ambitious, clever mouse and her landlady used a no kill trap that the mouse kept getting out of. My friend ended up buying a "no view" trap so that when it snapped shut and killed the mouse, you couldn't see it. If you're queasy about dead mice, that's probably the cheapest way to do it.

We used to use Decon but then started finding it throughout the house on the floor. With a cat and 2 small kids we had to get rid of it. I think the no view traps work best - well besides my killer

 

[MushyMushy]

My cat is totally worthless for killing mice, although we can tell when we have one in the house because she'll all of a sudden be interested in the cabinets or fridge.

Now the dog... yeah, she's my killer! She sees a mouse and SNAP, it's done for. We haven't had any mice since we got the second dog (in my avatar), so I'm not sure how she would do with one.

 

[Imzadi]

We used to use Decon but then started finding it throughout the house on the floor. With a cat and 2 small kids we had to get rid of it. I think the no view traps work best - well besides my killer

Yes, according to the Health Inspector, mice/rat poisoning is very dangerous for other animals around. The mouse/rat eats the poison. It is slow acting. So the mouse is now running around a lot slower than it usually does, meaning it's able to be more easily caught by a dog or cat. They catch it, eat a little. Since the mouse is poisoned, the cat/dog now has become poisoned, even if they hadn't eaten the original poison. The pets die a very slow, painful death as the rat poison shuts down the kidneys of whatever animal ingests it. It is irreversable. There are no antidotes.

OP, if you have pets nearby at the neighbors, do not use poison. The mouse got in. It can also get back out. The neighbor's cat may find the slow moving mouse and catch & eat it.

 

[dis-happy]

I had some friends over this morning for brunch. The guy had a big gash in his leg. Last night he was eating dinner at Arby's when his finacee brushed against his leg. As someone who recently returned from living in a third world country he assumed that it was a GIANT RAT brushing against his leg, so he sort of over-reacted in jumping away and gashed his leg open on the underneath part of the table. He says where he's been living the rats are the size of cats and are nothing to mess around with! The rest of us were ROTFLOL! Be glad it wasn't a giant rat at least.

 

[flying_babyb]

I have a mouse story. I was 16 saw one in the heating vent and SCREAMED. Well we decided on humane traps. We loaded them up, stuffed them in the vents and forgot about them. We had a snow day from school and I was lounging in the living room and somthing smelled bad. Well by the time I got up (I was lazy teen) and hunted down the smell we had a baked mouse in our air vent. It smelled for a week.

Poor mouse, he was kinda cute. I too have useless cats, they couldnt catch a cold.

 

[KAMKIM]

My cat is totally worthless for killing mice, although we can tell when we have one in the house because she'll all of a sudden be interested in the cabinets or fridge.

Now the dog... yeah, she's my killer! She sees a mouse and SNAP, it's done for. We haven't had any mice since we got the second dog (in my avatar), so I'm not sure how she would do with one.

Usually its the male cats that cant/wont kill mice actually. In the feline species females catch the food. Interesting that your dogs are more interested in the hunt than your female cat

My cat is declawed and has killed countless mice since we've had her. My mother has 2 cats with claws, and a dog and its like a three ringed circus when they get a mouse LOL the three of them have yet to kill anything.