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Science/nature/environment

Jane Judge's Mice

(40 Posts)
JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 11:49:38

I cannot find the other thread where we discussed my mouse friends who have made a tunnel outside my lounge window. There are it seems three and one has no tail. The photos are a bit blurry as they are so fast and I had to take the photos through a window as if I open it they just stare at me out of the hole!

Do they look the type that will come in my house?

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 11:50:18

I also have a selection of much blurrier ones grin

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 11:53:40

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Boz Sun 26-Sept-21 11:55:06

Get rid of them, please. They will be in your house next.
They breed quickly as well.

VioletSky Sun 26-Sept-21 11:56:00

Use a humane trap and drop them off far away

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 11:57:39

To be fair, I am far away I wonder whether someone dropped them off here!

HolySox Sun 26-Sept-21 11:58:11

Very cute. They look like field mice that may move indoors when it gets cold. Ours did! Invest in a (humane) mouse trap now! Warning, when you release them back outside it is recommended you do it at some distance else the little blighters will just come 'home'.

HolySox Sun 26-Sept-21 12:03:47

I think 2 miles is recommended for mice. Could be worse. In Canada they have problems with bears that need to be relocated a minimum of 80 miles.
We dropped our house mates off in woods 4 miles away. Actually found it difficult to find somewhere that is not near somebody else (SE England).

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 12:07:07

grin at least it's not a bear. Do you have to drive them out into the woods as a passenger? seat belt on.

Callistemon Sun 26-Sept-21 12:08:20

We relocated a mouse that was in a drawer in the garage but were told that it might well die in a new location or that other mice would kill it.
We might as well have done it quickly ourselves than let it suffer somewhere else.

Tizliz Sun 26-Sept-21 12:10:38

??? ?. there is no bear icon, perhaps they just leave their prints

Galaxy Sun 26-Sept-21 12:12:05

To be fair the mice are going to be the least of your worries. I now want to move in with yousmile. They are so cute.

Septimia Sun 26-Sept-21 12:25:06

If they're living outside in the bank then they're not house mice and they're nothing to worry about. They may be field or wood mice and could come indoors in cold weather, but there's no reason why they should.

We occasionally get house mice that have migrated from the often empty house next door and they're very different from the ones in your photos. They get short shrift.

More often we get field/wood mice (large heads compared with their bodies unlike house mice which are bigger anyway) and voles (very short or no tails) brought in by the cats. They don't want to be indoors! So we catch them in humane traps and put them out again. There must be hundreds of them around us but they've never come in of their own volition.

Please don't kill them if you can help it - they're cute little wild creatures that need preserving. Watch them through the window and enjoy their antics.

Amberone Sun 26-Sept-21 12:35:57

Field mice occasionally move into our garage in the Winter. There is a fridge freezer in there and lots of boxes stacked up so they have places to nest. It's really hard to get rid of them - they ignore the traps we put down. They ignore those plug in things that make a noise. Occasionally the neighbours' cats come in and take a wander around but that doesn't seem to get rid of them. We threw loads of stuff out last time that they had ripped to shreds. I spray the walls with vinegar from time to time and they don't seem to like that much.

Eloethan Sun 26-Sept-21 13:23:41

I don't think it would concern me - they look quite happy where they are. But if they do move into the house they can be captured humanely and re-located.

nanna8 Sun 26-Sept-21 13:33:54

My daughter’s pussy cat caught his first ever mouse today but the silly animal let it go because it ‘played dead’. He lost interest so it got up and ran for it. Clever little beastie. My sil put it outside.

Callistemon Sun 26-Sept-21 14:02:50

How big are they, JaneJudge?
Are you sure they're mice and not baby rats?

We had one which tunnelled from a neighbour's garden into ours and it had to be dealt with pronto.

I don't want to worry you but they could be emerging from a nest.

sodapop Sun 26-Sept-21 14:08:55

Two dogs and a cat and we still occasionally get mice. My husband uses a humane trap and lets them go in the field across the road.

Septimia Sun 26-Sept-21 14:29:50

JaneJudge, Callistemon - from the photographs they are definitely NOT baby rats.

Baby rats wouldn't be that small anyway when becoming independent.

Listen to the folk who have experience of such wildlife.

FannyCornforth Sun 26-Sept-21 14:34:29

I had a baby rat in my bedroom a few years back.
I think that it came in through the cat flap, and came upstairs.
It was in there all night, climbing up the curtains and all manner of stuff.
The dog and the cat went absolutely ? ?
Neither of them could catch it.
In the end DH killed it with a plastic shovel while I was at work.
I cried sad

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 14:44:45

they are white underneath and have a dark stripe down the centre of their backs. Can you see? As I said, they are really fast! I presume they'll hibernate?

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 14:45:56

You will have to zoom in, it is to the left of the hole with its feet sticking out the back! My daughter has moved an armchair so she can watch them out of the window grin

Blossoming Sun 26-Sept-21 14:51:54

They look like field mice to me, as they have lighter bellies and large back feet. House mice are a uniform colour all over and smaller back feet.

JaneJudge Sun 26-Sept-21 14:55:29

It looks like that last one is the one without the tail!

Parsley3 Sun 26-Sept-21 15:00:16

I find the occasional mouse nest in the garage. Twice in the Henry vacuum cleaner, once in a fishing bag and OH was most annoyed to find one in his winter golfing mitts. The smell of mouse pee is awful. If we are lucky, the nest is empty but the Henry one was full of teenage youngsters. I put it in the garden to let them fend for themselves. I like to think of them as field mice but they are nesting indoors so they can’t be, can they?