As mentioned before, I've been dealing with mice in my kitchen. Last week I bought two live traps and put them on the counter. I did capture two mice (safely released in the golf course next door) but over the course of six days there were four days where the traps were triggered without a mouse being inside. Not a good success rate.
Last Monday I bought a different style of live trap it is a long tube that is carefully balanced. The "lid" rests on the floor and when a mouse enters to get the bait at the other end the tube rocks back and the lid slides into place. I had bought two, so placed one on the counter, the other under the sink.
At 3:15 am, I heard an occasional noise (I don't know if it woke me). After a while I got up to investigate and confirmed it was coming from under the sink and the new trap there had been triggered. I didn't want to take a mouse outside at that hour, so returned to bed. The noise continued. I figured it was the mouse pacing the length of the tube.
I took the trap outside Tuesday morning -- and found it empty. On closer inspection I figured out what had happened. A mouse apparently bumped the bait end of the trap, causing it to trigger. The mouse could smell the bait through the end cap (which allows loading the bait) and proceeded to do a great deal of chewing of the trap to get at the bait. It didn't succeed and the bottom of the cupboard was littered with chewings. What I heard was not a mouse trying to get out but a mouse trying to get in.
I reset the trap and put the second one beneath the sink. I checked them after rehearsal last night. One was triggered when I returned, with a mouse in it. I took it to the golf course. The other trap had a mouse in it this morning. Four mice now evicted. I'll reset traps again before going out this evening in hopes of catching any that remain.
Today was my time to clean much of the kitchen and reclaim it for my own use. In an earlier round of cleaning I discovered that a mouse had crawled through my toaster, so I bought a new one. I haven't unpacked it yet, waiting to be sure the mice are gone.
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A few years ago I had a startling morning. I woke up, stumbled to the toaster to start breakfast, and as I was putting a piece of toast into my toaster a mouse crawled out of it! I screamed and woke my roommates.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember how we got rid of them, but I do know we got a new toaster! A friend suggested spraying lysol on a piece of bread and toasting that, but that didn't seem like a healthy option to me!
Good luck on the mouse evictions.