In article ,
says...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 07:31:16 GMT, Blair P. Houghton wrote:
I had a mouse. - He was living in my kitchen for a week or so. snip

For many years I've lived at the edge of a desert residential area, with
no homes immediately across the street. There used to be just a burned
out cabin foundation directly across, but one day a big tractor-sort
cleared that away, in preparation for a pre-fab home being put there
now. Until the initial cleaaring came about, I had never experienced a
need for mousing anywhere I've lived.

Hah! One evening I thought I saw what I supposed was a dried up
cottonwood leaf blow in through the security screen that I have an 8x10"
section cut out of for the pup, though no leaf was to be seen about.
Some minutes later there was a wee mouse scampering across the room to
get behind the television. I had nothing at home to use, so I went to
the hardware store and chose those "sticky plates" to set at each side
of the TV's back for catching the little buggar.

When I was a kid I worked at a local hardware chain, and the store I was
at had a definite mouse problem.

Decided to use the glue traps at the time. Well, next day when I came in
there were two of the little critters stuck to it. What to do, what to
do.

Seems that week we were having a special on 2L bottles of Coca Cola
(Don't ask - it was a hardware store but we sold soda and TV's - go
figure - anyone remember NHD?) so I slipped the glue trap into a paper
bag, got the pallet jack and lifted an entire pallet of Coca Cola and
slid the paper bag underneath and hit the pressure release on the pallet
jack. Squish! Messy but effective.

Then of course when they started digging up the neighborhood where I
lived to put in new apartment buildings to give the animals from
Providence College a place to live we had a mouse/rat problem. Seems the
rats had taken up residence under the doghouse. Friend and I used to
take two shovels and a rock. Using one shovel and the rock as a fulcrum
and then tucking the spade end under the doghouse (A big doghouse - for
a German Shepherd, best dog I ever had but that's another story.) and
jumping to lift. As the rats ran out the other of us would hammer em'
with the other shovel. Once we knew they were dead we'd toss em' into
the nearby foundation of a new building going up.

Problem was that some people thought this wasn't so humane. Remember,
we're talking about rats here both the four legged kind and the two
legged kind. So we graduated to a live trap. Problem there is what the
hell do you do with the now ****ed off rat in the cage. First run we lit
it on fire - bad, bad, bad.

Fortunately I had a 10 gallon aquarium with a slow leak. From that point
on we simply filled it with water, dropped the trap containing the rat
in and voila - dead rat.

And my SO wonders why things like that don't bother me. I've been
dealing with it all my life.

In article .net,
lid says...

I had a mouse. I saw it on Friday and told the Handyman to come and do
something. He put out several glue traps and the next day, yesterday, I
found its corpse.

Mice very rarely come in onesies.

I hope that this was the only one. Tandoora, my cat, acted like a true
feline, at least an apartment kitty: As long as she suspected there
might be a mouse in the kitchen, she hid in my bedroom.

Ah - mine are well trained mousers though the eldest cat isn't as fast
as he once was and the youngest is a bit large to be stealthy. But the
middle cat - she's the champion. We used to buy her the stuffed mice -
she gutted every one of them. Does that to real mice when she gets one
now.

Barbara, remember the sound you heard while you were here? Maybe it was
the mouse and not the alarm in the radiator or in the smoke alarm.
Debbie heard it, too, but now it is gone.

I live on the 20th floor of an apartment building. Exterminators come
every week to make sure that no kind of creepy crawly things live in the
building, yet I have had mice several times before. At those times, I
had three cats living with me. The cats would actually catch the mouse,
play with it for a while and then let it go. Not once did one of them
kill a mouse.

All mine are killers. It's one of the things I love about cats. They're
these cute little furballs and deadly to small things and quite painful
to large things should they desire.

jmcquown wrote:

Uh, are you trying to trap them or feed them treats?! LOL

You're a girl. You know there's no difference.

--Blair
"I'm a boy. Took me 20 years
to figure it out."

sf icu2@pipeline dot com wrote:
I use regular "kill 'em dead" traps on mice and bait them
with (drum roll) Jarlesberg... I've tried cheddar etc, and
even peanut butter, but I seem to have gourmet mice when
they decide to hang out at my house.

Y'know what?

I just realized.

The mouse didn't show up until after I'd bought
my first Stilton in months.

--Blair
"I should charge a cover."

