The fight against unwanted creatures in your home

[Deleted]

Before I do my story, there is a background to this house and it's surroundings.

1. I am the only one with a garden. Well, let's just call it a patch of earth.
2. A bakery is 3 doors away, a butcher 4 doors and a superstore 5 doors away... so basicly I am living in the main shopping street of my town.

For the past couple of months I simply ignored the chewing and walking around at night in my kitchen. Until I slept in my living room one night and I got seriously freaked out about the sounds. Mostly it's loud chewing on either my trashcan or underneath my fridge.

I pulled forward the freezer yesterday but there was nothing underneath it. In the past I could hear them walking over my ceiling, which are supported by bars of wood. I put down a couple of traps, but it seems that this creature has been much smarter then what the boxes with mousepoison says. I used traps like poison, with cheese ( friendly and unfriendly ones ), several other mechanical things but it didn't seem to do it's trick.

Now, I know that the fact of clean dishes ( AKA no food ) is a important factor and I have neglected this. But since the hot wether has been coming back I also had to protect myself against hordes of ants crawling over my desk. Lately, the poison under the couch helped me a lot and as far as today I haven't seen any ants yet.

I can't find any holes when it comes to the intruder at night and I'm highly doubting that it is a mouse. With the bakery and butcher nearby, I have a slight feeling that it goes there to eat, then comes to my home to relax. My house is located on top of an office, and they also told me they found a few dead mice on their ceiling. Years ago I found 1 little mouse under my fridge ( dead ) and one outside on my little balcony.

But this year, the luck of capturing or killing this intruder didn't came back and now I'm actually trying to think about what I can do next. I'm not even sure it is a mouse, as there are no signs of poo or chewing marks.

[kel]

burn your house down, move to new place.
also inb4 that picture of burning down house

[Deleted]

burn your house down, move to new place.
also inb4 that picture of burning down house

... sigh, really?

[anveena]

Call an exterminator to come look at your house.

[Deleted]

It's all in your head ... We're inside of you ...

---------- Post added 2012-05-20 at 10:55 PM ----------

On-topic however:

Call an exterminator to come look at your house.

[Bosen]

I have similar problems. I'll hear movement in my kitchen cabinets and think mice are back, but find no evidence that they're back. I think the noise may be them digging from the outside, or from within a wall or in between the wall and cabinets.

They seem to be really flexible. Even if there isn't a hole they've made, they seem to be able to slip through areas extremely tight.

I found that some are even resistant to some poisons. A trick I had was mixing the poison with peanut butter. No animal will resist that. The thing that sucks is that they may have to eat a bunch of that mix, and they may go off and die in a spot you can't get to.

[Deleted]

I have similar problems. I'll hear movement in my kitchen cabinets and think mice are back, but find no evidence that they're back. I think the noise may be them digging from the outside, or from within a wall or in between the wall and cabinets.

They seem to be really flexible. Even if there isn't a hole they've made, they seem to be able to slip through areas extremely tight.

I found that some are even resistant to some poisons. A trick I had was mixing the poison with peanut butter. No animal will resist that. The thing that sucks is that they may have to eat a bunch of that mix, and they may go off and die in a spot you can't get to.

That sounds like a great idea. I don't care really where they die aslong as they don't reproduce

[poser765]

the problem with them going off and dying someplace you can't reach is the smell. You would be surprised how much even a tiny mouse can smell after a few days inside your wall.

[Osyrus]

there are two squirrels in the ceiling in my apartment but there are no chew marks or poo anywhere so at least they can not get to me

they can not seem to get rid of them

[Mormolyce]

You're haunted obviously.

Dunno if it helps but I think peanut butter works better than cheese. Try to avoid poisons in case they get it on themselves and track it all over your stuff.

Set up a webcam maybe?

[Dandello19]

Dead mice don't smell. The only way they will smell, is if they die near a source of moisture, ie a leaking water pipe or something like that. If there is no moisture when mice die they dry up extremely fast, and create no smell. Go with the poison and peanut butter on top of a glue trap. Good luck.

