Reply to: There's a moos loos in the hoos

[Freaki Li Cuatre]

No more sightings since I posted this.

And I reckon I know why.

Was round the back of the house earlier replacing a piece of rotten fascia when something scurried out from a hole in the wall to check out what all the commotion was.

It was a little stoat! Cute little thing with a white bib almost right up on his back legs looking at me. Then he vanished back into his hole.

Voracious hunters, though, are stoats. Think we've lost more chickens to stoats over the years than to foxes. Don't have hens these days but he's more than welcome to shack up in my wall if he's going to keep the rodent population down!

[d000hg]

That is very true, but they do tend to leave evidence - clothes hairy because the cat found how to sneak into a chest of drawers, etc If the dirty dishes on our worktop are still dirty, that's a good clue the cat hasn't been up there

[SueEllen]

Seeing as we HAVE a cat... perhaps it's like children, generally the badly behaved ones have bad parents.

Cats (and dogs to some extent) are clever enough not to do things that their human will not like in their presence. Once their human is out of smell, earshot and sight then some of them are damn sneaky.....

[d000hg]

You don't get cats do you?

They do precisely what you don't want them to do just to piss you off!

Seeing as we HAVE a cat... perhaps it's like children, generally the badly behaved ones have bad parents.

[Platypus]

This thread made me laugh! Thanks, keep those mousetrap stories coming

[Freaki Li Cuatre]

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

You don't get cats do you?

They do precisely what you don't want them to do just to piss you off!

[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....) ?

[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

[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

[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."

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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

[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