Mice in attic

[Dischord]

No this isn't a joke, I've got mice (or at least I think it's mice) living in the attic at my house. I first heard some suspect noises a few weeks ago and gradually started hearing more and more. So i bought some traps and poison off ebay.

Anyway today I baited the attic out with 2 packs off rodenticide blocks and various humane/non humane traps.

Tonight though as I sit here the little bastards are going nuts, I can hear all sorts of banging/scampering noises. They are definitly showing an interest in the traps and are either dying slow painful deaths or laughing in my face and pushing them over to make a racket.

Has anyone had experience with this? I really hate to kill them but I can't risk them chwing through any wires and causing a fire etc any tips would be appreciated.
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[The Artist]

Get some glue traps as well. They are very good at catching multiples per night.

[Dischord]

Hats off mate never even heard of glue traps
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[scorps]

as long as its mice and not bats.
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[Louise]

Did a post, a fair few years ago about having mice in my flat, didnt have a loft but they were driving me insane. In the end I resorted to Wilkinsons traps (All I could afford at the time as they seem to of missed the matinance guys poison he was laying down)
Worked a treat, within 2 weeks they had gone, we had caught and let free miles away from home. May, may not work, but for a few quid might be worth a try - as again, the posion they didnt take too.

[scorps]

the trouble with poison in your home is that mice can go off somewhere else to die, more than likely within the walls or between joists, the stench of half a dozen dead rodents is unbelievable, we had a stash of dead things under one of our kitchen cupboards courtecy of kittens dragging them under there to hide them.
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[Louise]

[mistergixer]

Just be thankful it won't be Glis Glis - they make a proper fucking racket at night.
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[Dischord]

Could very well be a Glis Glis I think I could deal with a few days of stench if they finally shut up.
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[scorps]

Id be upset if I killed one of them I dont even like killing mice, rats are a bastard though but we dont see them now we dont live on the cliffs, Charlie our main coon used to catch them all the time which im sure the eider ducks appreciated as their ducklings were safer, for some reason charlie didnt kill ducklings, I think he just wanted them as pets.
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[BakesBeans]

Yes, when I was a kid in my parents house!

Just mouse trap the whole area, and block any holes with expanding foam!

Last summer I had birds nesting in my current home, so once they fled the nest I blocked all the entry holes with mesh - ha ha fuckers!
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[unitynotsocri...]

I remember the jewish lanlord 35 years ago in cheetham hill,I complained about the mice..he replied 'its a good sign,it means there's no rats!'...he was correct,count your little furry blessings...

if you cant get rid of them,take some lsd and be transported to farthing wood.......not that much on telly at weekends anyway!
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[Ariel Badger]

If they are in your roof it will be squirrels, mice and rats want food so they hit your kitchen but squirrels want nesting space and take your loft. Time to get heavy with Mr Tufty.
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[Rogerborg]

If it's squirrels, you'll need to kill 'em on the sly or the tree huggers will be on your case.
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[hellkat]

I had a fuckload of mice in my kitchen for a while, I was close to hysteria: mouse shit everywhere on the floor every morning, made me heave just thinking about where they had been with their pissy poo-ey little mouse feet

Glue traps
Problem with glue traps is they don't die. They get stuck on there and then when you go to check the traps, the mouse is looking up at you, wriggling and going "Set me free, you bastard!"

So your choice then becomes:

(a) pick the whole shebang up (risking it biting you from mousey-crossness), put into shoebox, drive it out to the country and set it free. Pointless setting it free down your street, it will undoubtedly find its way back.

(b) leave it there for a couple of days till it starves to death, try not to think about it (put it behind something so you can't see it in your direct line of vision) and THEN chuck the trap out (my personal choice)

Snappy (springloaded) traps
The cheap snappy traps are better, once you get them set without snapping your fingers. But the problem with them is that you have to bait them with food, i.e., peanut butter works very well, and then the little buggers tell each other "Go to his house, he has food!" - and they are often smart enough to lick the peanut butter off without getting their necks broken. But its very effective when they do work.

Mouse poison
Poison is tricky (poison wheat, just say no, because all they smell is wheat so it attracts MORE mice than you had before!) ... if there are pets in the house, the anxiety is that the pets will eat the mice and poison themselves.

I eventually got some blocks of poison from B&Q: can't remember what they are called, but they are really expensive, and it looks like blu-tac, inside a small plastic box with entry holes on each end.

Once they eat it, that stuff works so fast that they often don't even manage to get to a place of safety to die, so you don't have to worry too much about them dying behing wainscoting and leaving a smell.

