Scrap nursery
 

I went to open a box of scraps to rearrange an put scraps from file boxes into clear containers. Luckily, this scrap box was the smallest box. Every hair on my body stood on end when to my surprise was a family of newborn mice. Mama (Thank you God) was probably hunting for a meal. I took the box out side. I do not want to hear anything from the PETA or SPCA about my dastardly deed. I do not like rodents of any size or kind in my house. Going back to Walmart or dollar store to get more clear boxes. I expected a small siege of rodents since the guy who lives behind us has finally mowed his yard. I checked my other bank boxes and nothing (Thank you God). I did leave the baby "rodents" in the box at the very back corner of my yard. The scraps are very few and only about 1 1/2". No big loss. Mama can check on her babies outside and the birds and squirrels can have nesting material. Still feeling creepy but not feeling guilty.

What a shock! We've had several mice infestations in our basement and have not found a satisfactory way to deal with them. I'd be pretty upset if they made it upstairs. My fabric is not in containers.

Just a note to Joe'smom, if you see one in the basement, they are probably all over. We have lived in the country for many years and occasionally have a mouse problem. It has been my experience that there are usually more than one--I think they bring their friends. lol I have had cats all these years and occasionally they catch one and leave it on the floor--present, I guess, but even the cats get tired of them. I would set traps, I think there are live traps if you can't bear to kill them.
Sue

We have had mice in the house off-and-on. I agree that if you find one, there are likely to be more. We use bait in live traps, and hubby takes the traps outside far away from the house and releases them into woodsy areas. Fall is the time when they are most likely to sneak into the house for warmth.

Also, what we found is that they were squeezing in through the tiniest of openings between the foundation of the house and the rest of the house. Dh went all around outside and pushed wire mesh up against the foundation. This drastically reduced the problem. Now we get only an occasional mouse who is able to slip in through a briefly opened door. Check around the corners of your garage door too; dh closed up an area there where we think they were sneaking in.

It's a little more work for us to bait live traps and carry the caught mice out to the woods, but worth it. Also HUGELY worth it not to have foam insulation bits strewn over my quilting frame! Before we got smart about the wire mesh, there were times when a mouse would appear on the lighting soffits in the living room and watch us watching tv!

Told DH about the mice and he informed me he had seen on scurry across MY computer desk. He set a peanut butter baited trap right behind my monitor! Ugh!! I moved that one elsewhere immediately. We have no place to relocate mice. We have sealed and sealed and resealed. We don't have a garage. Just hoping we don't get the big guys! Couple streets over a house is going to be demolished and prior to rats were seen scurrying about the back yard. Ugh!!

I hate mice we had them off and on over the years. We put can lids over any holes, spray foam any cracks 1/4" and larger. After 45 years of trying to keep them out, for the most part they don't get in. We always bait traps with peanut butter, but only a smearing. Otherwise some smart ones are able to get it off without setting off the trap. One cat can get them sometimes but, other two don't care.

Ick. I would be so freaked out

One night I was half-asleep - turned over to shut off the light - looked right into the soulful eyes of a little brown mouse! On the floor, not the bed, thank God! I got up and yelled (NOT screamed) for my husband while I chased it around. Finally trapped it under a cabinet and we caught it in some Tupperware (our "first choice" for catching mice!). We released it into a green area between our house and the neighbors, then got grief from them for letting it out near their house! (Not in a mean way, though).

We've always had cats, which is why, I think, that the brown mouse was on the second floor. They love to bring them in and play with them (too rough, silly cats!), and sometimes we get them before they are killed. That's always exciting! Occasionally we will get birds, and once - TRUE - an owlet!!

The mice generally don't bother me, except the one time we had an actual infestation. Got the pest control people on that and haven't seen one in a year and a half or so. I'm down to one old cat who isn't very interested anymore, so I'll have to be on watch for them.

