<div dir="ltr">I think my aunts friend had one for a while. Aunt couldn't go to the house after sometime because they're infamous for a musky, and generally strange BO. My cat was awful about playing with what ever he was hunting! Turned out he was a birder more so than a mouse cat. Partiall proven because he'd happly snake my baked chicken for dinner if I didn't watch him. He also would try to catch birds chasing a cat and birdS out of a house, and the casita? about how I imagine it's like to caclulate and derive orbital dynamics by hand. <div>LOL and he also tried to catch a lil baby bat while ma'n pa where teaching JR how to get bugs.JR found a rafter in the casita Imagine calling animal control at 6 am with: uh yeah I have some bats in my house, and my cat keeps trying to hunt them.</div><div>I'm pretty bad about just yeeting the trap into the trash. with everything in it. while going: ew ewewewew Fuuuudge! </div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 3:21 PM Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p>Gil -</p>
<p>Ferrets can be very unpleasant to smell... I had a stepdaughter
who kept two (along with a half-dozen cats and gawd knows what
other pet-hoarding my mind has blanked on over 30 years ago).
They also are totally nocturnal and will romp *all night*,
especially if there are more than one (or have a cat or a dog to
harass/play with). I'm sure ferrets (if they get outside) are
hell on birds (especially eggs?), housecats (if they get outside)
can be pretty bad too. I think Ferrets will consume their prey
unlike cats who will play with them for hours and hours and then
bring at least a partial carcass to you as a gift. Snakes even
more better at full-consumption, I understand they can defer
defecation until 99% is digested?... <br>
</p>
<p>I'm too frugal to throw kill-traps away, but you could follow
Tom's advice and I'd bet by the time you threw a dozen traps (with
head-crushed mice in them) into the trash, you might be done with
them (for this season)... or a handful of kill traps re-used
nightly might rid you over a week's time. I don't know how
territorial they are but I get the feeling that I never have more
than *one* family in my house when they do infiltrate... but
their reproduction rate is pretty extreme and one family can
become dozens in a short time.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div>On 1/3/23 2:47 PM, Gillian Densmore
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Steve, those are all great tips. I'll run a fine
tooth come through the house. Their's this area by the coffee
maker at the front they try to hide in as well as I think
somehow behind a rubermaid recycle bin. lol a ferret? not a bad
idea. Kim swears by his pet cat for keeping mice out. LOL one of
my doctors tells me how his pet beagle chases mice around. I
guess the pooch also OCD's on anything not Human and barks or
tries to hunt them. I've read tht ferrets can make preem pets,
as long as you can keep them from getting bored. I think Santa
Fe isn't fond of people having them forpets something about
birds. </div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 2:18 PM
Steve Smith <<a href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com" target="_blank">sasmyth@swcp.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Gil -</p>
<p> To misquote Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack in
everything, that is how the mice get in".<br>
</p>
<p>I have lived with mouse-flux all of my time in my current
(rural)property 20 years). The mice (and ground squirrels
and packrats) in the environs require that I remain
vigilant to keep them living outside my home. This has
involved a lot of care around making sure that doors fit
(and close) tight and that any wall-penetrations (dryer
vent, etc) be well managed/screened, etc. <br>
</p>
<p>Virtually *every* Fall I recognize that one or more mice
have taken up residence in some nook or cranny inside my
house... evidenced primarily by foodstuffs nibbled on my
counter and of course "droppings". Sometimes the sight or
sound of scurrying. If I trap these invaders quickly
enough I don't have a whole family (or several) and even
worse, multiple generations take up residence. I've been
a vegetarian most of my life but I still would stoop to
kill-traps to stop this business right away. When Mary
moved here (5 years ago now) her (yet) softer heart lead
me to buy a decent no-kill trap which was limited to a
single-catch per night nominally. It still worked.
