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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1707 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 29, 2025

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There is a mouse in the house!

I've got a mouse prowling about my kitchen. I've purchased the no kill box trap thing. I plan on releasing the little guy about a block way in a small park. Knowing the cruel reality of the universe, he's probably dead by sundown at the hands jaws of an opportunistic black snake. I suppose I could look the other way and let him live in a climate controlled home and live off the fat scraps of my garbage. A little kindness towards a tiny creature in this cruel world.

Nah, but fuck that, rodents are pests and gross.

Question: Besides doing the usual check ups to try to determine how he got in, is there any strategy for preventing mouse infiltration permanently? I've seen some pellets and other scent oriented products that claim to repel mice. Do they work?

I grew up with a dozen or so outdoor cats at our house all the time, and another group down at the shop. I'd never seen a mouse in my life.

When I moved out, we had a mouse problem. I was literally flabbergasted. My first thought was guess I have to get a cat? Then I thought, well I guess there is such a thing as a mousetrap? Or poison?

It was such a weirdly embarrassing thing to realize I didn't know.

So, a couple of things you can do.

One, you can get a cat. Cat hair has a scent that scares rodents. If all you have is the odd mouse, this might be good enough, but it won't get rid of a serious infestation. If you have a serious infestation, poison is your best bet.

Pellets and scent oriented 'products' probably won't work. If you live in a pier and beam house you can put cornsnakes/ratsnakes in the foundation. If you find mouse holes you can cover them over with hardware cloth(mice can chew through other things) before filling with spray foam. If you live in an apartment, instead, there's nothing you can do about mice except put out poison.

You can also put out poison. For a worst case scenario, you can soak cheerios or oats in strychnine and scatter it behind furniture etc(do not do this if you have a dog). Most of the time, commercial poisons are a better idea.

Some less conventional mousers are ferrets and ringtailed cats(the best biological control for serious infestations). They're both more challenging than a cat, but can be much more effective.

Cat hair has a scent that scares rodents

I wonder if that's why visiting cats like to look inside our shed when it's open. It's the only place we've ever found mice, and it's the only place that is untomcatinated never inhabitated by cats, and so while the scent of cats might scare the mice perhaps it's the residual scent of mice that interests the cats.

We always used an old fashioned mousetrap - you know, the type where the boot kicks the marble onto the seesaw that flips the diver through the bathtub and triggers the basket to wiggle down the pole.

I'm getting a strong sense that poison is my best option here. I'll give the trap a day or two. I believe it is one single mouse, not multiple.

But then again .... poison.

If it's just the one mouse you've seen and you're averse to poison, it's worth trying a cat first.

I had mice and it was the worst. Here are the things I tried which helped.

  1. Anything that has an opening, no matter how small, needs to be stuffed with mouse-proof materials (the exterminator I hired used copper wire, but said that the 'mouse excluder' fabric I purchased from Home Depot was good too; basically, you want something that if they chew on it, it hurts their mouths, so they don't). The sorts of holes that were being blocked were smaller than my pinkie nail, so be very thorough.
  2. I tried both the sound and scent repellents. They didn't solve the issue in any way.
  3. I used kill snap-traps, baited with peanut butter and nutella. I'd say on average they got a mouse every 2-4 days. The exterminator suggested I lay them down in pairs in case the mouse climbed across them, and I never had them fail to kill. Dealing with the bodies was unpleasant, but better than dealing with the live mice.
  4. If you have any food that is available at 'ground level' (like, I had rice on the bottom shelf of my pantry), try to make sure it is absolutely sealed away. They can smell food from a long ways away.
  5. (Edit) I actually forgot I did this, but I used to have a cat come over for a few days at a time; this was about as effective as everything else put together.

Ultimately, I solved the issue by moving out (cause my landlord was absolutely not going to help, despite numerous emails and phone calls). My new place has cats, which help a lot (growing up, I saw one mouse and one rat ever, and I always had cats around; the neighborhood definitely had mice and rats, they just mysteriously avoided the house that smelled heavily of their natural predators).

I used to have cats in the house a long time ago, and it definitely helped with rodents. The dogs that replaced them were a... mixed bag. My first German Shepherd could rat with the best of them, and so could her son. The lab and golden that came after? They'd either try and make friends or run away in terror.

I had a coydog(warning not suited for most people) once. Brought a dead animal every few days, and never ever saw a rodent.

I plan on releasing the little guy about a block way in a small park

Mice can navigate back home from upwards of two miles. You’re going to want to drop it off further than a block away or else you might be seeing it again the next day.

I used to have to use the long tube no-kill traps in England, and I found that the mice were perfectly capable of leaping back and forth over the pressure plate to get whatever goodies were in the bait cache. If you are also using a pressure plate operated trap, my advice is to get a bunch of pennies, smear them with peanut butter, and set enough of them on the pressure plate that it’s on a hair trigger. If the plate depresses when you pick the trap up gently, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re going to catch a mouse.

They can’t resist the peanut butter, and because it’s smeared all over the coins on the pressure plate, they have to get on the plate to eat it and get trapped by the hair trigger.

Kill traps are better and actually make cleanup easier, in my opinion, but the no kill traps work fine. Good luck!

is there any strategy for preventing mouse infiltration permanently?

Pet cats really seem to keep the numbers down. Not only do they eat the brave ones, but the smart ones pick up their scent and leave.

Rodent mesh and sealing around every pipe and conduit that pierce the walls of the floor of your house.

Nah, but fuck that, rodents are pests and gross.

Mice crap and urinate everywhere, including in your pantry and inside food containers if they make it in.

Last time they messed with me I went straight to the mousetrap and when that didn't work, I used poison. That worked just fine.

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