There's a moos loos in the hoos

[NickFitz]

Don't use poison.
Two reasons:
1) Potential for poisoning wildlife like Barn owls.
2) the all-pervading smell of rotting mice somewhere behind the skirting-board.

I once set a lightweight plastic trap in a mouse-run under the floorboards.
Some unlucky wee creature must have got its foot trapped and hobbled off with the trap,
then fell down inside my lath-and-plaster wall where it jammed about half-way down.
It could be heard rattle-rattle-rattle for days gradualy fading to rattle-rattle then rattle, then the smell

I went to check my traps in the kitchen one morning and one of them by the back of the fridge-freezer had vanished. There was a space by the end of a cupboard just by there, so figuring a mouse had got caught by the leg and struggled off into the shadows there, I hooked out the various bits of junk I had stored there. No mouse.

I spent a few more minutes poking around places on that side of the kitchen, but there was no sign of the trap anywhere

Eventually I gave up, and went to check the other traps. The one at the other side of the back of the fridge-freezer had gone off, and flipped itself upside down in the process. Donning my rubber gloves, I picked it up… and underneath was a dead mouse, with this trap having crushed its head, and the first trap attached to one of its hind legs!

It had clearly tried to jump over the first trap but been caught by the hind leg, then dragged itself, with trap attached, all the way along the back of the f-f, and when it got to the other side its head had gone straight into the trap there.

Result!

[TestMangler]

Yes, as other have said, forget all this hippy dippy humane live trap crap.

Good quality wooden mouse trap and kill the ****ers. Watch your fingers setting them too

[NickFitz]

Yes, as other have said, forget all this hippy dippy humane live trap crap.

Good quality wooden mouse trap and kill the ****ers. Watch your fingers setting them too

I used black plastic ones from Rentokil (B&Q started doing them as an own-brand product too, but I was fully equipped by then): they're the "Advanced Mouse Trap" on DIY Mouse Products | Rentokil Pest Control

Very good traps, they are. If the mouse is caught by so much as a toe, it's not getting away. I'd come home after working away to as many as four mice caught, a couple of which had starved to death after getting a foot trapped.

Trap placement is vital though: you need to know where the bastards are going. I set up IR video cameras that stream over WiFi, and can even upload footage to a remote server. That allowed me to see exactly where they were coming from, and adopt siege tactics. I had three major colonies in the end (behind the skirting near the front window, a corner where some pipes run in the kitchen, and behind the gas fire in the living room fireplace), and simple attrition caused by impeding their supply routes with a dozen or more traps let me kill them off one by one.

I think I had about twenty-four traps in the end. You can't have too many. Every time they learned to avoid one spot, I redeployed in another, but I could only do that effectively once I had the cameras watching their every move. In warfare, intelligence about the enemy's movements is crucial

Plus, I now have video cameras so I can check on my phone that the flat hasn't been burgled while I'm sitting in the pub anywhere in the world with a WiFi or 3G connection

[RSoles]

Actually, thinking about it, you don't even need to bait traps.
Most rodents stick to well-tested 'runs'.
They'll avoid running out into the centre of a space and keep to the edges.
Set your traps round the edge of a room and they'll run into them.

Speaking of 'runs', mice are incontinent. Another reason for getting rid of them.

[SueEllen]

Why are you letting your cat sit on the worktop?

You just have to let a cat into a kitchen and it will jump on a counter if it feels like it.

Cats will sit where they want and while you can stop them if you are present, you can't if you aren't.

[Freaki Li Cuatre]

Don't use poison.
Two reasons:
1) Potential for poisoning wildlife like Barn owls.
2) the all-pervading smell of rotting mice somewhere behind the skirting-board.

Yes, I'd go along with that.

I used black plastic ones from Rentokil

Fascist!

[vetran]

I sat my girlfriend down earlier and said, "Babe, you know how you're always going on about the patter of tiny feet? Well..."

"Oh my God!" she gasped, "You want us to try for a baby?"

"No, we've got rats."

[EternalOptimist]

mice are one of those creatures that are no real problem, until you know they are there.
Like cockies. There's millions of them around, but as soon as you know it, there is a massive urge to eradicate them.
I am starting to notice humans

[d000hg]

You just have to let a cat into a kitchen and it will jump on a counter if it feels like it.

Cats will sit where they want and while you can stop them if you are present, you can't if you aren't.

You can't absolutely stop them but you can sure discourage them. Being unceremoniously chucked on the floor while shouted at has an effect. Obviously though it takes time and you have to be consistent, no "isn't that cute" when you're doing the washing up and "get down" when you're preparing food.

I'll concede it probably varies depending on the stubbornness of the cat and how early you start training/breaking them, yours might be more awkward than ours

[RSoles]

Tucked away in my big collection of 'stuff I've bought that didn't seem to work right'
is, or should be, an 'electronic mouse deterrent'. Sort of high frequency noise generator
which is supposed to deter mice.

Anyone got one? any better results than I got (not much difference....) ?