We have mice in the older buildings on the farm. Our log cabin was built 10 years ago, and we have a cat… have not had mice but we get the occasional chipmunk running inside from the porch. The barn cats do a great job but we have to supplement with traps in different areas down there.
My car, though, is another story. Every week or two, I catch a couple of mice in “Jawz”traps that I have set in the car. They like to visit the area around the neighbors’ bird feeders and then find places to store and enjoy it, in my Subaru. Life in the country…Sigh.
I thought we had a rat. DS kept saying he heard something but I thought it was an owl/hawk outside on the gutter. DS would yell out that the “Pterodactyll is back”. I started to try and catch it with no luck and discovered it is a racoon that sometimes visits our attic. I cannot figure out where he is coming in yet but have a trap baited with sardines (marshmallows did not do the job).
Once I catch and kill him, I will do a better search. I think I would prefer a rat to this beast…
RE: hantavirus.
First of all tell your D that hantavirus is only carried by deer mice, not the common house mouse. They are 2 completely different species. (Quick ID–deer mice have grey-brown or brown fur w/ a white/or cream belly and a furry tail; house mice have solid colored fur with naked tails.) Deer mice only live in wooded rural or semi-rural areas.
Deer mice are actually kind of cute and look similar to gerbils.
BTW, cleaning up potentially hantavirus infected mouse dropping with a vacuum is the worst possible thing you can do. Vacuuming sends the viral particles airborne and makes them more likely to be inhaled. (You need to douse the droppings with chlorine bleach first, then sweep them up while wearing N95 filter mask and rubber gloves.) And hantavirus is more commonly spread by mouse urine rather than feces.
Thanks @WayOutWestMom ! I’ll let her know!
get a cat! it worked for me. so well in fact i got two!
My D’s roommate is allergic…
And H and I have one…
I’ve heard cats can help, but they don’t always 100% help a mouse problem
The mice in our old house once stole our cat’s food and hid it in the back of a kitchen drawer while she slept upstairs with us.
@WayOutWestMom I’d assume that once you spray the area with bleach and clean up the droppings you can vacuum or sweep?
Here’e the CDC’s guideline on cleaning up after rodents.
https://www.cdc.gov/rodents/cleaning/index.html
You don’t need to use 100% pure bleach-- 1 part bleach to 9 parts water solution will work fine.
Spray thoroughly or douse droppings with bleach solution. Let stand for at least 5 minutes. Then use a paper towel to pick up the droppings and soaking up any urine or bleach solution with paper towels. (Although it’s not in the CDC guidelines, our state health department recommends wearing a filter mask during this process.) Dispose of all cleaning materials and any mouse droppings in sealed plastic bag with a small amount of additional bleach solution inside, then place the sealed bag inside another sealed plastic bag before disposing in the trash.
Any hard surfaced area around where the droppings were should be wet mopped with a disinfectant (bleach) solution using the hottest water possible. Carpet, upholstery or any soft surfaces should be steam cleaned.
After one has finished cleaning, remove rubber gloves and dispose of them in the same way as other contaminated materials explained above.
After steam cleaning, it’s safe to vacuum.
I live in known Hantavirus infected area and have deer mice living my yard ( I live next to an open space area). My cats will occasionally bring me gifts of not-quite-dead-yet deer mice and, once for my birthday, one of my cats dropped a live deer mouse on my foot. The mouse then escaped through the open back porch door and into the house. It took me the rest of the day to catch it and dump back into the arroyo behind my house.
Dead mice/rats, even wrapped a few times in plastic bags, will stink up your garbage can kept in the garage- yuck. Thankfully collected!
In our previous place, we had a mouse problem. I started by using humane traps (I have extensive experience trapping mice, since I have done research on them in the past). They stopped going into the Sherman traps. I started using snap traps. Got about 15, and then they started avoiding the traps. Created batteries of traps (6 or so around an entry point), and trapped 7 more. Had the landlord block up as many entry points as they found, and trapped 3 more inside the house. Then we moved. I don’t know whether they still have a mouse problem.
We once had a deer mouse get into a previous house, and used a glue trap. Never again - it’s more gruesome than a snap trap.
Black sunflower seeds are better than peanut butter, and easier to clean.
Digression. First noticed a rat when it was feeding from the “squirrel resistant” birdfeeder I use with sunflower seeds for the squirrels (the duct pipe around it foils raccoons). They ventured in from the nearby woods. Then they chewed the hole in the soffit corner and we called a pest control firm. None the past year. Fun watching the squirrels, the cardinals are the safflower seed eaters at the other feeder. Placed near a tree but near large windows- following rules about thus far from trees, no thanks as then too far for good viewing. Acrobatic animals, squirrels- did not take more than a few days to learn the balancing for the different feeder.
Glue traps are cruel.
My D got one of those zapper traps that electrocutes the rodent. She also got some snap traps. We got the same stuff too. Hopefully our problems will be solved. The zapper traps are good for carpeted area…
We used a glue trap just once, when we lived in a very old house and there was one spot where they kept evading the snap traps. Never again! Caught one that was stuck to the trap by just one foot and its tail. I was upstairs reading a book while my D, who was 7 at the time, was desperately attempting to free the mouse by dislodging its foot from the glue (thankfully, she did this out in the yard). The tail problem was trickier. I had no clue what she was up to when she called upstairs and asked where the scissors were. You can imagine the rest. The mouse did run away once freed… but how far it got with an injured foot and no tail is anyone’s guess.