During the middle of the night I got up to use the loo. Was still sleepy so, to avoid a bad aim, I sat down… as you do. It was very early, so I didn’t bother closing the door.
Mid-flow, however, something caught my eye. A small mouse had run across the room adjoining the WC. It stopped when it saw (or heard?) me, and we had a brief Mexican stand off. It then ran off whence it came, before I had finished peeing.
So, I now need to buy a mouse trap but looking online I realised I don’t know which sort to get. Are the cheap and cheerful ones you see in Tom & Jerry cartoons sufficient? Do the non-fatal ones really work? Should I forget anything mechanical and just get a cat?
Loads on amazon.fr, I use the plastic ones (much better than wood) and baited with PB (@Mat_Davies ). Avoid the glue traps and poison, thats just cruel.
We had those, but binned them as not 100% effective so too many occasions of having to extract a half dead mutilated mouse. Work fine if mouse comes at them straight on, but not if arrive at an angle (or vice-versa, can’t remember).
We are struggling with rats. I’m so upset as I have an absolute horror of them! I’m too scared to go to the compost bin. We even bought an air rifle but no luck yet!
I think I’m the expert here, judging from the fact that following a field mouse explosion in the fields around and about and seeing so many of them in my house, I captured 130 of them, in various rooms, and released them from a trap such as this. I recommend them as they worked like clockwork, one mouse after another on a regular basis.
Don’t be frightened of them. They are much more scared of you.
I spent a couple of years getting rid of rats that came into my house following an explosion of rats locally. I caught about 16 rats in my kitchen with a small cat trap and released them away from the house. There are still a couple of rats left I think in my roof space, but making sure that there is no food around for them, even to the extent of clearing away a few bread crumbs from the kitchen table – justa few bread crumbs means they’ll be back to look the following night – has deterred them, and their presence in my house has nearly ceased. You need patience if you intend to be humane.
They will remain if they can actually find and eat food you leave, wherever that food is. No food means no rats. Where there is available food there will alway be rats, despite air rifles or poison. They are formidable. I repeat, where there is food there will be rats if rats are in and around your general locality.
I did the same thing in my workshop where there is cat food. I made sure that they could not reach it, but they are so agile and can climb around barriers or gnaw through them, but I have nearly succeeded. I forgot to hide away a cat bowl last night and saw on camera 1 female rat with 2 of her youngsters all very active running back and forth storing their finds, but all 3 of them looked underfed and thin from lack of available food in my workshop.
