How to trap a mouse in the house?

A tenacious little fella has taken up residence in the Tyred household of late and we are now engaged in an amusing but soon-to-be quite tiresome game of trying to get rid of him.

One of my children (the younger one) would just nuke it from orbit, but his older brother wishes to open up a constructive channel of dialogue with the mouse, highly respectful of his mouse rights, to work together towards a mutually acceptable solution to both parties, so I’m not keen to go for a traditional trap… yet.

First approach was to get a humane trap and put peanut butter in it. The mouse is either too stupid or too canny for this to have worked.

Last night we placed a high-sided bucket in the kitchen (he seems to like to hide beneath the kitchen units – our house is old though, and has numerous gaps between floorboards, skirting etc so trapping him in one place is impossible), built a ramp up to it, put a bit of peanut butter at the end of a toilet roll tube and balanced this on the edge of the bucket, the idea being that the mouse goes into the tube which then tips over and lands in the bucket.

Several variations on this theme were attempted last night, as he is interested, but he has foiled us on each occasion, either by moving the tube round then eating the bait and disappearing again, or somehow managing to reach the end of the tube and eating the bait without tipping it over. Am beginning to suspect mouse genius.

Mrs Tyred has been pretty cool with it so far, but that won’t last long. Tyred Jr will be calling me a murderer for months to come if I go for a traditional trap, and my mum refuses to enter our postcode.

So does anyone have any foolproof ideas they’d like to share?

A tempting piece of cheese for the best one!

get yourself a proper humane trap made of clear plastic. a sound investment for all future rodent catching fun.

they like chocy biccys

Where are you putting the trap? The wee fella we had a while ago took a while to catch, but it was just a case of getting the trap in the right place, tucked up along a skirting board where it wandered.

Sorry to break the bad news…but there won’t just be one.

You’ll need to find their entry point into your house and seal it.

The bucket probably wouldn’t have worked anyway, they can jump about a foot vertically, and they’ll keep trying to get out until either you release them or they die of exhaustion. Humane trap, all the way, although you may have to keep filling it with bait as the mouse eats it, eventually it’ll get fat enough to trigger the door mechanism (this happened to my parents, resultant really fat trapped mouse was hilarious)

and what do you do when you’ve trapped it humanely? let it out in the garden?

it’ll come straight back in.

kill it, find out where it got in. seal the hole.

In addition to the humane trap, hide proper traps so you’ll actually get it. No-one need ever know

you could cath it humanely for the kids then wring the litte gits neck outside somewhere.

what do you do when you’ve trapped it humanely? let it out in the garden?

My dad released it where he works, which is about 15 miles away, so unlikely to find its way back, and also not a problem releasing a mouse in a bus garage that has numerous rats, pigeons and resident foxes…

We had a whiskered infiltrator in our house last year. Little blighter used to scamper about on our kitchen worktop.

All attempts at capture failed because:

1) No matter how well we tried to block all entrance/exit points it always managed to get through
2) The beast was way too wily to fall for the tasty-titbit-located-in-the-humane-trap wheeze.

It speaks volumes for my rapier like reactions that I did manage to trap my prey under a tupperware jar. It speaks volumes for my stupidity that I then lifted the jar, trying to get the lid on upside-down. Beastie then scuttled into our washing-up bowl, did a Thorpedo to the other side, pushed our ad-hoc hole blockage device out of the way and exited view.

Mrs 16 had had enough. Out came the mouse poison.

Forgot all about mouse for about six weeks. Then became aware of a strange smell in the under-stairs cupboard – traced said smell to my beloved Rip Curl trainers. Balked at the sight of an exploded rodent…

Lost my trainers, but the mouse issue went with them. For now.

Not sure if this helps your plight.

Caught mine in the bin and put him out with the rubbish. Just dumb luck really.
Humane trap was about as much use as chocolate teapot.

Plot is to catch him then release him into a field at least a mile away.

This is the humane trap I got:

Left it in a few places where I’ve spied the mouse, but either he’s not interested, too canny or too dumb to work out how to get in, as the bait’s still there.

The bucket trap is using the bucket from the dustbin, so at least 18 inches high. I put a lump of peanut butter at the bottom to see if he’d maybe fallen in but got out again, but that bait’s still there.

I’ve sealed the entry points I can find (think that might be why we are seeing him in the house – he may be stuck in), but the house is old, has stupid raised decking round the back and there’s probably gaps I’ll never find.

I’m not keen on the poison – I foresee exploding mouse in an inaccessible place, hidden grimness.

Might be time to get a couple of traditional traps and hide them behind the kitchen kickboards.

Friends have offered the services of their cats for a weekend – how likely is this to work? I know nothing about cats.

12 posts and no-one’s suggested getting a cat?

EDIT Too slow ——— again.

Choclate and hazel nut spread works well

The Tom and Jerry option, as far as I can see, has two potential problems:

1. The cat has to be motivated. I’ve kept cats who, quite frankly, couldn’t be ars•d with mice – apparently all they were interested in was defecating in my yard.

