Mouse problem!

[CMB]

I've had a lot of success with chocolate. Often chocolate spread for ease of putting it on the trap.

[Coco61]

Reading with interest. I saw our first mouse in months last night. Near the cage and nearer the hamster food. Luckily the Barney is 7mm spacing, one of the reasons I chose it. Food went high up in containers but I have also been reading about the fridge on another thread.
Thanks for the link Serendipity, might well have to follow that up.

[Pebbles82]

You're welcome I can get those in our local hardware store as well.

The pre-installed bait in them attracts hammies fine, but if you were wanting bait for a different kind of trap, we tried just about everything and found chocolate worked best (as CMB said). Peanut butter was ignored, biscuit crumbs ignored, cheese ignored - they went for chocolate every time though.

[AmityvilleHams]

Mice probably just have a sweet tooth I think they deserve it though especially with the stress and most likely death that they end up having.To be honest though I have a lot of awful memories of sad things involving dead rodents from my childhood though,so I'm sure others would feel a bit differently than I do!

[Pebbles82]

It isn't nice I know. I had to steel myself . It's a difficult one, but unfortunately wild mice carry diseases. I once went on a week-end course that was run by a Buddhist group - it was a really interesting course on learning how to meditate and dealing with difficult people - almost management style techniques. You stayed overnight though in a big rambling building and there was a large kitchen you could use to make a cup of tea. But at night there were mice running all round the bedrooms and literally leaping around in the kitchen in and out of packets of cereals and tea and banging around everywhere! Someone asked about the mice and the answer was that Buddhists don't believe in killing anything and they were happy to share things with the mice.

While I like the philosophy it was a bit much lol. I told a friend about this, who came up with another philosophy that it wasn't fair on the mice who then had no purpose in life and were effectively on the dole and missing out on learning survival skills and chase tactics.

I did ignore some living in a roof space for a long time once as they didn't seem to come out but then started having light switches fail and was told they chew through cables. So mice and houses don't go well really.

[AmityvilleHams]

I think the Buddhist view on mice is something the world needs to learn overall Maybe not directly for mice,but it could definitely help a lot of people I think.

It is a very interesting idea to think that if you just allow them to eat everything then they won't have to forage and such,and they don't exactly get along well with houses.Death in general isn't easy to deal with I suppose,but one must be strong.

[Varx]

Thanks everyone! I'll try chocolate. Luckily they seem to have zero interest in the hamster food but I'm keeping it in a container now for safety.
Good luck coco61! Hopefully yours aren't as stubborn as mine. I think I have wood mice as opposed to house mice, dunno if that means they'll be easier or harder to remove!

Just did a bit of a clear out under the kitchen surfaces and ughhh they make me jump whenever they do a runner!
They definitely have a sweet tooth though. They got into my baking supplies and ate two entire blocks of icing (also the contents of one of those pillows filled with lavendar that you heat up in the microwave- weird).

Also that Buddhist philosophy is all well and good but they don't have to worry about house fires from mice eating electricals! Haha

[Pebbles82]

I think our last lot were wood mice too - quite small - just as cheeky I found. The lavendar pillow would be for nesting material probably. I got them in quite a modern house once when I had an old mattress in a garage. And a bag of sunflower seeds for birds in the garage. Went to get some sunflower seeds and a mouse jumped out. Then I noticed they had ripped all the stuffing off the top of the mattress. Because the garage was integral to the house, they got in through a gap where some insulated water pipes went through the garage roof into the house. They can cause a bit of havoc I didn't actually realise they were in the house until I looked after next door's cat for a few days and kept finding it leaping around inside the built-in wardrobes at night, trying to catch them as they came down from the roof space!

So a cat can be helpful - but not all cats will bother lol. I did start out thinking they were sweet little things, and then they were such pests and pooing everywhere, I just wanted to get rid lol.

Sorry - gone on a mouse ramble. Anyway those plastic traps with the bait built into the little mouseholes would tend to sort a few at a time we found. It sounds a bit grim but they'd either still be in the trap or very close by in a line along the skirting board looking like they were in suspended animation. It works very quickly so they are usually in or very near the trap. Which although in some ways I thought I'd rather not see, in other ways it meant they could be removed rather than dying somewhere underneath something and stinking the house out.