I found one dead mouse on my bathroom floor one morning, that was the one who staggered the furtherest, another in the hallway cupboard, and one in the living room beside the book case, he didn't even make it back to the hole in the floorboards he came out of

Then there is:
Mouse whispering (yes, I laughed too)

A mate of mine swears by it, she said it worked and she wouldn't believe that it would. But she reckons ... well, we all have to try it and see if it works.

You take away all the traps, all the poison, all the clove-scented rags, scented fabric-softener laundry dryer tissues (both of which are smells they are alleged to hate), take away any temporary cats you may have borrowed, or cat-scented blankets you borrowed from a someone who has a cat, and which also don't work.

Stand in the middle of the affected area.
And just tell them, "Mice, go away now".

You have to tell them in a perfectly normal human voice "I've taken away all the traps and poison and everything else I've used to get rid of you, and I am now just ASKING you to go ... its time you left. So please, go now. Goodbye." Don't shout, just say "Mice, I'm saying Goodbye!"

So I tried it (I was pretty desperate by then) ... they took their sweet fuckin time, but MOST of them have gone ...

But then, around about the same time, I also changed the method of storing my bags of dog food biscuits so they couldn't gnaw their way into the bottom any more ...
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[Wonko The Sane]

I helped a mate rid his old shed of rats, we sat outside with air rifles and got no-where.

was an 11x8ft shed.

we emptied it of the bikes and lawnmower etc and sent a jack rustle in and closed the door.

I kid you not, the dog came out red and there were about 100 rats laid out in the shed.

"fuck it, let's just burn it"

and so we did as it was the easiest and safest way of disposing of the rats.

the dog had had a great time!
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[Chalky.]

[t121anf]

I found the best way to resolve our mouse problem was to find the entry point and block it up, if they can't get in they aren't a problem.

Mind you that's not easy as they can get through some very small holes, ours was coming in under the patio doors where the installer had opted not to fill the gap, leaving us we a 1-2inch gap along the full length of the doors.

Blocked that up and problem started to go away, next was the fireplace where we heard them mostly. As the fire was "condemned" by some official who came to inspect something else ( I was at work so details are vague), we removed, blocked up all the holes and boarded it over. This was the only point we had seen one enter the "living" space from.

Lastly (or firstly as it actually was) our garage, which is in the extension on the side of the house, the roof beam went into the a gap in the house wall, but again Bob the Bodge-Job-Builder hadn't thought to block up any of the gaps. I actually saw a "large" mouse leave via here and run along with beam, simple block of wood to fill the gap, problem solved.

Also left loads of poison, from a farmer, behind fireplace. Not heard a rustling since.

Our problem stemmed from our neighbours, who over feed the birds.

[barryl84]

Please do not use glue traps, they are unnecessarily cruel (or at the very least, do not use them like hellkat did). You'll often find an injured, distressed animal with its leg half chewed off to finish off. I would suggest sticking with traditional snapping traps as they get the job done just as well, at least it's quick for the animal. I would also recommend using an electric trap.

[Bendy]

When we had mice at the old house, it was humane traps all the way. Not really for moral reasons, more cos nobody wanted to deal with dead mice.

Caught them, put them in a tub (with airholes) and released them wherever I was going that day. One was released on the top level of a Hammersmith multi-storey, another at Stanstead airport. Both of which probably slightly confused our little Berkshire field mice.

[Nexus Icon]

You sure it's not house sparrows? For delicate looking little birds they can sure make a racket. I swear they put on boots to wear indoors.
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[andym]

I found signs of mice in the wifes garage a couple of years ago (you know, little arm chair, tiny pipe and slippers etc)... anyway I got a couple of snappy traps and put them down... switched the light off and went back in the house... I went out about 10 minutes later and had caught 1 already (they were hiding in or around the freezer).

So I reset the trap and found another 1 the next morning, anyway I caught 4 within 2 days and that seemed to be the end of them.

When I had my engine round there the other day I noticed some mouse shits (mind you it could have been ratchets)

[hellkat]

Yeah, that's me, disgusting and cruel.


To be fair, I didn't really want to use the glue traps at all, the man in the shop had run out of snappy traps and I didnt want to put poison down at that point.

But there were so many mice and over so many months, I got desperate to do something to stop them.

Anyway, the mouse whispering has worked for now, so .... meh.
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[pepperami]

Mice in the attic?

Have they paid thier rent?........ no! take them to court and get them a notice to quit
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[Alpha-9]

How do they get up there?
And what would they be eating?

Surely not mice
...zombies?
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