Mouse in house – advice ? Builders?

We have a problem with a mouse..

We live in a semi detached 1930s house, the noise is coming from the corner of the room ( adjoining wall), we have wooden floors and the joists run parallel to this wall.
I have listened ( most nights for past week) to a constant ripping of paper and it sounds as of the mouse is directly under the boards where the skirting boards meet the floor BUT when I’ve lifted the floor boards can’t find any evidence of a mouse??

Where the heck could he be and how do I get rid of it as trapping is not an option as it is not this side so to speak.

Could he be in a cavity between the houses or just the othe side of a joist ?

Leave it. It’s cold outside. It will move out in the spring…

Spring ?

Another night of his ripping paper is too much let alone a few months.

Have you eliminated something bigger from your enquiries….. 😉

You could put a humane mouse trap under the floor boards and see what’s there in the morning. Poison’s the other option but maybe as a last resort. We’ve currently got the smell of poisoned rodents floating up from below our kitchen floor from the rat/s that didn’t die the fast way.

Eeeeek I hope it’s not a rat.. Sounds too delicate tbh?

Trapping is the problem.. Sound appears to come from under floorboard – but when lifted no evidence of any mouse whatsoever? And I’ve not heard a mini Hoover before anyone says it’s clearing up the mess..

Don’t bother looking for how its getting in, waste of time. Humane trap, and release it at least 1/2 mile away. Don’t let them go in the back garden as they will just turn around and come back in.
We get mice, they live in the woods out the back of my house. Just catch the buggers and let them go.

Oh, you will have more than 1 btw

Cheers for replies but I really don’t know how I can trap it/ them as it sounds like it’s in between the houses?

Just put the trap anywhere alongside a wall, overnight, with some peanut butter in it.

Kill it.

Traps, poison and sticky pads.

It will drive you nuts if you don’t.

If you bang the boards where it’s nibbling it’ll be scared and run away. Quick learners. If it doesn’t run then be worried…

Next door are strippng wallpaper ?

It could be a beetle eating its way out of some wood. They make a right racket.

Have you bought any second hand furniture recently?

Does your next door neighbour look like this?

Hmmm, too quiet for a rat & no actual physical evidence of a mouse then? Any sign of rising damp under those floorboards? If so then it could be shubunkins…

….

a right bloody royal pain to get rid of.

I had a mouse scrabbling away in a cavity wall once, put ye olde spring loaded trap in the loft with a choc button on it and within two days, SNAAAAP. No more mouse. Worth a loft based trap ? Mices can sniff food from some distance and can negotiate their way around a building structure.

Borrow a cat for a few days. Mice will pack up and move on just for the smell of the cat. Then get your own cat. It’s the only guaranteed way to stay mouse free.

We had a mouse recently.

The cat would sniff around the corners of the kitchen for a while before this but we never saw any evidence of it.

Then one morning I opened a draw and he had ripped up all the tissues from a tissue box in the draw.

Then we never saw him again, although we have just had a few days of loads of cluster flies in the house, which made us initially think that he had died somewhere and they were coming from him.

Previously we had a curious one that jumped from the top of the tumble dryer up into the heat venting pipe, and obviously got stuck. We found him some time later after he had died in the heat and then started to rot. Mighty dehydrated he was 🙁

I worked a guy who put a snap trap under a loose floorboard. He heard it snap one evening so turned the TV down.

He could then hear the trap sliding slowly along under the floor and then it stopped after a minute 😀

He could then hear the trap sliding slowly along under the floor and then it stopped after a minute

That’s one tough mouse. Do you think he was squeeking ‘Adriaaaann, Adriaaan’ as he was dragging himself along.

humane? quick is as humane as it gets, BandQ, pre-baited with something irresistible to mice and IME, gets a result in 20-30 minutes (you’ll hear it going off)

plan b is a scarer which plugs into the mains and makes some noise through the mains circuitry (*). I had an infestation a while back and used traps then a scarer. Since installing the scarer, I’ve never caught or heard another mouse
(*) maybe, I may just be talking crap, but I think that’s how it works. It does work though

My dad used to have a big old wooden boat back in the 70’s & we think a Mink got aboard.Say think cos we never actually saw it or caught it,but could hear it running about in the night,the boat had 80 gallon diesel tanks that ran down each side of the hull,we could hear it running up & down them all night.It also used to eat through the wiring loom all the time,we’d all be sitting there at night & suddenly all the lights would go out,so were constantly having to do repairs.
We first thought it was a mouse,as it had ate some food that was left out,so put several mouse traps down for it,heard them all go off the first night,had a look in the morning & it had just ate what was them.So we bought a few rat traps & poison,all the traps went off & the poison was eaten the first night,didn’t kill the bugger though & rat traps are truly vicious looking things…It also ate a load of stern gland packing & anything else that resembled food !
Then the old man put the boat into dry dock for the winter,left the boat open with a plank across to get ashore & we never heard from it again….
Years later the old man was regailing the story in the pub,going into all the dramatics of how he chased this thing all over the boat unable to catch it & then said the thing that suprised him the most was what the hell it must have been living on as we never left any food on board.My sister then piped up,oh that was me I used to leave it cheese,meat,biscuits & stuff as I didn’t want it to starve to death,the old fella’s face was a picture…. 🙂

Anyway,Had a couple(mice) in the garage(it’s an internal one & I didn’t want them getting in the house)a few years back,mouse trap with some bread & jam worked a treat.Well,for us it did,not so sure Pixie & Dixie enjoyed it quite as much….

