Humane Mice Deterrent
Posted by erinmonster5 on Feb 20, 2009 · Member since Jan 2008 · 2870 posts
I need your help.
I was just talking to one of my co-workers who is having trouble with mice in his home.
He's been using glue traps, which horrified me, even though he assured me he removes the mice as gently as possible from the glue and releases them. I have a hard time believing this doesn't harm them.
I told him I'd investigate and find him a more humane way of taking care of the mice. But all I've found are sites selling "live traps" which he says he has, but hasn't caught one mouse in.
I was wondering if there was a mice deterrent.....like how you sprinkle cayenne pepper around to get rid of ants....
Does anyone have any tips I can give him?
I can't stand thinking about a poor little mouse, terrified and struggling on a glue trap.
omg, I had a mouse in my apartment once stuck in a glue trap... I didn't even know the trap was there... it was left over from the previous tenant..
I struggled to get that mouse out (oil works well) but it was still pretty paralyzed on one side.
I looked for all kinds of humane ways to catch mice or keep them away and none of them worked for me!
The best humane trap that worked for friends was to take an empty garbage/trash can, and put it next to the counter (if they go on the counter) and take the cardboard part of paper towels that you are done with and balance it on the edge over it with a little food on the side that is over the trash can. They'll crawl in and fall into the trash can, then you can release them into the woods or something....
they caught 3 mice that way...
good luck though. best bet is to try and keep everything packed away, which sucks when you have bread or something..
I had a mouse problem at my first college, where the air circulation units for each room were connection (and vented to the ground outside. geniuses). As far as preventing them from coming in, use plastic storage bins/tupperware instead of ziplocs/bags/open containers. And don't limit it to foodstuffs - these guys ate my cotton balls! But if the main reason they're coming in is because it's cold outside, not much you can do there except try to seal off all their points of entry.
I got a humane mouse trap (not the green clear one PETA sells, but a black sort of bent-L-shaped one like this http://www.beautifulbritain.co.uk/htm/wildlife/humane_traps.htm but sold in the states. I used peanut butter as a bait at the end of the inside tube. Worked well - I caught 13 mice that winter! And they all got a free meal out of it -_-
There are home made contraption ideas on the internet, like this one http://marquardts.org/mindspring/mice/index.htm which is a pretty cool use of a normally lethal trap.
I have made the one with the coffee can and it worked well. My neighbour saw it and made one too to catch mice to feed to his snake!!! The 5 gallon bucket worked well. But You need to empty them far far away from your house or they will find their way back and bring their friends. There are some devices which give off some sort of high pitched sound which mice do not like, sort of the way I feel towards opera. I have never tried them but have friends who have very successfully. I have a camperized bus which sits in my yard and I was having problems with mice there. I put a slightly used cat's litter box in it and that helped. Then I put moth balls and that worked but it now smells like moth balls which I can't stand and which I have read may actually be not too good to breathe. The best ways to keep mice out of your home is to find out where they get in and seal it up tight. I have bever had a mouse in the place where I live now and that is why. I once went camping in my bus and found out that the area was overrun with mice, thousands of them!!! Someone told me to put a little dish of food outside my bus and they would stay out but there was so many that they would gobble up my offering and then come looking for more. I had to put black plastic all around the bottom of the bus and seal it with duct tape to get any peace and sleep at night. My friends simply got cats to keep them company at night. We were camping at the time fighting forest fires, and apparently the fires had driven the mice to the safety of our campground.