As a sceptic and electonic engineer (with mice in the walls and loft), I reluctantly bought a set of ultrasonic mice scarers not expecting much to happen. Needless to say after 2 weeks, the little blighters are taking no notice at all.

As they remainin 99% of the time inside the wall and internal floor cavities, I can’t get at them. It’s not surprising the ultrasonics do no good since that stuff won’t penetrate building materials or even insulation quilt. Managed to get two by mousetrap in the roof joist spaces, but they are mostly taking no notice.

There are some other fangled gadgets which modulate the mains wiring with RF. I am even more sceptical about these, but they claim to get round the problem of ultrasound not going through stuff. Quite why mice would get upset by some weak RF fields has never been explained. Methinks it’s more pseudo-science. Has anyone ever made these things work?

Otherwise it’s poison, but I’d sooner not have too many rotting mice in the ceilings. There are no holes anywhere (ie I haven’t a clue where the external hole is to block up, because there is nothing obvous left to block), so keeping them out isn’t so easy.

I don’t think so, used 2 different types, made no impact that I could see.

I had a mouse this last winter that mainly stayed in the cavities and walls and was very trap shy (although managed to lick the bait of one of the pre-loaded cloths peg jobbies).

Tried everything, including glue traps, that has worked in the past and gotten no-where. It’s left for the summer and I’ve gone around the whole outside of the house with a can of no-more big gaps, if I can get the nozzle in I’ve given it a blast. It normally works for 2 years or so, so this winter I’m going to go around and see which holes are nibbles/opened and then properly seal them in the spring. If none are touched and we still get a mouse then it’s coming in via the services somehow.

Hard to clean away all food with a toddler in the house.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MgoSw6n1oM&feature=related

nope

No, they’re useless. My house backs on to open fields and has a fairly high mouse occupation time.

I’ve tried all sorts of humane traps etc. being a proper left wing Guardian reading pacifist vegetarian and all that, but in the end only poison did the job 🙁

I believe it’s a fairly unpleasant requirement to seek out water that causes them to exit the roof spaces, so they rarely seem to end up dead in the walls or roof.

With very young children in the house, and only a certain amount of enthusiasm for disinfecting everything before use I was left with the poison as the only option.

Hmm, thanks.

Well I just bought the poison.

As you say Brassneck, it’ll be hard to do it, what with their little snuffly noses and all that..

My little girl was overwhelmed when I did catch one (in a live trap), she wanted to cuddle it and keep it for a pet! Oh dear. I hope I can find a good excuse.

I would say they can work,with the two conditions
A.you can throw accurately
B. you can throw it hard enough
half a house brick works better!

We got 2 of these contraptions ,1 in the kitchen downstairs but still get em in the flat roof above each autumm and the other is in our bedroom to convince the wife that it’s safely keepin em out the between the bedroom floor and room downstairs.
Our house is at least 150 yrs old n some 2foot thick walls included so they come up thru the walls ,no chance of stopping them so poisen on annual basis keeps em down.
Humane traps waste of time cause they got an inbuilt homing device so your only giving em a free meal n trip out.
To top the lot our terrier dog sat n looked at a rat last winter as it
came from behind the fireplace as if to say what do you expect me to DO!