2. Even if the cat is a proven killer, it’ll probably toy with the mouse for ages and you may well find bits all over the house. In some ways an exploded mouse in your best trainers may actually be preferable.

Friends have offered the services of their cats for a weekend – how likely is this to work? I know nothing about cats.

if its anything like my cats you wont just have 1 mouse in the house, you will have several, some smeared up the walls, some died of fright underneath kitchen units and some hidden in wardrobes to scare the missus at a later date.

May I suggest…… ?

or

and Finally…

You need to get a proper cat, and introduce the element of competition. We had heaps of cats when I was growing up, one foolishly bought a live mouse in, and got mugged by the boss cat, who ate in on one gulp just to make sure.

We had a mouse in our flat a month or so ago. We dought some poison and a proper trap! Anyway for about a week The mouse just kept of taking the bait (Peanut butter) and not getting caught! I then put some bread and peanut butter in the trade and bingo. 5 dead mice in 5 days. We no loger have a mouse issue…

The only mouse that has tried to share a house with me –

I started with humane traps and the best of fluffy intentions.

It ended several weeks of mouse shit later with me happy as Larry that the mouse’s brains had been bashed out by a good old fashioned spring trap.

My advice would be not to try to take prisoners.

No point in “humane trap” what are you going to do with it after you catch it?

These are humane – quick. Typically you hear a bang (gotcha) then another one or two (spasms). Easy set and easy to get rid of the body and reset if needed.

If you have a cat already it is quite likely that it brought it back and got distracted by a random beam of light. On moving into a house next to a river we’ve developed some expertise in catching mice!

Humane mice traps do work, but they have to be positioned alongside a wall with suitable bait (cat biscuits seem to work). If scampering around then a towel chucked a foot in front of the direction it is heading usually captures them. They can also be ushered out ala Tom and Jerry stylee with a broom.

Our cat seems to have got the message and while we get the occasional present outside the house, we don’t have them brought inside nowadays (fingers crossed). We do make sure it is not allowed outside of the hallway at night though. (Note, keeping a cat is not my idea!).

Worst mice-related event happened when my girlfriend’s sister was staying over. On deciding to make breakfast she cut up some bread, put it in the toaster, depressed the toaster and was treated to the shreeking of a trapped mouse! 😈

if you can get a trip-trap humane trap *(they have gone a bit expensive now though) from ebay (as my local hardware shop doesn’t do them) – not because I’m a fluffy hippy but because they work a treat and are easier to set than spring fellas.

Bait the trap with bacon rind and set in a dark area along one of their runs (back of microwaves/chairs/sofas etc) – if your not sure of the most used runs hoover up all the droppings and inspect carefully in the morning for the greatest density overnight. Put the trap against the wall (for spring traps place at 90 degrees to the wall for best effect).

Trip traps can often catch 2 mice at a time and you can show the little fellas to the kids and show how safe they are in there – then I normally drown them around the back of the shed (the mice, not the kids).

Keep re-baiting the traps (store the bacon rind in the fridge if you don’t like a lot of bacon butties – btw streaky or smoked appears better than back or plain) for at least a week after your last catch, it’s doubtful you have only one mouse.

edit to say – hate those easy set ones, after several had their pre-baited bait licked off I reverted to glue traps and trip traps. Much better.

1-0 for the humane trap!

He obviously got a taste for Lidl crunchy peanut butter the night before last, as he finally succumbed to the temptation sitting in the humane trap and got stuck.

Chubbiest mouse I’ve ever seen, but I guess eating your own body weight in peanut butter will do that for you.

Driven 3 miles away and released into a field, much to the delight of Tyred Jr who swore blind the mouse gave him a look of gratitude before darting off.

Haven’t told him I’ve set killer traps under the kitchen units and other mousey places. We shall see what happens.

smash with hammer.

dooosuk – Member
Sorry to break the bad news…but there won’t just be one.
You’ll need to find their entry point into your house and seal it.
POSTED 20 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

And given they can get through a hole not much bigger than the diameter of a Bic pen, it will be very difficult to seal things up.

flip top bin with some melted cheese/chocolate stuck to the lid.. mouse drops in, can’t get out again.

Driven 3 miles away and released into a field

Have you not heard of Homing Mice?

?

Caught one humanely by laying a few pairs of wellies and similar footwear strategically against skirting boards whilst flushing it out. Little fella went straight into my ex’s prada white knee high leather boot. Must have been a some sort of fashionista. I was for realease strategy, whilst the GF wanted extermination. Let her do it the only way she could – by squishing it inside said boot. She never wore them again though 🙁

Someone earlier on is right – there will be more than one. Just do yourself a favour, get a Little Nipper trap, bait it with peanut butter, set it against the wall and get rid of the little feckers that way. You don’t need to tell the kids 🙂

TS

We caught quite a few with a humane trap. Then a new lot moved in and kept triggering the humane traps without being caught – once we went rodentcidal we found they were so fat they couldn’t fit into the humane traps! No wonder, having eaten large amounts of pasta, vegetables and even some stock cubes – and my Camelbak bite valve…

get a cat

Get a rat.