<p>Ugh, I feel like this is a constant battle for me . I have been dealing with this on and off for quite some time.
I have had more than one ( useless ) exterminators that don’t do anything that I haven’t done myself with no lasting results !
There is one particular area in my kitchen ( drawers with utensils as well as pot holders and kitchen towels )
Besides it being gross and unsanitary , I am just at my wits end with the constant cleaning of my utensils, not to mention them eating my wooden spoons and pot holders</p>
<p>I have tried to find the source of entry and block with steel wool</p>
<p>I have cats that are not hunters ( and can’t get access to them anyway since they are in closed areas )</p>
<p>I have used traps and caught some , but that doesn’t halt others from coming in.</p>
<p>I have tried to use peppermint oil , my latest attempt at dealing with them in a non-toxic way</p>
<p>I have used sticky traps, useless</p>
<p>I am reluctant to use poison because I have heard that they exit the house and die outside. This is something that I fear because I know if there was a mouse in any state, dead, dying or alive and scurrying about, my dogs would go after them</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions that I haven’t tried, short of burning my house down ?
So frustrating</p>
<p>Put utensils in a pretty pot on your counter top. Ditto with pot holders (or hang them). Sprinkle comet cleanser in the drawer and leave it empty for a while with the comet in it. Then get a utensil drawer liner and leave the comet in there but put the utensil holder on top of the comet and fill with utensils if you want them in the drawer. Sprinkle comet behind counters if you can access there. Mice may be nesting in the space behind your cabinets (sorry) in the wall. If you have insulation in the ceiling of your basement just under the floor of your kitchen they’re probably in there, too (sorry again). </p>
<p>We do a constant trapping job in the basement to keep them out of our kitchen; we buy snap traps and simply throw the whole thing out when they “fill.” It’s not pretty but neither is mouse poop in your kitchen cutlery.</p>
<p>This is the time of year when the meeces enter the house to avoid the cold. Trap on!</p>
<p>We hired someone who thoroughly went through the house and mouse-proofed - worth every penny. Our “critter-getter” is a fireman and this is a side business for him; he plans to retire and do it full time. Once he mouse-proofs, he gives a life time guarantee.</p>
<p>He took care of openings that we never considered (dryer vent, for example). He used various materials depending on the type of opening - all with safety in mind. (He has some sort of little basket over the opening for the dryer vent. Lint can still exit but no rodent can enter.) Anyway, it’s been over a year and we’ve not had even a hint of a problem.</p>
<p>*He set traps for any rodents already inside and came back every two or three days for a couple weeks to check the traps and remove anything captured.</p>
<p>I would LOVE to hire someone ho actually knew what they were doing. Everyone claims to, but no one has been successful at all</p>
<p>My cats are free to roam , but the mice are in drawers so they can’t get them ( and to be honest , don’t even try )
I have WAY too many utensils to put them in anywhere but the drawer. I am a kitchen gadget junky.</p>
<p>The professional exterminator sounds like your best bet. But if you don’t want to spend the money on that, here is something that has worked for us:</p>
<p>Take a tall bucket and put something delicious in the bottom–like bits of cheese and/or peanut butter; you can add some birdseed too. Place the bucket on the floor of your kitchen, near the area where you see mice, and lean a piece of wood against the bucket so that it creates a ramp that the mice climb up, but must jump off into the bucket to get the food.</p>
<p>When the house is quiet (i.e., you are gone or sleeping) the mice will climb into the bucket to get the food but won’t be able to get back out. Then you’re stuck with live mice in a bucket–if you are too kind-hearted to kill them, you can take them far, far away (not in your yard!) and release them. Repeat until you see no more evidence of mice.</p>
<p>This won’t work if you have dogs or energetic cats who are likely to knock the ramp loose.</p>
<p>A friend recommended our critter-getter. She had used various exterminators but had no long-term luck. Look specifically for someone who deals with wildlife rather than pest control and ask for references. Ask around - the friend who recommended our guy lives a few houses away. You won’t be the only one dealing with the problem.</p>
