killing mice

[doesitfloat?]

I have a 1-1/2 yo home that butts up to some undeveloped land (for a few more months).
All of a sudden, I have a mouse problem. I have caught 5 or 6 of the little bastards in glue traps or snap traps. I think they picked our house originally because of me not carefully storing the dog food and the approaching development.
I catch about 1 a week but I'm afraid I might be catching 1 for every 3 and just spinning my wheels. I used the bait at the outdoor shed and that killed several of them within days. But I'm hesitant to use the bait in the house because of them dieing in the walls or crawl space and stinking up the joint.
How long do they stink if they die inside your house? I would think only for a few days but I don't know. It might be worth the stink to know I'm wiping them out.
Any thoughts?

[Run_em_Hard]

I would say this...keep them from wanting to come in your house, lock up the dog food and other stuff. Lay down that stuff that kills them on your yard and slowly catch the ones in your house. Slow but should get the job done.
Or call a pro, have them come and do their magic. Probably even come with a warranty.

[topless]

Pellet guns work wonders. The are even enviromentaly safe. :crossx:

[sleekcraft137]

I live in farm country and everytime the crops are harvested we get a swarm of mice in the garage. The best way i have found to get rid of them is just to put several traps. The best bait i've used and was recomended by a few pest control peeps is peanut butter! (weird huh?) Anyways you put the peanut butter on the trap and use a lighter to roast the peanut butter till its crispy on the outside in the area of the mice. I accually had a mouse walk up to me while i was roasting the peanut butter, I set the trap down and SNAP! right in front of me. So give it a try. Oh yeah, as said before things like dog food will attract them, so keep stuff like that in plastic containers.

[SmokinLowriderSS]

D-con. I never had any stink. nuf said.

[Hallett19]

Get a cat...

[2forcefull]

I own a comercial building in downtown las vegas that has a motel that is zero property line. [that's where the mice were coming from]i was having a mouse problem. the pest controll guy put the glue strips and every day when I opened shop I had to deal with the mice stuck to the glue, cute little guys that looked at me like," what'cha gonna do murder me for tresspass'n on your property". so I got some 5 gal. buckets, put some penuts in the empty buckets, the mice would get in the buckets, and could'nt get back out. I would then put them in the dumpster and the trash guy would haul them to the dump.
all was fine till one day I caught one of them in my crispy cream donut box! hell no!!! now the war was on. I bought box'es of decon and put them everywhere. pretty soon no more mice, and no more since!!!
then about 2 or 3 years latter I was remodeling and took out some cabinets and there they were, mice skeletons, perfect bone structures. seems whatever is in decon eats the mice from the inside out. never had any dead smell-----they just disapeared :cool:

[Partycattin]

We used to get mice once a year. Would catch 5-6 of them and then all clear until the following year. Then last year we started seeing rats. Set up multiple large snap traps and caught a lot of them. They even ate a hole in the plastic storage container for our dog food. We got a better container and
put out smaller portions of food for the dog so he would eat it quickly.
Pretty soon they were gone.
It's pretty fun using the snap traps. You'll be kicking back, enjoying a brew and hear one go off. It's off to the races to check it out. My kids loved it.
I had on rat get caught in a trap. I knocked it on the head with a golf club to put it out of it's misery. Left the house for a couple of hours and came back to find only it's leg in the trap. So somewhere around here I have a 3 legged rat running around. He's probably the Don of the rat moffia.

[Rexone]

I back up to undeveloped area and have rats continually. Used to get them in my attic until found that hole now just outside. I use snap traps now outside but used glue boards, and pellets when they were in the attic in addition to snappers. I'd get 10-12 a week some weeks in the winter in the attic. They were a pain in the ass to get rid of.
They don't smell that long, about a week to 10 days in cooler weather. Had a few mice too but just considered them bycatch. :)
Prolly have caught at least 200 in snap traps over 10 years, maybe more. I use the Victor traps with the yellow no bait pad and just place beside wall. They walk over it and bam. I've tried several kinds of baited snappers too including raisens and peanut butter, but determined the unbaited ones catch just as many rats and don't attract dog noses. :squiggle:
I also have ground squirrels. Not one or two either. I used to use poison but had a change of heart. I now use a humane trap and relocate them to the hills. 2005 = 65 squirlleys relocated, 1 possum (released), 2006 = 28 to date. I don't think I'm gonna get to 65 this year.
Snakes, coyotes, fox, scorpions... oh nevermind :)
Just some useless trivia.

[lewiville]

I had on rat get caught in a trap. I knocked it on the head with a golf club to put it out of it's misery. Left the house for a couple of hours and came back to find only it's leg in the trap. So somewhere around here I have a 3 legged rat running around. He's probably the Don of the rat moffia.[/QUOTE]
That is so funny. I can her him in a "soprano voice, You looking at me biatch"

[KreatinKaos]

I have a lot of rats near the stream in my back yard ... on a rainy day I can set some bread out as bait then sit back and nail them with a .22 :crossx: Then my neighbors cat carries all of them onto his back porch :crossx:

[doesitfloat?]

