Mice

Get a cat.....or two! We have 4 and no mice! Well not indoors!

Fantastic way to get ride of mice. Get an ordinary glass. Smear the bottom of the inside of the glass with peanut butter. Put the glass where you know the mice are hanging out, ie where you are finding droppings etc. Turn it upside down, but balance one side of the glass on a coin that is on its side, so there is an opening for the mouse to go inside. As they go for the peanut butter they will knock the coin over and hey presto, the glass falls down and they are trapped inside the upturned glass. Usually they are still alive as long as you don't leave them too long, so slip a piece of card underneath the glass, then carry it out and round to somewhere far far away. I live in the country and occasionally get unwelcome mice, our cats were useless and this is a neat and easy way to get ride. Good luck!

Even the smell of a cat- which mice & rats detect when we can't - will deter them. My neighbour 'borrowed' our cat for a couple of nights when they had a problem. Cat wasn't too happy but mice were never seen again.
Mind you cat did start going next door trying for a 2nd breakfast for a while!
We have just acquired 3 new cats & one of them has started bringing mice in but he doesn't seem bothered about eating them. He just leaves them as a present for me! Luckily I had pet mice & a tame rat as a child so they do not bother me at all.

I am vermin phobic?
I can say cats is not a very helpful answer at all. A terrier is more use, however my first port of call would be Rentokill if they still exist. I would personally be out of the house until they were too.
I feel very sad for you.

Your husband is only partly right. Mice do get in through incredibly small cracks or holes, but it does help find out where they are getting in and to block the holes.

Mixing mouse poison or ground up glass into the polyfila before putting it in the holes prevents the mice from just gnawing their way through it, which they otherwise will do.

Get a cat - we moved to a large Victorian house in London 11 years ago and the mice gathered in the afternoons in sixes and sevens to socialise in the middle of the room - one evening I sat on the sofa watching TV and felt a tug on my jeans - found a mouse running up my leg ! Two cats did the trick - no need for poison and awful deaths for the mice as they bleed to death with the warfarin - they just leave

Peppermint oil, they hate it, once had one in the boot of our car who shifted very quickly after a sprinkling of oil. You should be able to get it today from a chemist.

Our cat didn't catch many mice. I believe the smell is a deterrent. She preferred birds which was not good. I once found her with a baby owl in her maw.
I think pest control is the only answer to a phobic householder. Good luck.

We have 4 cats and a mouse would never dare to enter our house!! We do get a few "gifts" bought home but give me a dead one any day over live ones running about the place!! ??

Understand your horror. It is truly nearly impossible to keep them out, it is worse at this time of year as it is warmer in than out. The only thing that worked for us was a cat. We also have a dog now who seems to keep the rabbits away from the garden too so win win.

Get a cat. Or occasionally feed someone else's. I know some people don't like cats and that's a shame, because they do do their work. And they're friendly yet independent pets.

No you have to decide which is worse- live mice All the time or DEAD mice then quickly disposed of.GET THE CAT.borrow one first,if its a ratter- but to keep them away long term,get your own cat!Sometimes knowing the cat is there is enough to deter mice!

I found the boxes which you bait and set against a wall did the trick, bought then from local hardware shop, alternatively the blue poison that you put in a plastic tray, somewhere unobtrusive. They can get through tiny apertures, but in the garage we have now plugged larger holes with wire wool which they are supposed to dislike.
I also discovered that rats can climb up a drainpipe! This was one close to the wall and I saw a rat shinning up, feet on drainpipe and back against the wall. Rentokill do charge an awful lot of money especially as they seem to want to revisit over the course of a year. Good luck

Weve always had at least one cat- never had mice in house,it works!even living near fields,once or twice my cat (who was born a farm cat)did bring a couple of dead ones near the step outside,but he never brought them in.as yours are already in,cat might take them away to some quiet corner but surely your hubby could then quickly dispose of them.

