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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1706 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for October 29, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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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 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.

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