Mouse trap facing the wall, baited with peanut butter. Try not to step on it in the night.

They’re crafty little buggers, it’ll probably find it.

Also, I wouldn’t count on it being ‘a’ mouse. They breed rapid style.

Cover any external air bricks or vents with very fine strong mesh to stop them getting in.Set traps and check regularly! Under the floor if accessible,in the loft and under any fitted kitchen units-you’d be surprised how many houses have mice living unnoticed underneath fitted kitchens.

Thanks all I will try the ‘carpet bomb’ approach…set traps everywhere.

Currently got a scritchity scrabbly noise in the roof void above our bedroom each night (1½ story cottage) suggested putting the cat up there but Flowerpower said no…I said “what’s the fn point of having one then?” The mice in the attic don’t bother me so much as the spiders I’m likley to find, so she’ll have to deal with it when she gets back tonight. (if she’s reading this then you’ve got time to plan darling?)

We had mice in the loft and more recently in the garage.

My daughter wasn’t happy about proper traps so I bought some humane ones.
They work but the mice get full of their own pee plus you have to take them a long way away – we had one that kept coming back.

My advice is just get the basic little nipper, traditional, spring traps.
I have caught 8 mice with a pair of those in the garage and none in 2 more modern designed ones.

Bait with chocolate and check twice a day.
I left a dead one (on purpose) in the garage for 2 weeks as I read the smell will deter others – it didn’t.

we had one that kept coming back.

how do you know it was the same one?

I also used humane traps as the snapp traps didn’t seem to do the joband used to take the on the way to work to let them out in a layby or something – usually when it was about -7deg…

Also, forgot to add, cats don’t work very well on builders, you really need a big snarly dog for that…

how do you know it was the same one?

I was convinced it was the same one so we put nail polish in it’s leg.
So unless there are a lot of fashion conscious mice out there….

MTFU!

*caution, may not be suitable for use indoors 😀

I was convinced it was the same one so we put nail polish in it’s leg.
So unless there are a lot of fashion conscious mice out there…

You started a trend… others followed.

Just having a cat about won’t scare them off.
There is always more than just one.

So far cats have caught 2 mice in the garden.
Traps in garage have done 5.
Traps are moving to the attic next.

+1 on peanut butter, seems to be the magic mouse magnet of doom.

I would nuke it from orbit, the only way to be sure….. but it’s not my house and the landlord might be miffed

My GTP would love the mouse!

You could always try the friendly friendly good cop routine.

We had a mouse we’d see in the kitchen occasionally around the edges of the floor, it would leg it as soon as the light came on, like they do.

We were not massively bothered, we just considered our options, it ate well from our laundry cupboard but not any of our actual food for some reason. Maybe we dropped enough crumbs for it, I dunno, but anyway it got less and less alarmed when we’d come, and it also got fatter and slower. After a while it would just look at us and amble off into the corner. Now knowing where to find it, we armed ourselves with a tupperware box and wham, trapped. Using the old piece of card routine we got him in there and got the lid on. Drove out to the woods, let him out, where he would’ve been eaten by an owl in no time I suspect.

Funny looking cat you’ve got there.

Had mice in the garage , house mid Nineties garage integral and bathroom above .The little buggars chewed through the boxing in the garage around the stench pipe and climbed up into the floor space below the bathroom then ran all the way to a single storey solid wall and down between the wall and plasterboard.
I knew they were using this wall as I could hear them whilst on the downstairs loo.
They were also running round the inside of the wall and coming out behind the kitchen sink, down the washing machine pipes and eating the dog food, clever little bleeders 😯
This took me ages to fathom and luckily there is a circular inspection hatch right by the top of said wall, I placed a few traps and caught loads so they must have been there a while .
One mouse had obviously been hungry as he had eaten half of another still in the trap- not a pretty sight.
Another unlucky blighter got caught in a trap by his hind leg and unfortunately stepped on another one in his attempt to shake the first.
All clear but still think they are there,although no sightings for about a year

House mid nineties garage integral bathroom?

Wow that’s quite a niche music taste 😉

One morning I cam downstairs to find our cat somewhat agitated. He was obviously interested in something behind a cabinet. Turned out it was a mouse, so I informed Mrs Feet as I had to go to work. She moved things about and the mouse ran round the room. I got shouted at to ‘keep the cat out’. I kid you not! Mrs Feet wanted to keep the cat out of the house so she could deal with the mouse!!!!! Anyway, I convinced her that we have a very efficient mouse removal device, let the cat in and 1 minute later we had no mouse and a happy cat.

Sometimes my wife comes up with some daft ideas!

peanut butter no, nutella yes