<p>mathmom – we had a similar experience with dog food. Nearly an entire bowl of dry dog food made it from the bowl to the inside of a closed china cabinet. Between that and the pile of nice clean dish towels, someone had set up quite a love nest. :0</p>
<p>At our house, they come through the holes underneath the stove and fridge where the gas and water lines run to the main connections in the basement.</p>
<p>We had one chew a hole through a plastic dishwasher drain hose – it was an undetectable leak, but enough water to keep a mouse happy. Cost $160 to fix. </p>
<p>S2 has a rule that if the mouse survives the trap, he will release it to the woods at the end of the street. Figures it deserves a second chance. I used a glue trap once when we lived in an old house in Philly – never again. Too gruesome for me.</p>
<p>We’re allergic to cats here, too. The dog doesn’t hunt.</p>
<p>Friend lifted up hood to her car to find piles of dog food deposited by garage mice.</p>
<p>We were getting mice until we readjusted the garage door so that it closed very tightly to the garage floor.The mice went from garage into attic somehow. Readjustment fixed the problem for us.</p>
<p>We had a similar problem with mice. We live next to a wetland and mice would enter our house every fall. I finally got tired of it and hired a pest control firm. They placed a couple of bait boxes near the foundation of our house–the boxes are about the size of a shoe box. They place bait in the boxes a couple of times a year. The mice eat the poison bait from the outside boxes and then die somewhere not near our house. I haven’t seen a mice–live or dead–anywhere in or near our house since we started this service.</p>
<p>Food to a mouse is different that food to us humans. For some reason mice love to nibble on brooms, brushes and other plastic stuff. They also eat cardboard and paper for food. you may have a nest. It is important to find the nest. Around now water comes from condensation on the outside of pipes and tanks. A dehumidifier will eliminate that source of water. Look for a trail of “caraway seed” shaped dung along walls etc. I used this expanding foam around pipes and joints that may have been used by mice. They cant eat thru the foaming insulation as its poison to them. Other people swear by brillo scrubbers stuffed in the opening around pipes and walls.</p>
<p>My husband found a forgotten half-full bag of grass seed in our garage that may have been serving as an attractant. It has been disposed of, and a lot of holes and cracks have been sealed. We’ll see if it helps.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I can’t stop think of the two baby mice who apparently died a horrible death under the hood of my car during the heat of a Maryland summer. I guess it’s stupid to feel that way, but I keep reading articles about children and pets dying in hot cars, and there’s no reason to feel that the experience would be any less horrible for mice.</p>