In article ,
says...
On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 14:44:34 GMT, Margaret Suran
wrote:

Tandoora, my cat, acted like a true
feline, at least an apartment kitty: As long as she suspected there
might be a mouse in the kitchen, she hid in my bedroom.

LOL1 She doesn't like wild animals in your house any more
than you do.

snip

I live on the 20th floor of an apartment building. Exterminators come
every week to make sure that no kind of creepy crawly things live in the
building, yet I have had mice several times before. At those times, I
had three cats living with me. The cats would actually catch the mouse,
play with it for a while and then let it go. Not once did one of them
kill a mouse.

According to what I've heard/read, cats need to be trained
by their mothers to catch and kill mice. Otherwise mice are
interesting playthings to them.

That is probably true. Cats do learn from humans and other cats - for
example I believe in the case of the middle cat (Emily, a 6.5lb female
felid) who came into the household at a total of 6 weeks old, we
encouraged the mousing by buying her those little stuffed mice and
helping her play with them.

The youngest cat (Cosimo, 25lb male felid) learned mousing from her I
suspect.

So when the eldest cat finally gives up the ghost I'll have to get a
youngish kitten and go through the same routine. But that probably won't
happen for another 5+ years, the eldest cat (Randy, 11lb male felid) is
only 14 years old.

In article ,
says...

What a chickenshit! LOL!!!
Love to eat them mouseys
Mouseys what I love to eat
Bite they little heads off
Nibble on they tiny feet.
-The Kliban Kat

All three of mine are proven mousers.

I've always wondered though why they don't make mouse flavored cat food,
or for that matter, pigeon flavored, canary flavored, etc.

Living in the city doesn't help the poor things but when they do see a
bird pirched nearby they go nuts. The ack-ack-ack sounds and all.

In article , says...
Nancree wrote:

Mice also love gumdrops. Honestly! I read this tip years ago. They seem to
like the color and taste. The advantage is that the gumdrops last. They don't
dry up and fall off like cheese.

In my experience, Resse's Peanut Butter Cups are beloved
as trap bait by both rats and mice.

Unfortunately, squirrels seem not to care for them a bit.
Still working on that squirrel in my attic.

Plain old peanut butter. Has worked fine for years when I've used traps.

In article ,
Blair P. Houghton wrote:

sf icu2@pipeline dot com wrote:
I use regular "kill 'em dead" traps on mice and bait them
with (drum roll) Jarlesberg... I've tried cheddar etc, and
even peanut butter, but I seem to have gourmet mice when
they decide to hang out at my house.

Y'know what?

I just realized.

The mouse didn't show up until after I'd bought
my first Stilton in months.

--Blair
"I should charge a cover."

Try bacon rind...
That always worked on the mice up at the mountain cabin. :-)

K.

--
^ ^ Cat's Haven Hobby Farm ^ ^ ^ ^
,, ,, ,,

Boron Elgar wrote in
:

On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 07:31:16 GMT, Blair P. Houghton wrote:

I had a mouse.

(snip delightful story)

...and a gourmand, at that.

You will find that peanut butter on the traps is a cheap and effective
attractant. I cannot be lifted or snatched off the traps, but needs to
be licked, so the mouse comes fully into the trap.

My husband used to mix some of our bird's seed with peanut butter and
bait the traps with that.

I do understand your desires for humane trap and release, but you
should know that it is rarely one " Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous
beastie" about the place.

Yep - no such thing as a solitary mouse, in my experience! Did not try
humane trap and release as I knew they'd just be back.


Rhonda Anderson
Cranebrook, NSW, Australia

Katra wrote:
Try bacon rind...
That always worked on the mice up at the mountain cabin. :-)

Nope. I'm sticking with Stilton.

HE CAME BACK!

Or his little sister did.

Shoulda known.

I heard and saw one on the kitchen counter tonight.

Set the traps out with a fingernail of stilton in each,
and about an hour later--clack! Rattlerattle...

He's so owned.

I dropped him out past the back fence again, this time with
a flashlight so I could see him split for the culvert.

Tomorrow I'm definitely getting a proper coverplate for the broken
cleanout on the outside of the kitchen wall. I'm pretty sure that's
their ingress.

--Blair
"Anyone rented Mouse Hunt lately?"

Mark Thorson wrote:
In my experience, Resse's Peanut Butter Cups are beloved
as trap bait by both rats and mice.

