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Jen&Rog

Advice on mice in the loft

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As I sit here browsing the Omlet forum I can hear mice (maybe rats?!) in the loft above me, and I really think it's time we found them a new home. Anyone know of any effective humane methods? I'm worried if we trap them somehow, they may have babies who will starve without mum. Am I being overly sentimantal? :boohoo:

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Maybe its the time of year, I discovered mice in our loft before Christmas (when I discovered on nibbled Terrys chocolate orange and a packet of destroyed Hannah Montana chocolates!) I tried humane and non humane traps and they managed to get the choclate out of BOTH without setting the trap :roll:

I resigned myself to having to clear the loft COMPLETELY to really get rid, which is something that has needed doing for years anyway, never mind all the stuff up there that I can SELL!

Trouble with mice is that they're incontinent, all the time they're walking they're weeing and you have to set them free MILES from home before they stop coming back. Good luck, luckily I can't hear ours otherwise they would be driving me nuts.

 

Mrs B

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Hi Jen & Rog,

I like to think of myself as a caring sort of person.....BUT.....when it comes to rats and mice in my house, grinning at me as they trot across my kitchen worktops late at night....getting in my chests of drawers, making nests in my sofa? I draw the line!

I buy a very effective poison and have had no regrets. My poison has wiped out whole familys (I've seen them so theres no babies to worry about).And it's about as humane as you can get......who wants to be held hostage and then released into an alien environment?

I am surrounded by fields, so for all those that don't invade my space, I don't invade theirs.

 

I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but it is just a way of here.

 

Jackiex

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I will go one step further.

 

Don't muck about trying to do this yourself, chances are you'll spend a small fortune on different poisons. See what your local Authority offer in the way of pest control - they can be VERY cheap and they have stronger stuff than you can buy over the counter.

 

They are vermin and can damage your property - They are not some endangered species and they breed like rabbits! Animal lovers we may be but these are not pets.

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Does anyone know if the poison remains active after it has been eaten?

as far as I know it does - we were told this after we realised that we no longer had owls visiting our garden. We'd poisoned the owls by poisoning the rats :cry:

now we leave the cats and owls to deal with rodent control and it seems to be working :D

 

I think if they're in the roof poison should be safe enough shouldn't it? However, I do wonder if the noises jen&rog can hear are bats...

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Bats, maybe, which you can't disturb but at least won't do any harm.

 

 

However I would call in the professionals rather than try to find out yourself - our family have had both starlings and squirrels set up in loft spaces.

 

Grey squirrels make HUGE nests and destroy everything they find. They are very territorial and will attack if someone comes up into their space.

 

Starlings, if they can get in through the eaves, will fill the whole loft with nesting material and mess. My Dad removed six bin-bags full from a starling infestation.

 

Once you get rid of whatever they prove to be, block all holes under the eaves to stop them coming back!

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I am VERY careful with my poison. I only put it where only these vermin can reach it and it does not seem to have affected my local bat/owl population. I also saw my chooks the other day annhiliating a mouse/vole whatever with no ill effect that had invaded their territory.

There is nothing wrong in protecting your own....we just have different methods now....and I prefer mine to battering an animal over the head with a club or torturing it in an agonising trap. Just imagine if you had been born the 'vermin'? What sort of dispatch would you have wished for? I know what I would have wanted.... but then I'm a born coward......crikey.....couldn't even have a baby without an epidural.......and that was 40 years ago!

 

Just watched River Cottage.......sorry Spiritual purge....will stick to my poison.

 

Jackiex

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I'm a poisoner too, I'm afraid. I don't think there's any other way. On Swarm (BBC1 Sunday evenings) last week, it said that a pair of mice can be responsible for 3000 mice in 12 months! Once they're in your house, you have to deal with them or the problem will multiply.

We got rid of some in November. They were in the loft, the garage and one of the rooms. We also found one in the airing cupboard. :vom:

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Poison is good - mice wee all over every surface, continually.They also breed like rabbits so I would get rid of them asap.

Pest controller told me that eating a dead mouse would not harm my cat; but put poison in sealed boxes so cat could not eat poison itself, as that can be harmful.

Mice usually take food back to hidey hole to eat, so chances of cat eating dead one, or you smelling dead one are, apparantly, slim (poison also contains stuff to make them rot without smelling, so I am told...)

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We had a mouse in our kitchen. I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, but when I'd turn and look there'd be nothing there. Anyway, one day I turned round and there it was, sitting on the draining board 'hiding' behind a clear glass :shock: We tried to catch it to chuck it outside. We even tried the cats, but they were so not interested :? So I bought some poison which you put in a little tray on the mouses route (clearly marked with the little brown trail) and a couple of days later, there it was, dead in the tray.

 

A few days later, I was emptying out 'that drawer' and I found a little red teacup with little town up bits of paper and tissues and cotton wool. For a split second I was aww and then thought thank god we'd done the poison when we did otherwise we'd have a whole family living in our kitchen.

 

Re your loft. I'd try and find out for definate what you have up there and if its mice then if it was me I'd put down poison.

