Did you set your traps?

[ken herrick]

This is why.....

T'was the night before Christmas, and all thru the house,
a thousand creatures were stirring and each was a mouse.

All the stocking were hung by the chimney with care
but, by the holes eaten thru them, you could tell mice were there.

All the children were crying in their beds in despair,
for the mice were there too and the cupboard was bare.

St Nick and the reindeer on the roof were a landing,
as the mice raced up the chimney, more food demanding.

The reindeer were startled and scared into flight
and Santa and sleigh took off into the night.

The very next morning no presents were there
for Santa and reindeer had crashed from the air.

[bloke]

We live out the country and there's a generous crawl space under our house. It's sealed up well enough to keep animals out but of course mice can get in anywhere, and you can't keep them out of a crawl space. I'm sure the holes cut for the water lines and gas lines in the kitchen are way larger than the pipes themselves, and I should go under the house and fit wood around those pipes, but I haven't done that - not even after all these years, and each year mice move in from the cold to live underneath our stove. That haven't been said, we have gotten pretty good at remembering to put sticky traps under there - each winter - which are very effective at trapping them. We can always tell when they've been caught, because the cats starts sniffing relentlessly under there - particularly at night. Mrs bloke - just yesterday- ran a yardstick under there and collected up a couple of sticky sheets with two or three mice on each one - dead.
I really should climb under the house, measure those pipe diameters, and make some half-moon wood things (that would fit close around each pipe) and screw them up to the subfloor. It's dumb to keep having to catch mice every year.

your poem adaptation: funny. thnx.

[York-aholic]

I think they make some of that expanding foam you spray in that is supposedly “mouse proof”.

[bloke]

I think they make some of that expanding foam you spray in that is supposedly “mouse proof”.

Mrs bloke suggested expanding phone but I just figured they'd eat through it. If what you say is true, I should have listened to her. First, I need to go under there and find all the places and then hang some of those little wire flags upside down from them so I can find them all a second time.

These two cats that we have now are both excellent mousers, Mr. Covid and Miss Cuddles. If any mice do venture out from underneath the stove, they are dead, and they also go way back into the tree line and into the wood pile and keep those cleaned out, as well as popping moles and voles out of the ground and dispensing with those. They are inside and outside cats. We let them out just before sun up and they come in at sundown. In the winter, they tend to come in and out more due to the cold air being a bit unpleasant for them.

In the past, we've had more cats than just two, but - as we look at reality - we don't want to shoulder our progeny with a bunch of pets.

[gocsick]

The best thing I've found for mouse proofing is steel wool and the brass chore boy sponges. Just stuff it into any gaps before sealing. It cuts their mouth...

[peterbas]

.

[York-aholic]

I think they make some of that expanding foam you spray in that is supposedly “mouse proof”.

Mrs bloke suggested expanding phone but I just figured they'd eat through it. If what you say is true, I should have listened to her. First, I need to go under there and find all the places and then hang some of those little wire flags upside down from them so I can find them all a second time.

These two cats that we have now are both excellent mousers, Mr. Covid and Miss Cuddles. If any mice do venture out from underneath the stove, they are dead, and they also go way back into the tree line and into the wood pile and keep those cleaned out, as well as popping moles and voles out of the ground and dispensing with those. They are inside and outside cats. We let them out just before sun up and they come in at sundown. In the winter, they tend to come in and out more due to the cold air being a bit unpleasant for them.

In the past, we've had more cats than just two, but - as we look at reality - we don't want to shoulder our progeny with a bunch of pets.

Would I lie to you? (Don't answer that) Never used it, just seen it on the shelf...

https://tomcatbrand.com/en-us/shop/repe ... 8ZUZFba6Da

[bloke]

Thanks so very much !

We will look for it.

[tofu]

.

[bloke]

Interesting. That's sort of what I thought about foam - that mice or rats would just chew through it, because they chew through anything that's easy to chew through...and even if it's poisonous. That's sort of why I was planning on measuring the diameters of the pipes, drilling holes in one-by wood only a smidge larger than the pipes' diameters, and cutting the wood right down the centers of the holes to use as two-piece patches over the carelessly cut holes in the subfloor.

[Tubajug]

I'll second the steel wool suggestion. We redid the flooring on our main floor this summer and used the opportunity to stuff every hole we could find with steel wool. So far, no mice...

One of our cats is also a good hunter. She caught several last year, but we haven't seen any since we redid the floor.

[tadawson]

I tried the steel wool, etc. and all it did was make them chew holes elsewhere and p*ss me off . . . . They cleared a hunk of vacant property near us, and we got overrun with rats, so I decided to go scorched earth/"drop a nuke" and found that the Tomcat bromothalein based baits (example: https://tomcatbrand.com/en-us/shop/bait ... 70810.html, although we used the biggerbstuff in pails from Tractor Supply) are amazing - 20 verified kills in a few days (and who knows how many we didn't see) and typically they leave prior to death. The only thing is to be cetain to use secure bait boxes - this stuff is not good for pets. After the initial wipeout, leaving one box loaded near a key route has avoided any recurrence.

[shovelingtom]

I think they make some of that expanding foam you spray in that is supposedly “mouse proof”.

Colleagues have started using RoBan Barrier Pest Control Paste as of late and are super happy with it. Applies through a caulk gun. My understanding is it’s a combination of steel-wool shavings, bad smelling to rodent stuff, unpalatable tastes, and a hardening agent. The combination is a paste that can be forced into small cracks or just put on like caulk.

[donn]

When we were going to sell our house, the pest control people came out and put foam in the cracks. I don't know how well it worked, and I wouldn't by any means recommend something just because those turkeys use it, but there you go.

The problem with poisoning them, is that the dying rats are easy pickings as they stumble around the area. Your pets, raptors, etc. aren't going to raid the bait, but outside of the rare case of a herbivorous pet, they'll be all over the sick rats. I remember seeing a Cooper's hawk on the back fence with what looked like what's left of a rat, thinking "good luck, buddy."

There's an alternative poison that's supposed to sterilize them or something of that nature, I actually bought the kit, but as I read up on it I kind of lost interest in this strategy, and at the moment I can't clearly recall why, but it might have something to do with the fact that years later they're still emailing me to see if they can sell me their potion to resupply my rat sterilization chamber. That's clearly where they make the money.

I got some kill traps. The classic Victor type seems to me about as good as anything. The CO2 powered hammer was cool, and when it works it really works, but I didn't really get many with it. There's another spring type that if I remember right may come from Tomcat, that's a heck of a lot easier to set up if you're a little fumbly fingered with the Victor.

In our area, the local hardware store carried an electrocuting trap that they thought highly of, and it was very popular. So popular that they were ordering so many of them, that the factory desk back east finally had to ask, what kind of hell hole was this, swarming with rats apparently? Well, it's true, Seattle has a lot of rats. The climate is mild, sea port, a lot of old wood houses ... And apparently we love to electrocute them. I don't know if I ever caught one in mine.

All just fond memories now. No rats here - really. Residential construction is plain masonry. No gypsum panels over studs, just solid masonry walls all the way down. Squirrels are very rare also, which is fine with me. I did flush a rabbit this afternoon in the back, but so far no real problem.

[Grumpikins]

Never fear, on new years eve santa is going to return with a dozen cats-a-mousing.