I'd use peanut butter, but it would get messy, as the trap
is just a 1x1x4 box, and after the first capture I'd have
Thai basted mouse and trap. Then I'd have to wash them
so I could attract the next mouse to the back of the trap.

If I was using traditional spring traps, I'd probably
have turned to PB by now, as Stilton is crumbly and likely
easy for these little eggheads to snatch without applying
any downward force.

But I'd have to buy PB. And the smallest jar of PB,
even on sale, is $2.29 this week at Safeway, while two
spring traps are 98 cents, and I have way too much spare
Stilton rind.

Unfortunately, squirrels seem not to care for them a bit.
Still working on that squirrel in my attic.

Squirrels probably like a nice pecorino-romano....

--Blair
"Better hope he's not one of those
Limburger freaks."

COTTP wrote:
In article .net,
says...

I had a mouse. I saw it on Friday and told the Handyman to come and do
something. He put out several glue traps and the next day, yesterday, I
found its corpse.

Mice very rarely come in onesies.

History: Had a mouse here about two years ago. He left
of his own accord, after doing about the same sorts of
things to the kitchen that this is (these are) doing.

He was tan. This/these are gray.

--Blair
"I was hoping for black."

Blair P. Houghton wrote in message .. .
I had a mouse.

He was living in my kitchen for a week or so.

I got some great no-kill traps from Home Depot. Small gray
plastic boxes with a gravity lid that stays open while the
trap is tilted forward, but slips shut once it tilts back.

Exactly these:

http://doitbest.com/shop/product.asp...386&sku=769878

Cute story. Thanks for having enough compassion to use the
Have-A-Heart traps. Really no need to kill the little buggers -
relocation works well.

Also, next time, peanut butter works wonders.

-L.

wrote:
jmcquown wrote:

wrote:
Margaret Suran wrote:

Melba's Jammin' wrote:
In article , Blair P.
Houghton wrote:


I had a mouse.


(hilarious story snipped)


My daughter just had a baby. The cat took a liking for the crib when
the baby was not there. After having to wash the crib linens once
too many times we did just what I described. No more cat problems.

Bert

Why not simply close the door? No need to scare the poor cat to
death. The child will outgrow the crib eventually. You're going to
make the cat terrified to even go into the room with the kid.

Jill

The cat is very fast and will outrun anyone to get to a barely open
door. My daughter has to keep the door open to hear the baby (he is
less than two months old) who is in an on-demand breast feeding
schedule. It is best to train the cat.

The cat, by the way, is an outside cat. She goes in and out whenever
the outside doors get open. She does not get terrified easily at
almost anything.

Bert

Uh huh. You or your daughter ever heard of a baby monitor? I won't even
speak to the "on demand" thing.

It is downright cruel to use mouse traps to scare the living daylights out
of the cat, not to mention the fact that it might, in its curiosity, get one
of its paws snapped shut in it. Geezlepeets. It's not like... oh wait...
are you one of those people who believe cats suck the breath out of babies?!

Jill

In article ,
Blair P. Houghton wrote:

Katra wrote:
Try bacon rind...
That always worked on the mice up at the mountain cabin. :-)

Nope. I'm sticking with Stilton.

HE CAME BACK!

Or his little sister did.

Shoulda known.

I heard and saw one on the kitchen counter tonight.

Set the traps out with a fingernail of stilton in each,
and about an hour later--clack! Rattlerattle...

He's so owned.

I dropped him out past the back fence again, this time with
a flashlight so I could see him split for the culvert.

Tomorrow I'm definitely getting a proper coverplate for the broken
cleanout on the outside of the kitchen wall. I'm pretty sure that's
their ingress.

--Blair
"Anyone rented Mouse Hunt lately?"

I'm actually impressed that you are live trapping... ;-)

I tried that with the rats in the chicken yard and it got way out of
hand as rats are so smart, they seem to learn about the others getting
trapped so stopped going into the box traps.

I had to resort to careful poisoning. :-(

The carcass count stopped at 48...... sigh

I'm just glad that they never got into the house, even tho' I have
several hunter/killer cats. Rats ate eggs and killed and ate young
pigeons.

Nasty creatures shudder

Watch out tho', mice can carry Hanta virus.

K.

--
^ ^ Cat's Haven Hobby Farm ^ ^ ^ ^
,, ,, ,,