[ninjapaws]

instead of cheese....take a mouse/rat trap down with a cracker with a bit of peanut butter on it.

mice and rats liking cheese is more of a myth. they love peanut butter.

trained as a exterminator muhahahh

[Deleted]

Call an exterminator to come look at your house.

If you have the money to that, go for that :-).

Otherwise I think you have to live with it. Actually mice or ants don't do much harm. Just don't let your food out in the open and seal things like flour or sugar, as ants like to go in there :-).

[Adam Jensen]

instead of cheese....take a mouse/rat trap down with a cracker with a bit of peanut butter on it.

mice and rats liking cheese is more of a myth. they love peanut butter.

trained as a exterminator muhahahh

If I remember correctly, the cheese myth arose from the fact that Swiss cheese would form holes and medieval buildings always had mice so people put two and two together.

But it is indeed a myth and they prefer peanut butter.

[Reeve]

Rat traps are actually extremely effective.


I had a rat in my apartment once, and the very first night I put the trap out, the rat died. Of course, you have to be prepared to clean up the huge quantity of blood and the body, but it'll kill the rat really effectively.

Alternatively, you could always get a cat. They're really good at dealing with rats and mice, and scaring them away.

---------- Post added 2012-05-21 at 04:22 PM ----------

Maybe I need to be glad to "only" have spiders and ants that I combat endlessly with my highly trained spec ops team of geckos.

On topic: Just call Ghostbu... I mean, exterminators. It's just much more easier to let someone who knows what they're doing to handle such task.

Geckos rock. I would love to have a few geckos in my apartment. For some reason Americans don't appreciate geckos the way people in the other countries I've been to do.

[Anjerith]

Your going to have to call an exterminator or pest control, sorry it is the only way around it.

Once the problem is taken care of, good maintenance is the only preventative option you can take.


Slightly related, I have a major Rabbit issue in my garden right now. If anyone has any solutions that are even slightly humane (i've tried traps. they don't seem to give a crap about them due to the giant garden they would seemingly rather eat) feel free to PM me ideas to avoid derailing this thread about household pests.

[Deleted]

Dead mice don't smell. The only way they will smell, is if they die near a source of moisture, ie a leaking water pipe or something like that. If there is no moisture when mice die they dry up extremely fast, and create no smell. Go with the poison and peanut butter on top of a glue trap. Good luck.

We once had a mouse which died under the wooden floor in my flat neigbour's room. The smell was gradually getting worse while we tried to contact the caretaker, my neighbour had to sleep in the living room. When he finally showed up, he entered his room, which induced vomiting reflexes for us even with windows wide open, sniffed around and declared: "I don't smell anything. And I've got a good nose!"

Desperate, my neighbour called up the landlord's son, a baker living in our house. When he just entered the flat, he just said: "Yeah, that's a dead mouse, I know that smell. Could be worse, we once had a dead pigeon in the ventilation shaft." Then got a carpenter to cut up the floor and looed under it with a USB cam, until we found it.

[Flaks]

Pretty sure it's actually some dude who likes coming to your place to crash.

[Pellaeon]

Rats and mice do prefer peanut butter way more for sure. A few years back I was living in a trailer with my sister and mother in the prairies and for awhile I had a problem with mice coming into the bathroom and I couldn't figure out why at first. I had caught something like 16 mice in one week including what looked like a pregnant mouse and a baby beside it both caught in the same trap trying to eat the peanut butter. At any rate the water heater was in front of the tub (when standing in it) in a little storage area where for whatever reason my family decided to pile a bunch of crap there around the water heater.

Turns out after my sisters pet rabbit had died the year before she left a big bag of rabbit food pellets in that area and somehow the bag busted open and there was lots of rabbit food pellets on the floor which explained why I had such a mice problem in there. Between cleaning that up and also crawling underneath the trailers crawlspace that had a dirt floor and putting rat/mice poison pouches along the walls and corners every few feet it definetly did get rid of the mice.

[Fargus]

Dead mice don't smell. The only way they will smell, is if they die near a source of moisture, ie a leaking water pipe or something like that. If there is no moisture when mice die they dry up extremely fast, and create no smell. Go with the poison and peanut butter on top of a glue trap. Good luck.

Glue traps are absolutely horrible. Do not use them please.