I also have a semi-feral cat that has at least 15 kills I know of , plus a few squirrels.
I’ll rent her out for bottles of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti !
Nutella.
They will kill amongst themselves for a bite.
Poison inside the tubes I mentioned isn’t harmful to any other animals/pets as they can’t get at it. The mice die together quickly as a group and they don’t leave carcasses in my experience as they shrivel up and disintegrate very quickly. Trying to pick them off one by one with traps won’t eradicate the problem. They multiply very quickly.
wouldn’t use inside. They die in the walls and rot.
There’s always the Caddyshack method.
We have lots of the little critters because we have the woods behind my house and a creek running along one side. I guess I am heartless, but I just love the snapping sound when the trap slams shut. The idea of humanely dropping off a mouse at the local State Park and then coming home to have a Flannery dry aged porterhouse seems a bit off to me. A little piece of hot dog smeared with peanut butter does the job very well.
He’d have them exterminated, but they are such good cooks.
Agree poison is not ideal, as they will usually die inside a wall (or similar). I just removed our old hot tub plus decking and found no less than 5 mummified rats under, most likely poisoned by the previous owners.
Also I believe in good old fashioned snap traps. Rodents are not endangered and it is a quick way to go.
And pets and birds will not eat the poisoned vermin.
Two down. Hopefully that is it; but continuing our trap regime.
While true, from experience the smell dissipates within a couple of days.
Plus, if it’s Cumadin (or whatever the blood thinning poison is), they often go outside in search of water and die there.
That’s what I’ve found as well. I bought a house that is in the woods a few years back. I was hesitant to let the exterminator use it, but the previous owner had let them breed out of control in the attic, and as the exterminator pointed out, we needed some swift action to win the war.
Shock and awe! Control the battlespace!
How long until we have another thread started asking if mouse poop in a cellar will affect flavor profiles when aging? I would have already started one if I was feeling extra-trollish.
In regard to mouse control, the best offense is a good defense. Vermin proof construction goes a long way in keeping critters out. Once or twice a year I do a full exterior review of our house and make sure that penetrations are sealed, intakes and exhausts have bird screen over them, and gasketing is tight around windows and doors. This in addition to a robust hawk population and a few feral cats in the neighborhood keeps things under control.
The one year that we did have some invaders, we opted for old school traps with peanut butter as bait. It seemed to work well enough.
TW
Leave the un-poisoned carcasses for preying birds. But place a warning, in case some birds have peanut allergy.
And how long until someone says “It won’t affect Beaucastel?”
Have had some issues over the years and use a regular spring trap.
To add to some amusement factor. my kid who lives in NYC had one in the apartment a couple week ago. They put down a glue trap and caught it. They then used some cooking oil to separate it from the glue which she said worked very well. This all went to plan apparently. It was then released somewhere in central Park.
Going to blame it on the boyfriend since I’ve always been clear about just disposing of small vermin like that.
We seem to have (or had) a mouse or chipmunk in our car. A sealed package of cookies in the glove compartment was nibbled ten days ago. Then a bag of garbage my wife foolishly left in the car overnight. A day or two later the foil from a piece of chocolate had been shredded on the passenger seat, and there was a little scat.
I’m still trying to figure out how a critter could get in or, particularly, out a slightly open window.
Needless to say, I have to work on my wife’s habits before the bears get wind of our car. (We’re upstate.)
Leave the car, with the windows closed, in the hot sun. That should kill the rodent. Ignore any later stench.
15 is Bourgogne level.
I use the Raticator - https://www.raticator.com/
The success rate of this thing is just stupid good and there is no messy clean up (I’ve placed a motion detecting Blink camera to see the results). The trap is infra-red triggered so it’s essentially sleeping most of the time, making it super efficient and I change batteries about once per year.
I don’t like the ones where the rodents take home the food or poison because if they’re nested in your walls/insulation/floors/etc, you’re going to have a rancid stench as it decomposes, and then the ants and other critters move in to feast.