Mice and Common Household Traps

Mice are often nighttime movers and shakers, and have more activity at night, so it is not surprising if you have mice in your home, to find them in tall wastebaskets, buckets or toilets. They sometimes are searching for water, and end up going in the most unusual of places. It is a good thing to always have a plan to capture and evict your mouse population, but if you notice flies are everywhere, and a strong offensive smell, you could have some dead mice in your walls or rafters. In order to avoid having to tear down your walls or ceiling, it is better to have them leave or come to you.

Mouse Traps Can be a Tall Bucket or Wastebasket

With a simple large pickle or food bucket, you can capture most of your curious mice, with a board across the top, and another that allows them to climb up to that board. Then, place some food in the bottom, and you will capture some mice in the evening. The concept is that they can get in, but with the slippery and tall sides, they will not be able to get out. The bucket has to be tall, or it will not work.

We had a tall wastebasket that worked all by itself, when it was empty. We emptied the garbage, and left it alone one night, and caught a mouse in this standing container, with no food. The basket must have been a frequent food site, as they could get in, eat, and then with the liner's help, leave and do it again. One little guy was so used to his food source center, just forgot to use his nose, and got stuck. Catch and release my friends!

Your Toilet can Be a Mouse Trap

Mice need water more than they need food, and can only live for a few hours without clean fresh water. Most mice use your toilet for this resource, but they will use a hanging cleaning basket in the bowl to escape. If you have a scenario, where there is a nice wicker or textured clothes hamper or wastebasket near the toilet, and a hanging cleaning device in the toilet, they are all set. They do not mind the chemical as much as they enjoy the ability to get in and out of the toilet. Most mice will see the toilet as an obstacle they cannot retreat from, but if you have a large mouse population, and water is scarce, leaving the toilet up and open, can capture some mice.

Hiding in your Cushions is Not a Good Mouse Trap

If you need a reason to set your mouse trap plan into action, think about all the poop and urine that your mice are leaving in your home. In the kitchen cupboards, while they search for food and water, they are leaving a little trail of pee everywhere! It is a mouse highway of sorts, and they use this to find their way back and forth. Not only that, but if they find a nice warm and humid spot in the kitchen, probably near the water pipes, they can use the condensation off the pipes, to keep hydrated, and raise a family. Your pee and poop trail will only grow.

What about the living room? After a long day at work, who wants to end up sitting in a couch that is a mouse house? They are big creatures of comfort, so a couch is a perfect place to hang out, raise a family, and eat an use the bathroom in. If you see mouse scat in your home, do not take it lightly, as it is not fun to replace walls, furniture and other items because of a rodent infestation.

Food is Their Motivator

Mice have little that they will not do for food. They love to hang around our agricultural areas, the grocery stores, and our homes, waiting for us to go to bed. They are masters of laziness, never doing anything to provide for themselves, other than hunt down the smell of food.

Keep your food in containers that they can not get into, and you will have no mice. All your food. No pizza boxes left out at night, chips or dip, or any cereal in the original boxes. You will go farther with some great snap top lid containers, and a plan of keeping all food contained.

Even pet food needs to be considered. Of all the areas, this can be the hardest, but if you have cracks that allow them to sneak into your home, you need to contain the pet food. Buy some containers, and see the problem become much more of a quiet non-problem.

It is cheaper in the long run, as they have many people they can investigate and use as a resource. The mouse is like the house guest who will never leave!

10 Rodent Signs

If you think you have mice, here are some signs that will confirm your suspicions!

1. Fecal Pellets
2. Chewing damage
3. Channels from the house to the yard
4. Mouse sized footprints
5. Mouse Highways in kitchen or food areas
6. Greasy marked areas
7. Urine tracks
8. Dead or Alive Sightings
9. Noise or scurrying at night
10. A musky smell in the dark areas they may be nesting.

Further confirmation can be made with a black light or UV light, as they generally will pee as they run!

Mice eat Your Wires

One of the most frustrating things about Mice or a Rodent Infestation, is the fact they like to eat through wiring! Imagine, you have a nice new home, and your lights do not work in one room. It just goes out one day. And, there are some flies and evidence of mouse poop near the room.

Here are some diy pest control tips for you to consider:

You can use a series of electronic pest control devices in this case. Do the round-up, and get rid of them by placing the devices in this room, and then turn the lights on, and leave them on if you can, at night. The combination of noise, and light is going to make them batty!

Then, they will decide to evacuate to other parts of the home. So, pick a spot on the same level as the problem room, and place traps there. In essence what you are doing is making the mice move to the happier spot further away from the room they were living, and supplying food in un-set traps. The migration, and the food, will get them all in one spot, and then on the 5th night, set those traps!

This weird combination of the ultrasonic devices, the lights, and the baited traps, really works. Sometimes, you can get the entire group in a few nights. Continue to vary your baiting and setting of traps until you get no more evidence from the mice, or produce any dead mice.

You now need to remove access to your home, and that requires preventative steps of caulk. That is a great story in itself!

Mice Love to Hide

Mice will often be very wary to venture outside of their den during the day. If you have some signs of mice, and have yet to see one, chances are they are there, but are just making the best of your nice place, and are enjoying the hospitality.

If you are looking for them, stop bending over, and wondering. Just do the following, and it will confirm your mouse problem. Get some snap traps, and bait then in areas where you have seen the poop, or the food being chewed on. Use some peanut butter, and do not set the traps. Then, go to bed.

In the morning, if your bait is eaten, you have confirmed your worst nightmare. Keep up this pattern for at least 3 nights, and then set your traps. If you do it for more nights, you will have better success, but if you are impatient, give it a try.

Since they have been hiding, and coming out when all is quiet and dark, you are going to have 40 day process of catching and killing those mice with traps.

If this all seems so icky, there are better traps, and advice. Be sure to visit our other sites listed on this site for more advice.

Mice and Poisons

If you think you can get rid of your mouse population by feeding them poison, you surely will be mistaken. Think of it this way, if poison was the way to remove mice, then, why are they still a problem? It would be easy, and every home, office and farm would have poison baits around. The reasons are varied, but it has to do with how a mouse eats.

Mice like to drag their food back to their dens, and eat near the baby nest. They will take the entire poison box with them if they can get it there! The mouse you are working with will want to store the mouse poison in a safe spot, as it seems like great food. They do not have the ability to smell the poisons in the food bait, so that is a good thing for us, but they will take the entire baited food, and protect it with a fierce determination.

This means, your aggressive mouse will have lots of poison to himself. And, when he dies in the walls, his friends will do the same. All the while, this problem is growing, as the others are reproducing, and you have maybe removed a mouse a week.

Not only that, the poison option is a very painful death. It is inhumane to poison any living creature, and mice literally bleed to death, die in your walls, hidden corners or ceiling. When you have 4 new dead mice in that month, more flies will grow, the smell will start, and you will have over 50 new mouse babies ready to take their spots.

Mice Leave Tell Tale Signs

There can be signs of gnawing, of waste and excrement, and also dead animals. If you catch a mouse, do not touch it with your hands. There are often lice, fleas, and other mange-related pests that live on a mouse. Especially, if the population is large, because they are not nutritionally sound, and they have immunity issues.

The best way to handle a mouse is to use plastic gloves, tongs, and a garbage bag to encase the dead mouse. The vermin on the dead mouse will then be trapped on your dead mouse, and will not infect you or your pets.