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We sometimes get woodmice in the loft - we have been told that they get in under the garage doors. In warmer winters they stay outside. They tiptoe very gently around, but we did once have something much noisier - perhaps a squirrel. The mice tend to get bowls of poison because we don't want them to think "ooh des res", but with the larger thing OH banged the bedroom ceilings with a broom handle. It sort of got stuck in the corner above DD's bedroom and we heard it frantically scrabbling to escape. He stopped banging and it ran back along towards the garage - we never heard it again. Since then we have had the soffits and oojits replaced - nothing big can get in now. But rats can squeeze into very small spaces and mice can get through gaps of about a quarter of an inch (or so I am told). The naughty wood mouse that came in and stayed under the stairs, and then the kitchen, was eventually caught in a live trap and was released the other side of the village. It had tried to get out while we were on holiday because we could see where it had tried to scrabble a hole by the kitchen door - it's normal home was under the patio or back doorsteps.

So basically - poison for upstairs and live traps for downstairs - because you are able to check them more often and mousey hopefully won't get too stressed in the trap.

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(poison also contains stuff to make them rot without smelling, so I am told...)

 

I have to say I am not too sure about that. I can smell dead mice really clearly - whether their death has been brought about by poison or any other means.

 

I know that we have mice in our loft but they are field mice and I don't bother too much. We did have one running around our landing and bedrooms and that took some getting rid of. It would take all the poison from the tray and hoard it underneath the bed - without eating any. It also managed to get mars bars off the traps without setting them off.

 

The trap eventually worked and I felt awful but I hated the thought of it in the bedrooms at night.

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We have a regular problem with mice here. I have two Little Nipper traps which work well for us. We are mouse clear at the moment but as they weather has suddenly become wet and wild I expect we'll find we have another few soon.

 

Luckily they only get as for as the loft, all crevices into the kitchen and understairs cupboard have been blocked with wire wool. This seems to keep them upstairs.

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We use "snapper" traps in the loft & DH take great pleasure in flushing the little blighters down the loo :shock: ! And it is a :shock: if he doesn't tell you & you come face to face with one which hasn't flushed away!!! We have them every year, we live in an old farmer labourer's cottage in the middle of a field & next door but one have cats, who I know bring in livestock, so it's not really surprising!

 

We also have a "snappy" one in the kitchen above the cooker extractor, I nearly had heart failure when it went off whilst cooking the dinner one night...oh the joys of the countryside :roll:

 

I had humane ones in the bedroom (having heard uninvited guests one night :evil: ) and found it had scratched my door and the frame trying to get downstairs to the kitchen - "Ooops, word censored!"ody believes me when I tell them. I caught it in the kitchen after it avoided the human traps the next night & took itself downstairs again. We have a skirting board around the edge of the stairs which I imagine it used, rather than the stairs themselves!!

 

I have dogs and children & would rather not use poison, I understand that a mouse caught by it's tail/leg is cruel, but as the usually are caught across the neck/head it's usually quick & simple. The only one we had which was caught & didn't die immediately made so much noise it sounded like elephants in the loft, so was dealt with very quickly.

 

Sha x

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I'm going to go up in the loft with a torch and investiagte!! I'm pretty sure it's not bats because I hear the critters scuttle from one side of the roof to another, and have found droppings in the Xmas boxes. But I'll be careful in case I do have bats so I don't disturb them.

 

I could never bring myself to poison anything... in fact when I found a mouse family in the shed, I ended up putting them back. What a soft touch I am... and look how they repay my kindness.

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Could quite easily be rats considering the time of year. I'd lay poison so it'd get mice aswell if needs be. They are both vermin so cannot be released back into the wild. They spread disease (Weils is nasty) and can chew through lots of things in your loft - cables, insulation, wooden beams, not to mention valuables. As they're living rent free - it's time for a payback!!

 

I watched this a little while ago... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7816913.stm

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We've had mice in our camper van.

 

Caught one in a trap --- sad to say it wasn't a "clean" catch ... confused me when I found th trap missing.

 

We went away in the 'van over the New Year (it was ***** cold) and discovered it has chewed holes in the insulated window screens (so it had a nice warm nest somewhere) and also chewed through the fresh water tank. (We discovered the leak in Calais and discovered the "chewing" after we'd got home.) This meant we were relying on bottled water for cooking and washing up, we had no shower or water for washing. Luckily the heating workedwithout water in the boiler. This is going to cost £200 for a new tank, plus fitting, plus an unknown amount for a new window screen.

 

We don't really want to use poison in the 'van in case something dies somewhere so we've set more traps and hoped. We've also (hopefully) not left any accessible food in the 'van this time.

 

PJ

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We had mice in our loft too before Christmas. We are not fans of poison and not really knowing the scale of the problem, decided to get these traps:

 

http://www.trapman.co.uk/mouse-traps.htm

 

I rate these traps highly as they are humane, made of metal so the mice can't chew through, they can catch several mice at a time from both sides of the box and from our experience - very effective.

 

Erradicated our problem very quickly. :lol:

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