Take a 5 gallon pail, put some sunflower seeds in it, put a ramp (piece of wood) from the floor to the top edge of pail, they will walk up the plank and into the pail where they are now trapped because they can't get out. You can then take them wherever you like ...out to the woods. Works like a charm.

I like that sunflower pail suggestion. Wonder if that would take care of more than one at a time? or do they figure a way out? The mouse or mice at my house have learned to move the traps out of their way .... under the refrigerator so the traps can't snap and to avoid the live traps for the most part. Wish I could find a way to make the sunflower suggestion work for squirrels too. Both are so pesky!!!

MaryMo-- It does work for more than one mouse at a time and they will not be able to get out because the sides of the pail are too slippery. Only thing is you need to check the pail every day because you don't want the mice to be in there together too long because they could be mean to each other ....I know it sounds crazy but I've seen more than one in the pail and usually they are just ignoring the other but once, one of the mice had hurt the other one. Made me feel bad but the alternatives were worse. Just look at my avatar.

When you release rodents outside they are likely to come back unless you take them far away. Some types will travel several miles to get back to their (your) home.

Interesting-- last week I went to the garage to get bird seed for the feeders. A little brown mouse was happily eating away inside the seed pail. The little guy had pushed the lid off and jumped right in. DH took him to the back of our property and let him loose. And don't bring your friends!! Maybe the garter snake got him.

Arggghh. That's right up there with a swarm of silverfish.

I have had to deal with a baby mouse nest inside as well, thankfully not in the quilting supplies!! I took them outside and didn't care what ate them. I have no mercy on them if they are inside my house. I would not release any either, snap traps and they are done in.

This thread was very educational. I love the 5 gal. pail with seeds in it idea for catching mice, but I also believe that once released near the property they will be back, so I would have to be inhumane and go with the snap traps if I every saw any mice in my house. I have two cats, but they have never seen a mouse, so I don't think they would even know that they are supposed to hunt it down for me.

I once brought a 5-gallon pail of food waste home from a community dinner. I was going to dispose of it, but let it set in the old (100years) garage for a few days. When I found it, there were about 5 mice in it, and they had all drowned. I don't let mice free.

We have cats and a cat door into the breezeway. Our male cat often brought in birds, some not dead yet, and there were feathers all over the place.

And once, when we were away on a trip, the female cat brought a full sized rabbit through that door. The rabbit was not dead yet either. So the cat played with it for quite a while. I mean: blood and guts all over everything. Even half way up the walls. The lady who lives upstairs takes care of our house when we are away and she found the mess. She cleaned up as much as she could, but this was December, and it was cold out there. I felt so sorry for her. I still feel bad about that. Later I had the carpet cleaned by professional cleaners, and they said the blood was no problem. They got it all up.
But a while before that happened, we forgot about a bag of milk out there, and the cats got into that. The cleaners had a much harder time with that. It took several years of cleaning to get rid of that. (I usually get that carpet cleaned once a year.)
I can't imagine having a cat door that would let the cat come directly into the house, but I know some people have them.

I got a lot of flack from some neighbors. Told them they could handle mice their way and I would handle it my way. I will not let them procreate in my home. Totally agree. Snap traps, done finite.

We are in a suburb that abuts farm land, there is a hay farm directly across the street from us, and every year when they harvest the field we get an influx of mice in our garage. We have (indoor only) cats so we never see any trace of them inside, but they like to try to find homes in our garage. Now when we see them ramping up to harvest, we start putting the cats in the garage at night and that pretty much handles it. I think just the smells of the cats keeps the mice from coming in; we don't usually find any "presents".

We did have some mice getting into our crawlspace for awhile; turns out they were crawling up the inside of our downspouts and getting in through the exterior. We had the access spot plugged and put screens over all the downspouts and that took care of that.

I won't put poison out because I have cats and dogs and I just don't trust them not to figure out a way to get at mouse poison even if it's "dog/cat proof". I don't like traps either...most of them are gross and/or cruel and I'm squeamish even about the humane ones. I prefer to just keep the beasties out in the first place if I possibly can.

