We have mice coming into the garage, and I think they’re working their way up the various beams and rafters and into the loft (scurrying sounds up ther sometimes and, well, a bit of a pissy smell).

There’s power in both places, so I was thinking of just buying a couple of the plug in deterrent things and leave them there to do their stuff. Are they any good?

You can get plug in cats?

We have one in our kitchen. I think it is totally useless.
Have sat in the kitchen and watched a mouse run across the floor while it was switched on.
Get some mouse traps or a cat….

Yeah, cat won’t really work as we hav a dog. I suppose the cat could live in the loft, but then I’d be replacing pissy mouse smell with pissy cat smell.

totally useless. You need to block the holes with wire mesh then trap or poision

dont work you need some other method

And if you find any holes that are big enough to let this pass

they need to be filled in.

+1 for they are rubbish.

Mice + rat posion is a good combo. The thing is, we had so many of the blighters last winter I could have bought shares in the rat poison company.

We never had a problem when I had moggies. One (the female) lived indoors most of the time and caught mice. The middle one caught them outside and had the occasional rat, the big tom mainlined rats and rabbits. The farmer next door loved him to bits. Then he took on a car and lost, the others died in due course and the rest of the family declared their hayfever had gone with the cats so I wasn’t allowed another.

Now we have ‘pet’ mice that live in the roof, in the lath and plaster etc. Boo!

Yep, useless. Don’t get a cat like ours either – she’ll just bring her playmates home 😕

As above, block holes. Humane mouse traps work well too if there’s only a few.

Strangely, I’ve found them to be startlingly effective – we were in danger of going from “ooh, I think a mouse might have been in ‘ere” to “we have a mouse problem” – three of those plug ins (one on each floor) and they’ve all buggered off and not been seen since. No other changes, well we did set a couple of extra traps, but they didn’t capture anything.

They need to be plugged in 24/7 to work effectively, and over several weeks, if that helps.

They need to be plugged in 24/7 to work effectively, and over several weeks, if that helps.

That would be the idea; they’d be plugged in, switched on and forgotten about.

The thing about plugging the holes is I don’t think it would be possible, as some of them are for wiring and pipework as both the consumer unit and boiler are in the garage. At leats it wouldn’t be possbile until we’ve finished with all the electrical work and plumbing we need to get done over the next couple of years.

I’ve just done battle with another round of the feckers. One managed to die somewhere out of sight three days before my OH’s mum came to visit for a few days. What’s really cross-making is that the only other time she’s visited, the same thing happened. She must think our house perpetually stinks of rotting mouse; either that or she’s the Pied Piper of Taunton.

Plugging gaps isn’t viable, I live in a Victorian mid-terrace and there’s more holes than brickwork. I think they’re coming in under the floorboards from next door. Traps are effective though, with peanut butter as bait.

peanut butter as bait

+1

peanut butter as bait

Pretty irresponsible really – what if the mouse has a nut allergy? You could kill it!

Found the electronic things completely useless, conventional snappy sprung mouse trap works best for me, our mice didn’t like peanut butter though but loved a piece of mars bar. Make sure you have any stored pet food in mouse proof containers or you’ll never get rid of the buggers.

Not entirely useless but more of a temporary deterrent than a (cough) “final solution “. Get poison or get your council pest control dept