Mice again... This time it's silicone moulds!

[nframe]

Since the last catastrophy involving mice eating my soap, I had moved all my soaps into the utility room and left all the soap-making equipment in the garage. I have too much stuff to bring it into the house! Anyway, I discovered today that the little buggers have eaten some of my silicone moulds! I am really upset because I never thought that mice would eat them. I have put down a humane trap in the garage with plenty of porridge oats in it and they have ignored it. I think it's time I find a not so humane solution now.

This is a warning to those of you who are thinking of keeping your moulds where mice can get to them...

 

[seven]

oh bugger i would cry if my silicone molds were ruined. i hope you can find a solution to this problem asap. my soaping tools are already everywhere too (my house is tiny) but i will never dream of putting them outside in the garage. the mouse problem over here is pretty bad (not to mention cockroaches, ants, and other lil creatures. i live in a tropical country, that's why). everything needs to be kept in the house, period.

 

[boyago]

Wow, maybe you used a scent that they find irresistible. Side story: I lived in a house in San Francisco were all the houses on our block were built with no space between the houses so that the exterior walls were shared. This meant that if one person had mice everyone got mice. During one summer there were allot of mice. We used the humane mouse catching straps and everyday after work we'd come home and collect the mice traps with mice in them and go down to the abandoned tennis courts at the end of the block and release them. Betting on who's mouse would make it to the end edge of the court first. I was probably the funnest way to deal with the situation.

 

[Lin]

Mix some rat poison in soap batter with some goodies like oatmeal and leave it in the garage?

 

[boyago]

Mix some rat poison in soap batter with some goodies like oatmeal and leave it in the garage?

Don't get them mixed up!

 

[Lin]

mmm, oatmeal milk and warfarin soap.

 

[Pepsi Girl]

Forget being humane kill the suckers!

They will eat anything. Here at the ranch they get in our tractors and eat the wiring, hoses, whatever. Every year it cost us plenty!

 

[boyago]

Forget being humane kill the suckers!

They will eat anything. Here at the ranch they get in our tractors and eat the wiring, hoses, whatever. Every year it cost us plenty!

I think it was it was LAX that had a major problem with ground squirrels doing that to allot of the vehicles parked in the long term lots.

 

[Ruthie]

I've had a problem with them since we moved into our "new" house. They would avoid the sticky traps for the most part, and those sonic things did no good. But I did get some relief from peppermint essential oil. Put it on cotton balls and stuck those lil buggers everywhere. I guess they hate the stuff, as I've only seen one since, and I'm sure I need to redose the cotton balls.

 

[seven]

Forget being humane kill the suckers!

They will eat anything. Here at the ranch they get in our tractors and eat the wiring, hoses, whatever. Every year it cost us plenty!

^^^
Like this!

The ones we have here are big, bigger than kittens. Once at our old house, my dad had to replace nearly all of the wirings coz they were ruined by those monsters. He was pissed alright.

 

[lizflowers42]

Wow, I am so lucky! Never had a problem with mice in my basement. Our garage is a different story, but the only thing I ever leave out there is my molded soap in the winter to prevent gel. Have not had trouble yet, fingers crossed.

 

[Susie]

Put peanut butter in snap traps.(The new black plastic ones from Lowes or Home Depot, not the old wooden ones.) Works every time for us. We get rats and mice outside in the animal feed.

I would NEVER recommend that anyone use poison. They die in inconvenient places, and you get to live with the stench for 3 weeks.

 

[boyago]

Put peanut butter in snap traps.(The new black plastic ones from Lowes or Home Depot, not the old wooden ones.) Works every time for us. We get rats and mice outside in the animal feed.

I would NEVER recommend that anyone use poison. They die in inconvenient places, and you get to live with the stench for 3 weeks.

We had rats that were coming after our chicken feed and started to go into the garage so we went with those. I think the are called "sure kill" or something else that suggested and efficient end. I put them where where I saw the rats going and staked them down. Out of the five I caught only one was dead when I got to them. One trap went missing and my wife (at the time) called me at work bawling because there was a rat dragging a trap around the yard that she had to deal with. I now favor the old school clap traps. For a couple wussy vegetarians it was pretty traumatic.

 

[Obsidian]

I use traps like this. Super easy to set and they trip easier then the old wood and wire kinds.

 

[Pepsi Girl]

Yes, Peanut Butter is the ticket!

 

[DeeAnna]

Or use the humane traps but put a better bait in it. Oats are not attractive to mice unless that's the only food source they have. Peanuts or peanut butter works much better in the humane traps as well as with the kill traps. Or dry dog or cat food.

 

[newbie]

Or get a couple cats. No mice around here last long.

 

[nframe]

Or use the humane traps but put a better bait in it. Oats are not attractive to mice unless that's the only food source they have. Peanuts or peanut butter works much better in the humane traps as well as with the kill traps. Or dry dog or cat food.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I have removed the oats and put Nutella and peanuts in the trap. I need to buy peanut butter as I don't have any but, in this country, everything is closed on Xmas Day and Boxing Day (26 December). I hope the Nutella will keep them happy in the meantime.

As for getting a cat, this would be my ideal but it is not really practicable anymore. So traps will have to do. Mind you, if I caught a mouse, I wouldn't know what to do with it. My husband will have to deal with it!

 

[Lin]

I was mostly joking with putting poison in soap, I don't like using poison because I have pets. Even if they don't get to the poison, they can eat the deceased poisoned animal and ingest it that way. A few years back I was managing a boarding house and went to help clean the rooms of someone who had been evicted and left behind all his stuff, so had to be moved to the shed until he retrieved it. Anyway they were mostly done when I came in to help but turned out he had put rat poison in multiple corners of his rooms. Which made NO sense to me because the guy had a young puppy. My dog Emma ate some and I had to run her to the ER vet for induced vomiting. One plus was she didn't puke in my car from the hydrogen peroxide I guess. Then 6 weeks of vitamin K! So now I'm really particular about people using poison and in new places will ask specifically "do you have any rat poison anywhere?"

 

[lizflowers42]

Nutella would lure me into a trap