[FRIAM] keep getting mice.

Gillian Densmore gil.densmore at gmail.com
Tue Jan 3 16:53:26 EST 2023 

I had tried the live catch ones and taking them to the park. Oh just yeet
them back outside I thought they'll go scamper. problem is they'd try to
get back in.  lol a bullsnake? woudn't it find a hot water pipe and go:
really dude you expect me to hunt mice in freezing winter? Food for thought
though.

On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 2:48 PM cody dooderson <d00d3rs0n at gmail.com> wrote:

> My parents use sticky traps. You need a cold heart to kill them when you
> find them stuck to the trap. It's hard to do when they are looking at you
> with their tiny sad eyes and all you can imagine is their nest of tiny
> younglings hidden somewhere in your wall. Also, sticky traps will catch
> other animals including your house cleaner.
> I support you getting a bull snake too. That sounds like an adventure.
>
>
>
> _ Cody Smith _
> cody at simtable.com
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 3, 2023 at 2:18 PM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Gil -
>>
>>  To misquote Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack in everything, that is how
>> the mice get in".
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>>  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.
>>
>> 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).
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> Or maybe a bullsnake (or one of many other rodent-eating varieties)?
>> On 1/3/23 11:52 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
>>
>> Yeah, I buy traps from Amazon a couple dozen at a time.
>>
>> =======================
>> Tom Johnson
>> Inst. for Analytic Journalism
>> Santa Fe, New Mexico
>> 505-577-6482
>> =======================
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 2, 2023, 10:45 AM Gillian Densmore <gil.densmore at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> 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?
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