There's a moos loos in the hoos

[Freaki Li Cuatre]

Dozed off on the sofa after my supper tonight.

Woke up with a start when I heard the chink (that OK?) of cutlery on china coming from the floor where I'd deposited my empty plate.

Craned my neck to look down and there's a pair of beady black eyes looking at me from behind a set of twitching whiskers. A little mouse sat in the middle of my plate finishing off the last of my chicken chasseur.

Better get a cat in.

Actually, no. Can't stand the things. The way they sit on kitchen wortops with their asses in direct contact with tge surface on which one prepares food. Think I'd rather have mice in. I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to tell me I need to get pest control in otherwise I'll get weiles disease or something. And if it had been a rat I'd have agreed with you.

Trouble is, I had them in last year and I felt they took advantage of my laissez faire attitude. You give 'em an inch and one minute they're scavenging scraps off your dinner plate while you're asleep, the next they'll have their feet up on your sofa with the remote.

May have to get one of those humane traps and take them down the road to the house with the noisy kids.

[RSoles]

It's that time of year I'm afraid, the first cold-ish nights bring them in.
Forget about kindness, forget about care.
I tried the humane traps and got to know some mice quite well.
They just keep coming back.

Humane is a quick 'snip' death.
There's a mousetrap called 'The Little Nipper' which is made of wood with a little wooden platform
which triggers the 'snip'.
Bugger to set, but very quick to snap.
All others are inferior.

[NickFitz]

If your humane trap actually catches any, take them at least two miles away to release. They home over surprisingly large distances.

But it won't. I tried all that humane malarkey when I had mice a few years ago. It doesn't work, and the bastards breed fast.

If you've got one, there's a good chance you've got loads, or soon will have. Get real traps and poison, and expect a long battle. I got rid of about 60+ in the end, and it took several months (not helped by working away in the week for much of that time).

[SueEllen]

Can't you convince a neighbours' cat that they want to visit you for a month?

Then after that ensure you aren't around to let them in.

Mind you some cats are useless and just enjoy chasing mice around the place rather than doing anything with them.

[I just need to test it]

Yeah, I set my humane trap with a chocolate button. Must've taken all of ten minutes to catch him.

I took him across two fields and released him.

Then, exasperatingly, the pair of us made our way back to the house side by side.

Where the cat got him.

[xoggoth]

Nice little things, meeces. Main problem is they take food to hidden places. They were raiding the bird seed in my shed last year and I keep finding husks in my tool box, plumbing bits etc. Probably gets a bit unhygienic in a kitchen.

I got rid of about 60+ in the end

Gordon Bennett!

[Uncle Albert]

One of our neighbours caught a mouse in a humane trap and drove it a few miles away to release it.

It ran straight out into the road and was flattened.

[stek]

Humane traps are daft, you catch a town mouse in it, release it in a field, it sits there thinking 'this is nice' and its immediately gobbled up by an owl or summert...

[d000hg]

Why are you letting your cat sit on the worktop?

[RSoles]

Don't use poison.
Two reasons:
1) Potential for poisoning wildlife like Barn owls.
2) the all-pervading smell of rotting mice somewhere behind the skirting-board.

I once set a lightweight plastic trap in a mouse-run under the floorboards.
Some unlucky wee creature must have got its foot trapped and hobbled off with the trap,
then fell down inside my lath-and-plaster wall where it jammed about half-way down.
It could be heard rattle-rattle-rattle for days gradualy fading to rattle-rattle then rattle, then the smell