NBR: What do I need to know about getting rid of mice?

DMD1029 · June 2012

DS is 20 months old and I'm 7 1/2 months pregnant and FREAKED OUT! A spot on our ceiling that we thought was mold as a result of a leak (bad enough) turns out to be mice droppings!

Has anyone dealt with this before? Is there anythign that I need to know when hiring an exterminator, particularly given that we have a toddler and I'm pregnant?

TIA!

ToBeMMG · June 2012

get a cat :O)

mben1119 · June 2012

ToBeMMG:
get a cat :O)

I came in to post the same thing!

anngeewhiz · June 2012

And for a non-toxic way to get rid of them: Shallow pans filled with fresh soda. (Mice can't burp, so they die from gas...) I'm not sure how often you need to refresh the soda--maybe daily?

dette7820 · June 2012

Ug. We tried for months to get rid of ours on our own.. no luck. So we hired someone who set traps around the house- out of reach of young children *since we have a toddler* and within 2 months they were gone.. Good luck!

ilovelife · June 2012

We had mice in our garage so dh put down sticky pads.

Rhenna · June 2012

We had flooding last fall and for the first time ever I had mice in my home. I tried the plastic snap traps and they just were not working. The mice were taking the food without triggering it and at one point I swear they were coming out in broad daylight to wave at me to show I was failing. DS and I caught a baby one and he insisted on feeding it cheese lol. But anyway, I went and got the old school wooden traps and put them along the floor boards where the trail of mouse droppings were and out of reach of the dog/kids. Put some peanut butter on the trap and within two days I had killed 10 of them!!! The worst was sitting at home watching tv and hearing a trap spring. I chose not to use an exterminator because I've heard that they use poison which then means you have dead mice hanging out in your place somewhere when they go off to die. If they use traps I didn't see the point because it's ridiculously easy to do on your own. After about a week of using the traps they were all gone, never had them come back.

Rhenna · June 2012

ilovelife:
We had mice in our garage so dh put down sticky pads.

I've heard horrible things about those. That mice will screech when they get stuck or gnaw their own paws off to get off the pad. I couldn't do it. The wooden traps kill them instantly and its really easy to clean up.

abbyful · June 2012

anngeewhiz:
And for a non-toxic way to get rid of them: Shallow pans filled with fresh soda. (Mice can't burp, so they die from gas...) I'm not sure how often you need to refresh the soda--maybe daily?

That sounds mean. Gas can be painful enough, can you imagine gas so bad you die?! Not to mention you have dead mouse bodies hidden around your house and stinking.

ilovelife:
We had mice in our garage so dh put down sticky pads.

These are cruel too. If you've ever seen a mouse stuck to one, struggling to exhaustion, you'd never buy them again. If you leave them out until the mouse dies, it's a death from starvation or exhaustion, or they'll chew their limbs off in attempt to escape.

---

Buy the snap-traps. They are the most humane way to get rid of mice.

sophia17 · June 2012

We had this problem in our previous house. We hired local company for two years to come out and keep all the bugs/mice and insects out of our property and it was the best decision we made. We had tried to previously treat the problem ourselves but it didnt solve the problem we had.

We bought some poison (sorry I know it is cruel but I refused to even stay in the house once I saw a mouse) and put it in the house and learned later that this was the worst mistake we made. Apparently when you put these in the house it attracts more mice in the house instead of attracting them outside of the the house. Our exterminator told us to put them under the house and he put sticky traps in the house and outside and the problem was solved within a week.

starrshine · June 2012

We live on the woods and had them in our garage-- they found the world's tiniest hole in the wall and migrated in from a wood pile.

I cleaned out my ENTIRE house and got rid of all paper boxes for foods like cereal, I now only use rubbermaid-type pourable containers for all those things, I also use those for the cat food since I think they were making off with cat kibble in the garage where we stored extra food. We eliminated anything tempting from the garage, cleaned and reorganized everything, and then waited for the traps to do their jobs.

My DH set all kinds of snap traps and would dispose of them as necessary but in the house I insisted on the ones where you cannot actually see the dead mouse. Because yes, I'm squeamish about things like that and also I didn't want our toddler seeing it. I highly recommend those. The mice never did find their way into the house so that's good.

They were all gone within a week and have not returned.

abbyful · June 2012

sophia17:
We bought some poison (sorry I know it is cruel but I refused to even stay in the house once I saw a mouse) and put it in the house and learned later that this was the worst mistake we made. Apparently when you put these in the house it attracts more mice in the house instead of attracting them outside of the the house.

No poison! It can poison other wildlife or neighborhood pets. The mouse could eat the poison, then if the mouse is eaten by another animal, that animal is poisoned too.

When DH & I bought our house, the previous owner had left mouse poison all over the place. We thought we had it all picked up (we went through the house several times checking!), but we missed some. 2 of our dogs ate the poison. Thankfully we caught them in the act and rushed them to the vet. They had to have vomiting induced, get Vitamin K shots, stay at the vet's office for 6 hours for observation, and be on Vitamin K pills for a month. If we wouldn't have caught them in the middle of eating it, we would have had sick and possible dead dogs and never know what happened!

SoEnamored · June 2012

We bought these noise things from Home Depot. You plug them into an outlet, and they make a high pitched sound that mice hate, that humans can't hear. It worked like a charm. I'd avoid poison packets because the mice will go off and die in your walls.

We used poison packets first and ended up with a gross fly problem because, I suspect, there was a dead mouse or two somewhere in the house. I have no idea where the mouse died and we just had to wait out the nasty fly problem. GROSS GROSS!

trish051003 · June 2012

Hello. Let me introduce myself - I'm the freakin' anti-snow white. I hate critters (love my dog though). When I lived in the city, we though there was a robber - it was a RAT. I told DH I wished it was a robber. I'm sure you feel the same and wish it was a leak : )

So we move to the suburbs - ahhh RAT free living. Yes - but here they fly - we had a BAT problem. Yup bats living in our attic! Not caught by the inspection. I can't hear a flip flop flip without cringing (sounds like BATs flying). I spent $400 and got them erraticated. Then we got a new roof and 5 years later - another bat. This time while we were sleeping w/ our toddler - we all had to get rabies shots. This time I spent $1,000 getting rid of them w/ a lifetime gaurentee - the exterminator said "You have a bat friendly home". I said "well, make it unfriendly".

Now if they are upstiars in your attic - I'd be happy they aren't down in your house. But they could be in the walls and they could have babies - not sure when their baby season is. Can you locate an entry point they are getting into? A hole (could be the size of a pinky). Call and get some quotes, ask what they'll do and how much. It will give you an idea of what you are dealing with and then you may decided to do it yourself. But estimates are free.

Good luck!!!

music247 · June 2012

ToBeMMG:
get a cat :O)

This is all you need. The circle of life. Often just the scent of a cat will keep the mice away. Everything else, the cat will handle.

mikeandcristina · June 2012

As a PP said, get rid of the food supply.. we also used/use sticky traps that can be thrown away after a mouse gets stuck on it (they're non-toxic, and the ones we use have eugenol which basically puts the mice to sleep), and fill in any holes where they can get in with expanding spray foam and steel wool. (They can chew through the spray foam but not the steel wool). We live in the country, and initially were going to use an exterminator until they told us what they would do, which is put out sticky traps... so we decided to just take care of them ourselves!

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