How's this for ironic? I'm reading your responses and I hear a loud "SNAP" come from under our sink. RIP Stuart Little. :cool:

[Riomouse911]

I gots rabbits that eat my lawn to the nubs, gophers that are trying to undermine the house and make it sink into the earth, and a ground squirrel that plucks the ripe tomatoes from the vine on a daily basis. Thank the lord for Aguila .22 Colibri rounds, an accurate .22, and neighbors who hate the critters as much as I do. :skull:
Oh, and peanut butter works on the trigger plate of the gopher traps, too.. got 9 so far this year, with 2 more to go and I'm free from them for a while..

[Cheyenne372]

Take this advice from a guy that owns a feed store in Texas.....
We sell a product called "HAVOC". We get it in a trash can with 480 packages and sell one trash can per week!
It is a little green pellet and the way it works is that it dehydrates the mice or rats and they USUALLY....not guaranteed....will go somewhere to find a water source and USUALLY die outside of your home....unless you have a readily available water source in the house, like the drip pan under your refrigerator.
We throw packages of them behind feed in the warehouse and sometimes find them dead and they have never smelled.
Other baits like "Just One Bite" or the grocery store brands like "Decon" cause internal hemmoraging. They can be just as effective, but if Havoc might make them go elsewhere, that's what I want to use!
Havoc also has a product called "Bitrex" in it that is a bitter taste product that will generally make a dog or cat spit it out if they tried to eat the bait.

[diggler]

Funny this should come up now... we just started having a rat problem at the house. seems all the major construction around our house is stirring them up. I caught four so far, and the exterminator wouldn't help. He said we were doing the right thing and helped me locate (for free) all the points of entry into the house.
So here's where the funny story lies.... Last week, I saw the little bastard running around the house. Actually got within two feet of my wife, but I didn't say anything. I told her that night before we went to bed, that there was a rat in the house, and I laid traps out.
She gets up at around 3AM that night to go to the bathroom......... (you can see where this is going)
She quietly comes back into the room and wakes me up to see what she has found. Sitting in the toilet was the little ****er swimming around in his own private swimming pool! My poor wife almost sat down on it in the dark! Booowahahahaaaa!! I was so amused that i just flushed him down and watched him struggle against the current, and forgot to take a picture of him!
Well, a week later, and a lot of steel mesh installed, I believe we solved the problem. Turns out the neighbor has rat problems now...hmmmmmm :idea:

[HM]

I discovered I had rats in my wood pile on the side of the house - they were HUGE. They had been going into the garage and taking some dog biscuits. I got one of those ultra sonic deals and put it in the garage and I got rid of the wood pile and all other things that were next to the house. Haven't seen any new rat poop in the garage for a few days now.

[OutCole'd]

How's this for ironic? I'm reading your responses and I hear a loud "SNAP" come from under our sink. RIP Stuart Little. :cool:
LMAO......

[SHOTKALLIN]

Get a cat...
cats are worse than mice
just get the sticky traps. place a piece of captain crunch on it in the middle.
enough said. Just cought one last night. took a couple of hours. damn field mice and new homes.
haven't had one for a year. he's gone now. :crossx:

[doesitfloat?]

I caught 2 last night...one in the snap trap and one in the glue traps. I always thought the snap traps were "gross" because of the blood/guts issues but now that I've caught about 8 of them by both means, I'd say the glue traps are cruel.
Am I going to stop using them? Hell no! Just thought I'd get sensitive for a few moments...
OK, back to mouse killin :crossx:
They're getting smaller so I think that I've killed the adults and now the kids are orphans looking for their own food. I've figured out exactly where they're coming in under the sink and instead of plugging the hole, I've set up a perimeter of continuous glue traps so they have to cross over them. Seems to be working!
I feel like Carl in CaddyShack.

[YeLLowBoaT]

Peanut butter on a trap works wonders.

[Trailer Park Casanova]

The De-Con green poison squares from Home Depot does the trick.
Ya break the little squares off and leave them on rafters,, romex inside walls ( a major pathway), behind appliances,, ect.
My neighborhood was loosing the battle.
Then cats and traps & De-con keeps it under control.
Two cats in our neighborhood tipped the scale to the homeowners favor, then we all dove-tailed our trapping and poison bait efforts to eliminate the problem.
2 cats can serve about 20 homes.
We have a cat door so he can come and go.
Whacks gophers, mice, Norwegian roof rats, obnoxious birds,,
http://www.hotboatpics.com/pics/data/500/3812trevs_board_Liquid_Force_005-med.jpg
The Champ in action.

[BRSTQUEST]

My Italian uncle had a rat problem. He said a .44mag, a plastic bag, a shovel and a large hole get rid of them each and every time. I think he said something about leaving digits around to keep the other rats from coming around. Hope this helps....

[C-2]

http://209.85.12.232/5284/3/emo/worthlesswopics.gif
You have smart rats and dumb rats - you guess what type this is. Notice the calcified peanut butter.....
Nothing like hearing the sound of a snap during the middle of the night. Kind of like fishing....
http://www.***boat.com/image_center/data/520/1132rat.JPG