[FRIAM] keep getting mice.
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Tue Jan 3 17:40:36 EST 2023
On 1/3/23 2:47 PM, cody dooderson 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.
We tried various "fall in a plastic bucket" methods for our sunroom and
none really worked. I have nocturnal camera shots of these guys hanging
by one toe, stretching out nearly 6 inches to lick every bit of peanut
butter off of a roller-thingy that was supposed to log-roll them into
the bucket. We did catch a few younger/smaller ones that way, but not
the endless hoards we expected (based on Youtube videos of other's
experience).
We also didn't have the heartlessness to put water in the bottom of the
bucket (drowning) and have some evidence that the larger ones were maybe
able to jump/scramble out once they fell in... a sad method I knew of
growing up was effectively a poisoning method that didn't propagate
toxins into the environment... the method was to put a small dish of
water *inside* of a tray (pie tin?) of raw cement... the mice would
then walk through the cement to get the water (and back out) but would
then lick their paws clean, ultimately impacting their guts with
hardened cement. A disturbing way to die... but at least
cement-impacted guts aren't something that cats/owls/snakes would then
be poisoned by like the more conventional "poisons" do. I suppose
there is a risk that pet might do the same thing, but I think the amount
of cement they might ingest might not be more than a minor annoyance?
Mouse-flux is at least as annoying as Daylight Savings time changes...
but a source of endless discussion nevertheless!
>
>
>
> _ 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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