We once were at a Costco and they were selling some type of device that you installed near your door and it was supposed to emit some kind of sound or wave and would keep mice out. My husband looked at it and simply said it probably just sounded like "Meeow..Meeow"

Yeap, Autumn tis the season. Woke up a couple of days ago to the sound of a varmint busily gnawing on something, probably part of a wall. I am 66 years old and have been deathly scared of rodents all my life. Give me a good old snake or bug to deal with and I'm fine, substitute a small harmless mouse and its hysteria time. Purchased some poison, no half measures for me. I don't really want to kill them I just very much want them to go away.

This thread reminded me of a mouse problem my sister had in Tennessee. She had just moved into a small house and kept finding mice running across her kitchen floor. I told her to get a cat, but she decided to buy those supper sticky mouse traps. The first morning, when I went by to share a cup of coffee, she found a mouse squeaking and trying to get loose from the sticky stuff. She waited until the mouse wore itself out, then took it outside saying ewwe! Ewwe! As she ran to the door. When she opened the door to drop it outside, the wind caught it, and it flew over to the neighbors house and stuck itself to the high side of the house! My sister got to meet her new neighbor by asking him for a ladder to get the mouse trap back. All I could do was stand on her porch and laugh!

yikes i dont like them and sure dont want them inside!!

We live in the woods. We have tried the "mouse sound wave thingy" that was supposed to keep them out of the garage. It did make noise but only the humans noticed it---didn't work for mice in the garage.
I have also heard of the sunflower bucket.....many people (now don't kill me for this comment) will fill the bucket half full of water and then float a few sunflower seeds on top. It will get rid of mice and chipmunks---obviously they drown.
We have been using PEPPERMINT OIL. I bought some at the local Health Food Store and was told that many people use it to keep mice away. For our 3 car garage, I need to put one cottonball (with a few peppermint drops on it) in each corner of the garage---less for smaller garages. Mice do not like the smell of peppermint. Can't really tell if it works because I always forget to refresh the peppermint oil. Need to put more drops on the cottonball every week and I never remember. It sure is a cheap way to get rid of them rather than the traps.
We were just told by the pest control man that when you use Decon that the mice take it back to their nest and then die there---eeew!!! and then stink. This is a bad idea IF you have them in your house.
As far as squirrels---we have a "squirrel relocation program" at my house. We use live traps but then have to take them AT LEAST 10 miles away so that they don't return. (brother-in-law worked for DNR). I take them across the river---figure if they can make it back to my woods by traveling on the bridge or swimming the river,,,then they deserve to be here.

I'm sitting here and lmbo. My sister got into one of those almost dropped it with a squeaking mouse also. She caught it. Her finger stuck right up against the backside of the mouse. L-ing MBO!

My theory is we are supposed to kill the mice. There are not enough animals, and many times no animals, to thin the herd and if we don't natural selection them, it will imbalance nature. We will have too many at the rate they multiply. My mother always said for every one mouse you see, there are at least 100 hiding in your walls. When she would say this my dad would contradict her and tell her that is the number if you have a cat. 200 Plus without. Now that freaks me.

You should have taken them to the neighbor hehehe

I understand! We had an infestation last year. Fabric was the culprit. The exterminator was called after the trap was sprung over 10 times in an hour! We live in the country, and now think we have all the holes plugged. There's a certain smell now..I think their urine seeped into the cement floor...and I'm trying a vinegar solution to get rid of that. Mice are cute un storybooks. Not so much where things are stored!

Ewwww Mice .. you did the right thing !!

