was in bed last night and heard a noise, woke me up fast! Sounded like the downstairs blind being banged. So i crept onto the landing and listened.
Realised it was coming from the spare/junk room. Thought it was just stuff falling over but it gradually dawned on me that the noise was going on and
on, then out popped a mouse! One glance and it ran back into the junk. So i slammed the door tight and went back to bed. No sign of it now! 
How the
hell does a mouse climb up stairs?! Must've come up through a hole in the kitchen floor, from the space under the house - cant imagine how it
climbed up a copper pipe to get to floor level though. Absolutely baffled. I would think i imagined it but there are gnaw marks on a bar of soap in
there. Crazy stuff.
How best to get it?! I need it out before it starves to death and starts to stink, and also before swimbo comes home on sunday eve!
Do you know anyone with a ginger tom? 
Mice are really good at climbing... the only practical solutions are poison or a mouse trap. Not nice, but practical and permanent.
leave it too long and you may have a colony...
Spring trap baited with peanut butter - they love it (but not for that long obviously)
Leave it anywhere you see their poo.
Worked for me!
dont kill him/her,they are only trying to scrape a living in an anti-mouse world
a wooden box with some food at the bottom and sides they cant climb out of,catch them and let them go in someone else,s garden
I had some mice in the garage - caught them in humane traps, released them a few hundred yards away in a field - and they turned up again the same
night!
Sorry to say that bumping them off is the only certain way... shame, as I bear them no ill feelings - but they simply don't belong in my
house.
BTW: chocolate is also a good bait.
Amazing the heights then can fall/jump. As Tangerine Scream said, peanut butter is a great bait. Those sonic repel plug-in things do flip all (from my experience)
Spring trap : it only works once. Since a mouse died into it, the next ones keep away from it because of the blood's smell.
I fixed that by putting the trap in the fire for a few seconds.
Seems that new traps are made of plastic, so it's possible to wash in a dish wash machine to make it work again.
im a bit annoyed, i thought that closing the door would keep it in there so i could deal with it later, in the light of day though i see a 12mm gap under one side that it *possibly* would squeeze through. If i catch it alive i wont kill it, but a trap may be the only option!
quote:
Originally posted by Aloupol
, so it's possible to wash in a dish wash machine to make it work again.
what did the wife think of that
The most effective mouse trap is a plank with a razor blade standing upright at one end.
Write "Cheese this way" with an arrow pointing at the razor blade, on the plank.
Mr Mouse comes along, sees the sign and walks up to the razor blade, sticks his head over the top and looks both ways thinking "where's this
cheese then"
Cuts his throat.
There's really no need to complicate matters...........
Cheers
Chris
[Edited on 10/3/07 by chrisg]
Wooden mouse traps I have found are fine. Best bait to use a simple crumb of bread. Had 6 mice comit suicide in the same trap (fresh bit of bread each night), six nights in a row (that is to say one mouse each night.).
used lemoncurd, worked a treat
12mm is as wide as the M1 for a mouse!
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
im a bit annoyed, i thought that closing the door would keep it in there so i could deal with it later, in the light of day though i see a 12mm gap under one side that it *possibly* would squeeze through. If i catch it alive i wont kill it, but a trap may be the only option!
Mice don't go for cheese, Mars bar works well . Use to live more or less on a farm and had mice every year when the weather turned cold and tried just about everything to trap them
I've had a mouse in my loft , it started to eat the xmass trimmings, the little bugger climbed up the cavity wall ,after starting on the first
floor ,from the hot water pipes. I got myself a mouse freindly trap, set it up with peanut butter, and it caught it , but also killed it , suffocated
it, set it again, but with holes drilled init, about 6mm, it caught another one ,but this time it chewed an 8mm hole from the 6mm hole , and
escaped.
Alternatively
Cheers
Chris
If you can poke a biro through a hole (about 7mm) then a mouse can get through it. Allegedly.
http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th1c.htm
Mike
I recently asked the ratty man at wok how to get rid of my mices that have managedto get behind the dry-lining boards in my house (which gives them
full range from the floor to the loft!) He says the melted marsbar on a wooden spring trap works. I didn't like the idea of killing then so I
borrowed a humane trap from a farmer chum. It was a wooden box with fine wire mesh panels and two 12mm holes drilled through the wood with wire mesh
tubes in the holes. The tubes were about 2" long so as the mouses dropped out of the mesh tubes, they couldn't find their way out. They try
to find the way out by following the edges of the box.
I didn't think that the holes were big enough but the first night saw two detainees. The second night saw four. I took the mice a couple of miles
up the road to let them go.
Ratty man at work says they need to be squished as they can easily find their way back! The next consignment were taken to the middle of the moors and
let go.
I then went into the loft and saw the damage the little nibbling gets had caused. I then bought the wooden spring traps and a bag of Mars Bars!!!
reading that link that mike posted, i may have a problem! Mary and moses....
gonna get some traps tomorrow to sort them out, and maybe go mouse hunting tonight.
Im still bugged about where it came from, baffled. If it can indeed get through 7mm, it can probably waltz straight under my front door!
They can go just about anywhere but they'll only stay if there's a food source - make sure there's nothing edible anywhere that they can get into and lay traps to get rid of the ones that are there already. Loads of baits work apparently, raisins did the job for me.
I used one of those humane traps to catch a mouse... it came back three times. I even walked 3-400 yards in the woods nearby to save its life.
Eventually I bought a killer one... job done!
We now have cats - anyone know of a trap big enough for those seriously, nothing better than a Cat for catching mice. SWMBO didn't like
clearing up the 5 headless ones we had recently. Before you ask... we live amongst fields and woods so field mice are common around here...
StEvE
B&Q (black plastic) mousetraps worked: three killed in two days with a chocolate bait.
All quiet since.
3 cats = no mice
apart from the occasional present.
Remember watching the F1 qualifiing a couple of years ago when one of the Maclarens was just starting its lap, when in comes one of the cats, drops a
mouse at my feet and taps my leg to say this ones yours. I politely declined, next thing I knew I could here the crunching of mouse bones, and by the
time the lap was complete all was left was a tail with a bumhole attached and the little beany bit they never eat.
well wste not want not
Mice can get into the loft so a bathroom is very easy.
Ive always used humane traps in the past, was surprised to learn that it is an offence to let them go and you can face prosecution if caught
apparently. Something to do with their vermin status.
Ive always used dog food in the traps. Once had one of the black plastic tube types with a yellow cap at the end - the buggers chewed through the cap
and let themselve loose! Hard plastic ones always worked well.
got a pair of traps from B&Q, caught it first night. Under the sofa! He triggered the one in the kitchen too but didnt go in, id left the
instructions folded inside guess he read them and realised it was a trap! Im gonna leave them out for a while and maybe have a perminant one
somewhere. Cheers for the help guys! I dumped him by the mother-in-laws house
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
...He triggered the one in the kitchen too but didnt go in, id left the instructions folded inside