Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: Airthumbs on 29/07/2011 03:47:47
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Ok long story short, A man lived here who collected rubbish, 3.5 tons of it to be exact. Maggot infested, rotten food, the lot!! As a by product of his illness the hotel has now become infested with mice. Fortunately this man has now moved on although why he has not been put into a psychiatric hospital is beyond me!
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I put down some poison outside next to the hundreds of mice holes in the garden and it seems we have made a large reduction in mice. It's been almost a month now since the man left but his legacy continues. I have a clean room, no food lying around but this one particular mouse seems to risk its life every night by sneaking into my room and attacking any plastic bags in my room. I have been woken up each time to the sound of its frantic attacks on the bags. I have now removed the bags which had paper work in mainly.
I bought some more poison which look like small pellets and put that down around the skirting boards. I just heard the thing come in again and saw it literally run over the poison pellets as if they did not exist!! To get into my room it must have also have ignored several grams of pellets. If I am lucky maybe it's slow acting poison and the dam thing is on its way out already! (I feel so guilty killing it but I can't sleep properly)!
The mouse itself is quite young and I feel it cannot be more then a month old, this would mean that it was never exposed to the mans collection of rubbish that he kept in plastic bags! Could it be that this mouse has inherited the knowledge that food can be found in plastic bags?
Anyway, I can't bring myself to physically attack it and in case the pellets are too big for it have crushed them up a bit right next to its hiding place. So what can I do? I suppose one thing is to put the pellets inside a plastic bag but I really am running out of patience and need a good nights sleep!
Of course where there is one there are more!
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I gave up on mice, and prefer to use a touchpad with my computer [:D] I never jumps onto the floor and gets away from me [xx(]
Never let your mouse poison run out. The mice will adapt quickly. Perhaps buy a couple of different brands and allow the mice the choice, or alternate your offerings.
Personally, I've had good luck with the snap traps... at least for rats. If you know where the mouse hole is, you can also try a sticky pad... it will literally stop the mouse in its tracks!!!
Patch the exterior holes in your building. Sheet Metal may help. Some people like to add steel wool as they have troubles chewing through it.
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You should be happy to hear...
There are now mice developing Warfarin resistance genes. [;D]
http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=15976
http://www.jstor.org/pss/3862479
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Could it be that this mouse has inherited the knowledge that food can be found in plastic bags?
There could have been natural selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection) for urban mice who were attracted to the smell of plastic bags, (those black plastic bin-bags do have a strong distinctive smell).
Rats can be a big problem because they are attracted to the smell, color, and texture of plastics. They particularly enjoy the plasticizers that are used to make wire and cable flexible
http://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=231442
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I guess I had better lift my internet cable from the floor then as at some point I am going to loose connect..
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Can you borrow a cat from someone?
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I am getting two kittens soon and I will encourage them to be killers of mice. [;D] Just waiting for them to be weaned.
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You need to find an old barn-cat to teach them how to hunt.
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I get the impression mice will chew anything they can get their teeth into. I think they have a nesting instinct and like to chew and shred paper so I would not leave any important documents about. They probably take a while to do this but mice did a good job of this in my garage (ahem, overflow storage unit) a while back. They also, annoyingly chewed the corners of bags of cement and bags of sand so that when I tried to move them, in a rare attempt at tidying, the contents dribbled out relentlessly.
A neighbour's cat was clearly interested in pursuing the perpetrator of these crimes but seemed to lack the expertise, so Clifford has a point regarding training by cats with more worldly knowledge. Human training, via powerpoint slides, did not seem to work at all.
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You need to find an old barn-cat to teach them how to hunt.
Don't waste your time with cats. Get a Cairn or Aberdeen (Scottie) Terrier.
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There was a little terrier here today but all it succeeded in doing was trying to eat the mouse poison I had put down! I did clear it up before it came but it managed to find the one the mice had dragged off somewhere! He didn't eat it but he had the sachet in his mouth!
I must admit though he for sure knows there is something around as he keeps sniffing round the places they like to hide.
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Graham,
Powerpoint doesn't work with cats- the slides don't smell right.
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I thought cats generally made pretty good mice killers as it's instinctive to kill anything that moves, including feet?
I was going to get a small mouse toy and encourage them to focus on that in the hope when they see a real one they will do the same.
I know they are hard to train but it can't be that hard to encourage their killer instinct? I trained my mums cat to play fetch, that was so cool. [;D] If anyone is interested in the technique let me know.......
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Best is to use liquid poison, by placing it in a shallow dish near where they run. Lovely blue, and the mice disappear after a few days.
I have a occasional rat problem, they are bigger than the feral cats. Normally feed a pack of poison ( in the plastic bag, they chew through it to eat the pellets inside) for 5 days before they stop eating, and then I am free for about 2 months. Shooting them with a pellet gun helped catch the less cautious ones.