This thread has me in stitches....and i have a tale of my own. Setting the scene....we lived in the country and it was early fall and I knew the mice were already starting to come into the basement.
I had an open bag of M&Ms in my pantry...but was saving them to make M&M cookies for the kids. One night after they were in bed, got in the pantry only to find the bag had only a couple M&Ms left in it. Darn kids !! I told them i was going to bake cookies.
Didn't think anything else about it - til a couple days later i was going to make rice with dinner. Reached 3 shelves UP from the shelf the M&Ms were on - and almost dropped the rice box because it was so much heavier than it should have been. Looked inside and the Uncle Ben's box was full of......you guessed it ....M&Ms. I swear it's true !!!! Some dumb mouse had moved them all into that box. No way the kids could have done it - they could not have reached the top shelf even standing on a chair !!!
Sure made me mad cuz i had to throw away the rice and the M&Ms !!!

I would recommend either this:
http://www.amazon.com/ANTI-REMOVER-P...dp/B001RFY3AK/

or this:
http://www.amazon.com/Nok-Out-Spectr...dp/B009LLHOJY/

They are both enzyme formulas that work on breaking down the proteins causing odor.

I can vouch for peppermint oil! I also had an infestation...IN MY CAR!! I'd gone shopping, and when I came back to my car, there were TWO brown and white mice on my drivers floor mat. UGH!!! one dead, one not quite. Luckily I was able to pull the mat out and leave them...sorry... no proper burial. When I got home I noticed tons of little pieces of foam behind both the drivers and passengers front seats...yep they had both made nests in my seat backs, and yup...left their babies behind!! DH had to handle it from there, and by the time he finished taking the seats apart, he removed 9 babies. He bought little plastic bottles with holes at the top, added cotton balls, and soaked them in peppermint oil. They now hang on the door handles of the back seat. There's one in the engine compartment also. For several weeks I made him drive my car, and I took his....just to be sure!! They haven't returned, so I'm back to driving my own car!

My husband can't kill anything and he was sick one year so he had me taking the live traps to the back of our property through a snow storm. His cousin laughed because mice are nesters and would only come right back to the house. That was the end of that.
Mia

I was awakened around 3AM one morning by my cat playing on the bed. As she ran from my head down to my feet, then walked from my feet up to my elbow, I turned on the light to see what she was doing. She had a little mouse she had brought to give me, and every time she laid it down beside me, it would try to run away. Then she would catch it again and bring it back to me. I was not happy knowing that before I turned on the light she had chased it across my pillow!!!!:eek:

Thanks, Prism99. I'll try that if the vinegar didn't work. It's not a place I like to go after the infestation!

Sounds like you need some Tupperware. But, yes, mice have been known to gnaw through Tupperware, too. Those were some really hungry mice, or a whole lot of them.

I found a water rat's nest in a self-watering planter base a few years ago after the plant (a large palm) had died and I was clearing out the dirt, so I could take it downstairs (we lived in a condo next to a lagoon). I had gotten to the bottom of the pot and saw pink wiggling bodies. Mom was gone. I called Animal Control and they told me leave the babies alone and the mom would move them. Sure enough, I checked the next day and they were gone.

When the new apartment complex was going in behind my house, we had lots of mice. My Westie, Annie, was very busy eradicating the mice. She doesn't eat them, just bites the back of the neck and shakes it till its dead. Come morning there were 7 mice lined up on the kitchen floor.

Once again I haven't read all the posts so someone might have mentioned this. But I found a article on the net for repeling pests and they suggested that strong smells especially peppermint repel mice. I tried it and it seemed to work. I used cotton balls and wet them with peppermint oil and set them where there was a place that mice might come in. I think they should be placed in something since it is oil. We also use those copper scrubbers in any holes they come through. They can't chew the metal. We tried steel wool but it rusts away and makes a awful mess. I had thought of planting mint around the foundation of the house too. I hate mice!! The neighbors just remodeled an empty house and the mice fled to my house. I had one and I thought it was a hord. It ate all the chocolate it could find and my traps didn't work so went to walmart and found some new kinds and caught it. That was the fatest mouse I have ever seen.
Lynda