Help!! :(

[Julie82]

Not sure if this is the right place but maybe someone here can help me.

For some reason my house has been suffering from field mice lately. I think they were after the dog food but now it's been moved they're literally eating everything from soap powder to cables!
I bleach the place every night and have made sure no crumbs or anything are laying about.
I called environmental health but they wanted to put poision down and I couldn't bear to see anything suffer or know I've caused it.


Is there any humane way of getting rid of them? I've heard they carry diseases so I'm not keen on them running about, not to mention my 2 little dogs pacing up and down all night keeping us awake!

Any suggestions would be greatly appriciated.

[muldonach]

As you are finding out mice make very poor neighbours, they are easily eradicated by using the traditional spring operated deadcatch traps in the areas where there presence is evident through droppings etc.

These are totally humane and in my experience kill instantly in the vast majority of cases.

For the longer term we find it worthwhile leaving a couple of baited traps up in the loft to nip any problems in the bud - if you will pardon the pun.

There are also livecatch "catch and release" traps available but I have no personal experience of using them. I see no reason why they should not help rid you of your mouse population perfectly effectively.


Regards
mac

[Tringa]

Field mice come into to our house most winters (mainly when it is wet rather than cold). They usually leave by themselves when the weather picks up. Often the problem is minimal, but I appreciate your plight - I had wash a drawer containing tea towels (and the tea towels) on three consecutive days one year, along with all the other cleaning after them. The only reliable method I have found of getting rid of them is the old fashioned killing trap. As said it is humane in almost all cases.

I have tried some of the live traps with very little success, it seemed most of the time the mice weighed too little to set off the trap. Though if you can get a proper Longworth trap you may have more success. However, I've seen advice that says live trapped mice have to be released a long way(hundreds of yards or more) from where they were trapped or they will find their way back. While releasing them close to the house it is likely to have them come back in, I have no idea how accurate this advice is. It could be argued that releasing them out of their usual area could result is their death by other means.

I have had limited success with an old fashioned milk bottle (the bottles with champagne bottle like shoulders and a wide neck) propped up on a box/couple of bricks and baited with something tasty. If the angle is steep enough they can clamber/fall in, but can't get out.

But nothing was as effective as a spring trap.

Good luck

[teknomage]

We sometimes have problems with wood mice indoors. Oddly, they don't go for food at all but like to chew anything made of plastic - in particular the insulation foam around the hot water tank/pipes, cables, plastic tool boxes - they also steal (and maybe eat?) mothballs. We started off using traps that just catch the mice so you can release them a long way away, but these traps didn't seem very effective (mostly ignored) and as they were made of plastic sometimes had their edges chewed, so we finally resorted to the old fashioned spring-traps when the mice started chewing through electric cables! The spring-traps work very well when baited with a peanut - unpleasant, but from the results they do appear to be entirely humane - it all happens so fast the poor little things wouldn't know anything. We leave a baited trap down all the time now in the usual mouse run (the airing cupboard!) and haven't caught one for over six months.

tekno.mage