<p>oh my H has possums in the( detached) garage. So stupid. They just stare at you.
No food in there, they just come in to get warm.
Haven’t seen them for a while- or raccoons either. With all the new housing, the brambly bushes are being torn down, so they must be having to go farther afield.
Or else they are lying flat in the roadway</p>
<p>I have an electronic rat trap that I’ve used to catch rats that were eating my avocados. It worked quite well, electrocutes them so they don’t die in misery like with sticky traps or sometimes with spring traps, and it’s easy to dispose them - just carry the trap to a bag or hole in the ground an tip the mouse out.</p>
<p>Ewww… mice stories.
We had some major problems in our last house.Tried to " humane " way to catch and release, only to have my husband and exterminator watch them scurry right back in under the siding. We have a few cats that were amused, but not that interested in hunting them…with the exception of one. </p>
<p>We took our youngest daughter to see Stuart Little at the theatre only to come home to a bloody smear on the floor and a mouse that was wet and damaged by our hunter, Kramer…
THAT was fun to explain to a little girl that just returned from a heartwarming film about a talking mouse.</p>
<p>Poor Kramer is no longer with us, and I wonder if his early demise was due to being exposed to poisoned mice. </p>
<p>I have no mercy for rodents when they can put you home and family at serious risk for health problems ( droppings can cause asthsma attacks ) or chewing on wires can cause fires. Setting them free only puts the next dwelling at risk.
Mice suck.</p>
<p>My sister dealt with a major problem when her lovely grand daughter, who calls herself “Miss Mouse” found a mousetrap with a dead mouse in it. They are so dear in books and not so dear running around your house or car.</p>
<p>Bethie, WSU Extention has a very informative rodent webpage (it talks about WA pests, but I think same stuff can apply to your kind of mice):</p>
<p>[Rats</a> & Mice](<a href=“Gardening in Washington State | Master Gardener Program | Washington State University”>Gardening in Washington State | Master Gardener Program | Washington State University)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ewwww!</p>
<p>Coming at 11 o’clock: my rodent stories! Stay tuned.</p>
<p>Ive been enjoying Second Nature by Michael Pollan ( brother to Tracy and also author of Omnivores Dilemma and Botany of Desire)where he battles with woodchucks [GARDENING</a> MEANS WAR - New York Times](<a href=“http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7D61730F93AA25755C0A96E948260]GARDENING”>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE7D61730F93AA25755C0A96E948260)</p>
<p>Its really fun to read about someone elses troubles
;)</p>
<p>I don’t know why I am enjoying this thread so much! Probably because I have are no house rodents at present. Great ‘ewwww!’ stories.</p>
<p>I suppose it wouldn’t be fair to throw out my stories from Borneo: cobras living in the neighbors attic… We kept a light on in ours, and never had them visit. (The cobras that is, the neighbors came by often.)</p>
<p>Glue trap. Then put the glue trap in a large plastic bag (with struggling mouse) and put large plastic bag in freezer. Mouse dies quickly and fairly painlessly–but not inside your plumbing, walls, car, etc.</p>
<p>Last year, I noticed that when I drove my car, it was smelly in a rotting-matter way, not in a mechanical-oh-oh $ way. So I emptied the garbage can from the back seat that gets filled with banana peels and other potentially stinky stuff. But the smell just got worse over the next days. Finally I popped the hood and found a rotting rat corpse full of wriggling maggots sequestered/stuck on the engine. The fellow who would have responded to eyelashes was nowhere to be found, so I had to extricate and dispose of the oozy mess myself. Some of the maggots fell off onto other parts of the engine and also had to be cleaned off. It took more than a few days before the smell finally disappeared and a lot longer than that before my psyche recovered. I feel vaguely sado-masochistic posting this… I offer it up in the spirit of sharing stories around the campfire…</p>
<p>^^^Which is EXACTLY why you don’t want to just use poisen. The smell you will not forget.</p>
<p>Garage record is 8 meeces; 4 this year. I’ve got to keep the garage-outdoor, people door closed. Kitchen had 8 meeces one year, until I found their gateway between outdoor faucet pipe and siding.</p>
<p>I hate meeses to pieces!</p>
<p>I just had to say that.</p>
<p>OTOH … if you ever want to see awesome mothering, watch a mouse mom with her babies. They are such awesome moms, giving and nurturing and raising more meeses! (I only watch them inside glass mouse tank … they are cute as buttons when contained!)</p>
<p>“They are such awesome moms, giving and nurturing and raising more meeses!”</p>
<p>Until, of course, she gets hungry and eats them.</p>
<p>OK…I think I’ll stop now</p>
<p>BunsenBurner</p>
<p>Somewhere in my piles of paper, I have a nasty one called Rat Facts</p>
<p>They are amazing animals, though they make me sick.</p>
<p>Okay, this entire thread could be grafted onto the “trying to lose weight” threads as a guaranteed dieting device. I know I’ve lost my appetite.</p>
<p>I think SV2’s entry would be particularly effective…</p>
<p>Possums are attracted by bluegrass music. Start with Flatt and Scruggs. No need to go with Dixie Chicks unless you think it’s a male possum.</p>
<p>We were the unfortunate recipients of mice getting in the car engines every spring or fall. The worst that ever happened was a car that was stilling for a couple of months and the mother mouse had many little mice in a nest in the engine, we found out because of the smell. When the A/C was turned on the little mice were sucked into the vents. Ewww! What an odor! We were lucky when an irresponsible relative wrecked it soon after.</p>
<p>Now, we do always keep D-Con in several places in the garage. We have to keep it where the dogs can’t get into it. They eat the stuff and go die in the nest. You can always look under the hood and see the nest and have the DH or the nice young man at the oil change place take care of it for you.</p>
<p>I once had a large hairy spider crawling in the car. My scream woke all the kids in the car. We were lucky we didn’t die on the highway. It ended up squashed partially in the window, partially out. We drove for hours with the carcass half in and half out of the car.</p>
<p>I guess I’m weird-- I used to have two pet rats… great little animals. Really smart and loving. They just, well, don’t live long enough. By the time you develop a relationship, they’re off to rat heaven. Oh well.</p>
<p>I second calling Click and Clack. Car Talk needs more mouse stories, if you ask me. </p>
<p>I also second the non-killing traps. I’m kind of a softie when it comes to vermin. I’m the weirdo who actually makes a point of shooing the spiders outside (I mean, I wouldn’t want to KILL it… that would be mean!)</p>
<p>There was only ONE kind of creepy-crawlie that I killed with extreme prejudice: giant centipedes. Thankfully, those are not something I deal with in San Diego. Oh, if you guys think a mouse is bad, you should just imagine living in Japan, dealing with things you didn’t know existed.</p>
<p>We had to sell a house once (by owner) and I’d just scrubbed it down to make the most recent baby diaper disappear, then threw all 3 kids into the car to drive around in circles<br>
(winter in Canada…) until H had finished showing it. </p>
<p>Just before we left, the D*&@#%$ gerbils got loose and into the bedroom they ran. All we could do was leave, close S’s bedroom door and hope for the best. H said the potential buyers peeked into his bedroom. H saw the rodents run, but the buyers did not. </p>
<p>They were the ones that bought the house! Sometimes we’re lucky, so lucky.</p>
<p>When I lived in Texas I was told the pointy boots are to get the roaches in the corners, but I believed a lot of hogwash.</p>