Maybe I'm alone but I think you kill them not catch them and release them to become problems for other people. I am a farmer's wife and daughter and have lived in the country all my life in a very old farmhouse. Rats and ice are a part of life. I put down poison and traps - usually only in the winter when they come in for warmth. I prefer traps (the ones that kill them!) as with poison they can die under the floorboards. Cats are great but my daughter has one and it constantly brings in live mice or birds that it plays with until they die! I do agree they can give you a fright when they scuttle, but if you wipe down surfaces and use food from the fridge or containers you shouldn't come to any harm.

Boolya- have you never heard the expression"he was off like a rat up a drainpipe" before??

Maybe its just a northern saying?.......

Yes farmcats do tend to 'toy' with their prey first,said cat who brought me 'gifts' had been born on a farm,his mum was a 'field cat'-attached to the local farm.i think he stopped short of bringing them in house as he'd grown up in our house,not outside he was good with us in house,but a viscious little mouser.

A year ago I went to use our downstairs loo and a mouse ran across the floor. To say I was petrified is an understatement. I screamed so much my husband thought I'd come across a burgler. We bought two traps and after two days caught one mouse. I haven't seen any since. Someone told me to push tin foil down around pipes. I'm quite sure our mouse came up through a space beside the pipe to our wash basin. You could do the tin foil thing yourself if hubby won't do it.

My aunt had a jack russell terrier,they make good ratters apparently.

We never get mice coming in of their own accord. However our soppy cat Monty brings them in (usually live) through the cat flap presumably as a 'gift' or his contribution towards the dinner table! We've had the odd half chewed one too but Monty genuinely likes to play with them and bat them around a bit. They usually die of fright or my DH becomes main mouser and there is a standoff between him and Monty (who has been known to growl and scratch DH in the ensuing grapple for dominence). I used to freak out about it but they don't last long and by fair or foul means we get rid of them the same day or lay a trap or two which usually does the trick.

When DH catches them we are amazed at how cute and tiny they are - gloves are always used to hold them and return them into the night but DH bears the scars on his hands of Monty's efforts for dominence!! Nothing to get too freaked out about though.

I recently found that the little critters had gnawed their way through the bottom corner of my shed door and had a wonderful feast on the giant pack of wild bird seed I had stashed there. What a mess! They had obviously preferred the sunflower seeds, from the number of discarded husks, and the seed had cascaded everywhere through the many holes that they had chewed in the plastic wrapper. The seed is now stored in a tough plastic box. I screwed an old flat metal cheese grater over the small gap in the door, and have had no further trouble.
I do get the occasional mouse in the house, but my humane trap usually catches them quite quickly. I release them as far away from home as possible, in the fields. Making sure that any accessible food is in containers, and cleaning up any crumbs usually deters them from coming to stay. I am not afraid of them. They are quite cute, but I don’t want them and their mucky habits around my kitchen.

I used humane trap with a paste I bought on Amazon....they love it. Also block holes with foil. They can chew through anything else but can't chew foil. They can get through very tiny holes by the way

We had them in our garage where I stored tins and packets and I binned the lot , washed out the cupboard with bleach and stopped storing food there. Yuk !
I also bought old fashioned mothballs and put them in the garage and we haven’t seen any sign of them since and that was a couple of years ago . I don’t like the smell of the mothballs but if I saw any signs of them again I would put up with that to get rid

I’m not bothered about mice as we have lots of field mice around here and I find them cute but draw the line at rats.
If one of the cats presents us with a live mouse, I usually catch it using a welly boot (lay it flat on the floor and they run into it because it’s dark) or chuck a tea towel over it and swiftly pick it up. I used to pick them up in my fingers but have been bitten a couple of times so rarely do this now. I take them outside and gently deposit them over the ditch into the next field.

I did once get a rat in the kitchen that had run in when we had the main outside drain open for building work. It ran under the island unit and hopped into a lower drawer so I gingerly opened each drawer until I spotted it then pulled the drawer out and ran outside with it and almost threw the drawer down into the garden. It jumped out and ran off.

I live rurally so mice (and rats and hairy spiders) are a fact of life.