<p>You have to find where they are getting in. Find an exterminator who guarantees their work. I had mice last year in my pot holder drawer, too. No sign of them (yet) once we caught three of them.</p>
<p>You have to find where they are getting in, and you have to find what is tempting them.</p>
<p>We had mice a few years ago. After much investigation, we figured out that they were getting in through a small hole between the garage and the house, and that the temptation was a bag of grass seed in the garage with one corner ripped off.</p>
<p>Dcon Ultra covered mouse trap - its a snap trap and I use peanut butter for bait. It’s small and can go in the drawer if thats where you are finding them. </p>
<p>I can never find where they are coming into the house from our garage. But keep baiting and using the trap until you are not catching any more mice and not finding any more mouse poop. I finally figured out the mice were not carrying around sesame seeds with them.</p>
<p>Not sure what will happen after natural selection takes over and the only mice coming into my house do not like peanut butter.</p>
<p>We periodically have mice under the kitchen sink (house is on a slab; I don’t think there’s any way to figure out where they’re coming in from). We just put out poison and eventually they stop coming - for that year.</p>
<p>We have a cat but she prefers sleeping upstairs with us so the mice can play at night in the kitchen. Once years ago, I found dry cat food stored in the back of a kitchen drawer, courtesy of the mice. Another time, we had a pipe burst and when they tore up the dining room floor to track it down, there were Hershey kisses wrappers among the boards. Apparently the mice had a sweet tooth and were raiding the pantry. </p>
<p>OTOH, when one of the mice was sneaking upstairs via some pipes to the laundry center in the upstairs hall, Tabby patrolled and watched for days. We didn’t see that mouse after a few days so maybe she scared it off.</p>
<p>I haven’t tried a mouse version but the rat version of the electronic rat trap works great! You put a bit of peanut butter on the back plate and turn it on. The rat (mouse) enters it to get the peanut butter and gets zapped. They die instantly so it’s not like being caught in a glue trap and gnawing off their leg to get away or even sometimes in a snap trap that doesn’t kill them right away.</p>
<p>Once the trap gets one you simply dump the critter out into a plastic bag or hole to bury them. You never have to touch the critter. The trap can be reused - hundreds and hundreds of times.</p>
<p>Of course, this doesn’t really solve your problem because there’ll likely be more coming in if they want to - this just manages it somewhat. You need to prevent them from coming in in the first place but of course this is easier said than done. A mouse can go through a tiny hole.</p>
<p>My rat trap is made by ‘Victor’ and looks like a little mailbox. You can find mouse versions by them as well on Amazon and Home Depot.</p>
<p>" Apparently not. Or they would have killed them all by now. "</p>
<p>The mice do not venture out of the set of drawers on one side of my kitchen. They have never gone near my cabinets with food , thank goodness. They move around at night when the dogs are snoozing in their crates. And the cats are sleeping upstairs on our bed…plus, not all cats are mousers , particularly if they have never been outdoors and " taught " by mom cat</p>
<p>I have used three different exterminators , none of them with any success at all. The most they have done is put down traps, which I can do myself.</p>
<p>I will check out the Victor . That might be manageable. I really would love to find a professional that finds where they enter and blocks it off :)</p>
<p>^^I second the recommendation of electronic traps. Ours is called a Rat Zapper Ultra(I think it is a Victor product). It works for both mice and rats - tested and confirmed! We installed it in the garage to take care of the blasted invaders. The minor problems with the Zappers is that batteries need to be changed periodically and also the trap needs to be checked daily to dispose of any catch, which is not so easy to do if the trap is installed somewhere not easily accessible. We bought the product called Rat Tale - it is a mouse-shaped sensor with an internal battery and a long cord that gets plugged into the Zapper. When the trap catches a mouse or a rat, the red LED eyes of the Tale light up and begin to blink, so you know it is time to take a peek at the Zapper. Pretty cool.</p>