Mice

We had a mouse in the kitchen a few years ago. It was coming in to the garage, up the wall, through a gap between the ceiling and the wall, in to the ceiling cavity, across the downstairs toilet, across the kitchen, down alongside a boxed in soil stack, and under the kitchen units. It appeared one Boxing Day morning as I sat at the breakfast bar, bleary eyed, drinking a cup of tea. Luckily it beat a hasty retreat the way it had come!! You have to admire its exploration abilities. It was attracted, almost certainly, by wild bird food which my wife kept in one of the kitchen cupboards.

The solution -

Find the points of entry and seal them all. (They can get through extraordinarily small gaps so make sure that you seal all the likely points.) I used expanding foam on every gap I could find. Store all bird food, etc. in a lidded bin in the garage. Put down traps and poison in suitable places. I have traps in the garage alongside the wall where I think that they usually come in. Last year I caught about 4 mice, but this year only one so far, so I think that I am winning the battle. The good thing is that since I sealed up the points of entry there have been no signs of any more in the house. Fingers crossed!!

we have mice in our kitchen too - drawn in by the filthy guy who lives upstairs (we're in a groundfloor flat). Unfortunately we can't block off entry holes as its a) a rented flat so we're limited as to what we can do in the way of repairs ourselves b) the gas pipes actually run between the floors because we used to share a gas supply, and there's no way to change that (and the gas pipes are how the little buggers get around).

things i've found work: 1) starve em out. box up everything in either tins, glass jars or plastic boxes. and i do mean *everything*. they will get into stuff you wouldn't consider that they'd want to: flour packets, cereal packets. packets of noodles. If they can chew through it, they'll eat it. Don't assume they can't get up to high shelving: they probably can. Wash up everything every night, clear up all food and make sure there's absolutely nothing available for them to eat.

2) wash the areas where they come with neat bleach (and don't wipe it off again - although limit this if you have pets to the areas where pets can't get in). Apparently they don't like it, it sticks to their paws a bit, they dislike the smell and although it won't stop them if there's food that they can smell, done in conjunction with no 1 it may be enough to discourage them.

3) traps. We tried bait traps, and they worked initially, but then the mice stopped eating the bait and we had to resort to spring traps. We got special traps from the pest control guy which are stronger than the traps you can buy in pound shops, and they work well - kill instantly. don't load up with cheese - that's a fallacy, and expensive! Peanut butter will do the job, they love the stuff. Buy a cheap jar and mark it "MOUSE" or something, so you don't transfer germs.

regarding the neighbour, i can understand her preferring to feed the dog outside. We have a dog and our pest control guy keeps on at us to remove the bowl with dry dog food that is always down (together with water) for her, even though we've never seen mice or droppings in that area. my suggestion would be to ask her to at least cover the bowl when the dog isn't eating food, even if she can't remove it completely.

good luck!!!

keth
xx