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Suddenly, so many mice
Oliver
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Here is a little background:
My wife and I live in an older (built in the 20's through 40's) neighborhood in a largish US midwest city. We've lived in our current house for almost exactly 3 years. Not a huge house, 1300 sq ft, small one car garage detached from the house, bigger back yard for in the city. The house has a full but unfinished basement.
We have two cats and a dog. The dog is a small yorkie mix and while he will tear the shit out of his toys and fake killing them, I have no idea what he would do to a real prey animal. He goes to the bathroom in the house on wee wee pads, so his smell is everywhere. One cat is declawed in front and I'm not really sure about her hunting ability. The second cat has all of her claws, and is all hunter. She wishes she lived outside and proves this by trying to escape all of the time. The dog lives on the ground floor but both cats have the run of the house.
Outside, there are mice everywhere, I see them all the time in the garage. Up until a month ago, I have never seen a mouse in the house. In fact even now, I've only seen the mice that our second cat has brought us. About a month ago she caught one late in the evening, which we then took and released outside. Two nights ago she got another one, which we also caught and released outside, although I suspect that it was injured enough that it didn't last too long. Last night she caught two. One got away from us, but may have been in pretty bad shape (so I will be tearing apart duct work tonight looking for it). The second was dead when we found it.
So, what I am wondering is, what the hell would all of a sudden motivate these mice to come into a house with 3 animals that they should identify as predators? We keep food in the house like everyone else, but so far none of it has been touched. We have pet food bags everywhere, but none of them have been chewed into. I did notice a rat outside under our garage a few weeks ago, but I have no idea how long it had been living there or even if it could cause all of the mice to flee into the house. I am planning on trapping the rat. I did find plenty of mouse poop when we moved into the house, but we cleaned it all up and have never seen any more show up.
I'm not really looking for extermination techniques, I think the cat and a ton of traps will take care of that. But if there is something that is motivating them to come inside, I want to change it. I don't care about the mice in the yard and the garage, they are cool to live there.
Any suggestions?
My wife and I live in an older (built in the 20's through 40's) neighborhood in a largish US midwest city. We've lived in our current house for almost exactly 3 years. Not a huge house, 1300 sq ft, small one car garage detached from the house, bigger back yard for in the city. The house has a full but unfinished basement.
We have two cats and a dog. The dog is a small yorkie mix and while he will tear the shit out of his toys and fake killing them, I have no idea what he would do to a real prey animal. He goes to the bathroom in the house on wee wee pads, so his smell is everywhere. One cat is declawed in front and I'm not really sure about her hunting ability. The second cat has all of her claws, and is all hunter. She wishes she lived outside and proves this by trying to escape all of the time. The dog lives on the ground floor but both cats have the run of the house.
Outside, there are mice everywhere, I see them all the time in the garage. Up until a month ago, I have never seen a mouse in the house. In fact even now, I've only seen the mice that our second cat has brought us. About a month ago she caught one late in the evening, which we then took and released outside. Two nights ago she got another one, which we also caught and released outside, although I suspect that it was injured enough that it didn't last too long. Last night she caught two. One got away from us, but may have been in pretty bad shape (so I will be tearing apart duct work tonight looking for it). The second was dead when we found it.
So, what I am wondering is, what the hell would all of a sudden motivate these mice to come into a house with 3 animals that they should identify as predators? We keep food in the house like everyone else, but so far none of it has been touched. We have pet food bags everywhere, but none of them have been chewed into. I did notice a rat outside under our garage a few weeks ago, but I have no idea how long it had been living there or even if it could cause all of the mice to flee into the house. I am planning on trapping the rat. I did find plenty of mouse poop when we moved into the house, but we cleaned it all up and have never seen any more show up.
I'm not really looking for extermination techniques, I think the cat and a ton of traps will take care of that. But if there is something that is motivating them to come inside, I want to change it. I don't care about the mice in the yard and the garage, they are cool to live there.
Any suggestions?
Oliver on
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I havent had mice problems, but I have had some serious bat issues. I am also not fond of extermination, its already unlucky for both the house owner and the animal that we cannot coexist, but that doesnt instantly mean we have to exterminate them. The solution I found was sealing any possible entrance into the house, even the air exhaust thingy from the water heater, (awful experience to go set the water heater to take a shower just to find a bat crawling out of it). I used a metalic cloth thingy, like the ones for mosquitoes on all windows and ventilation, I also did this on the air exhaust for the heater on the outside end, because you dont want animals dying inside your pipes.
This method has worked for this specific kind of intruder, while mice are probably harder to keep outside I found there are several pages and forums dedicated specifically to this endeavour.
The net result was that my furnace would shut off because it was not getting enough air to run and the house was not getting heat. Of course, YMMV, but just keep it in mind.
As a matter of fact, this has been very usefull, I might check my vent as well to see how its doing, since I havent in a while, and this mesh talk as got me thinking.