Equally important for me has been to have a live
mousing-cat in the house... even though I've never had one
catch/kill more than one or two in a season, I think the
presence and threat helps to reduce the number of mice
willing to force their way in when the opportunity is
found... I don't know if any voluntarily move back out
once they realize what they are facing.</p>
<p>Last winter I finally buttoned up a sunroom I'd had 90%
finished for years... this included replacing the raw
adobe floor with a clay-plaster finish, sealed with
walnut/citrus oil. The adobe floor (and cement bancos,
etc) could absorb/hide a lot of mouse-droppings/activity
that the new surfaces patently just enhanced... so the
flux of mice in my sunroom was mostly ignorable/tolerable
or in any case too hard to try to eliminate. With the
new finish it was just the opposite, and thoughtlessly,
the walnut-oil surface in the process of (many months
long) curing fully was a terrible attractive nuisance.
I think the little buggers thought it was a buffet laid
just for them. We had evidence of quite a few mice living
in there and even when we were catching and expelling one
per night, there was a never ending supply. There were
nominally *no* holes for them to get in, but if you've
seen my construction techniques you might not be surprised
to find that I actually *did* have a few *hidden* weak
spots where they might have entered. Our 20 year old cat
had gone blind the Fall before (quite gracefully) and
finally passed away on her own that winter... so no more
mouser or even the whiff of a threat of a mouser in the
house.<br>
</p>
<p> We then went away for 2 months with several different
house-sitters in the house who had not instruction nor
reason to try to keep up with the mouse flux. Besides, I
was used to mouse-infestation being entirely a winter-time
phenomena. When we returned mid-summer I sat in the
living room with the final house-sitter who was scheduled
to leave the next day and I sequentially set,
caught/released 6 mice in the space of a couple of
hours. The trap was just outside the room we were
sitting in and I could see the little buggers playing
chase on the floors, bancos, furniture as well as dancing
over the top of the trap and teasing their way in and out
of the trap before finally springing it. I went on to
catch several each evening (at twilight and beyond) until
we were down to rarely seeing more than two chasing
through the room... and catching one per night. Hole
after potential hole was plugged during this time. And
yet they keep coming. There is a chance these are
recycling, we haven't gone to the effort of notching their
ears or painting their tails or anything. My experience
in this environment is that there will always be dozens
(hundreds) of field mice aspiring to become house-mice...
so killing (or hauling far away) the ones we catch
probably doesn't change that much. I now wish I hadn't
moved the three bullsnakes I caught eating eggs in our
chicken coop across the rio grande, but invited them to
live in the sunroom... I think they are better (yet)
mousers than a cat.<br>
</p>
<p>We now have a fresh mouser who doesn't have continuous
free access to the sunroom (lest the buggers re-invade the
house proper) but who does spend time out there stalking
the hell out of every nook and cranny... she hasn't caught
any yet (though she did help catch a few who had gotten
into the house before we could trap them).</p>
<p>My best recommendation is to eliminate any
food-attractive-nuisances (refrigerator, cupboard,
animal-tight containers, etc), make sure you have no known
extgerior wall-penetrations (even the tiniest cracks they
seem to squeeze through) and then go on a trapping
frenzy... clean up any trace of mice ASAP so that you
*know* if you have any left as you trap them down to near
zero. And I recommend a housecat (or two), though I know
some do not like keeping cats. Maybe a ferret or a
schnauzer? My best ever Gopher-Getter was a weimerainer
who would sit for hours at the entrance to a gopher burrow
just to grab one... if allowed, she might have cleaned
them entirely out of the yard. We limited her time
OCDing out in front of gopher holes... it was hard to
watch. <br>
</p>
<p>Or maybe a bullsnake (or one of many other rodent-eating
varieties)?<br>
</p>
<div>On 1/3/23 11:52 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="auto">Yeah, I buy traps from Amazon a couple
dozen at a time.<br>
<br>
<div>=======================<br>
Tom Johnson<br>
Inst. for Analytic Journalism<br>
Santa Fe, New Mexico<br>
505-577-6482<br>
=======================</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 2, 2023,
10:45 AM Gillian Densmore <<a href="mailto:gil.densmore@gmail.com" target="_blank">gil.densmore@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Another surge of mice Q: For all of
Dismember i've had nothing but an ongoing trickle
of mice. what the is going on here? Is anyone else
having mice issues as well?</div>
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