night of the living MOUSE (1 Viewer)

[ChrisHeflen]

I had a similar thing happen growing up. We caught a mouse in a trap while we were gone one evening and when we got home, we kept hearing this rustling in the kitchen for like ten minutes. We finally went in there and saw this mouse, still caught in the trap, pushing itself around the kitchen. (it was actually on top or our cupboards).

We felt so bad that we didn't killit so we took it out of the trap and got it a "walker" from the hospital. It has lived with my mom ever since as a pet.

 

[Citizen87645]

I use glue traps in my garage and had a few mice come through within a few days. Each time the mouse was not dead yet but still struggling in the trap. The first time I just chucked the trap in the garbage but the thought of it dying slowly nagged at me for a couple days. The next time I put it in a paper bag and dropped a log on it. I tried not to look at the wet spot that had formed on the bag.

 

[Jay H]

My sister tells me of an ex landlord who used to gas squirrels with bags rubber banded to a car's exhaust.... Until I think the cops caught her doing it once and gave her a stern warning!

Jay

 

[Greg_S_H]

Someone should send this thread to General Mills. That's a new taste sensation right there. "So good, it'll maim a mouse!"

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Michah, I suggest picking this book up, just in case:



Read it, learn it, live it!

 

[Joe Szott]

When we lived in the country, we got a nice stray from the SPCA to help hunt the mice and gophers around the house. Unfortunately, we then learned that there are two types of cats: mousers and bird hunters.

We had a bird hunter. She never messed much with the gophers, but I'll be damned if ALL the quail and hummingbords didn't disappear within a few years. To her credit, she was a sweet cat and a deadly efficient hunter.

Ughh!

 

[Greg_S_H]

My cat does both. Birds and rats. Maybe a mouse, but I think I've mainly seen rats around here. She doesn't do it often, but she can get them whenever she wants.

One really sad thing recently is when the cat across the street got a squirrel and was toying with it. I heard a sound like a puppy crying, and it turned out to be a squirrel. The cat was trapping it by the tail and letting it escape, and then grabbing it when it got onto the tree. I wanted to go help the little guy, but by then he was pretty messed up and better off having the cat finish him.

 

[Micah Cohen]

Here in Baltimore City, the rats hunt the cats.

MC

 

[Lynda-Marie]

I have a weird one with regards to cats and mice.

At the house I used to live in, it was turning into mousie paradise. We could NOT get rid of the little buggers, despite having 4 cats, even though they were pretty efficient mousers.

My brother's fat calico, Sunday the Hutt, reached through a hole in the wall and hooked a mouse out with one lightning swipe, fatally wounding it. Chet got the mouse out of the house double quick, because he did not want Sunday to just play with the silly thing, and hide the carcass, for discovery later when the weather warmed up. He plugged the hole in the wall, but we still heard rustling in the walls.

About a month later, three of the cats were gathered near the plugged hole, trying to figure out how to get in there. Chet and I were watching TV, and thought nothing of it. I saw some movement by the food dishes out of the corner of my eye, and turned my head.

Perched boldly on the rim of one of the food dishes was a rather chubby mouse. It reached in, grabbed a morsel of food, and calmly ate it. I got Chet's attention, and told him to look at the food dish.

"Damn critter's got balls, doesn't he?" I muttered, and Chet started trying to call the cats over to the food dish to catch the mouse.

The mouse disappeared somewhere under the sofa, and the cats were cheerfully oblivious. Chet muttered something about putting a want ad in the paper, since we obviously had defective cats.

Chet set a glue trap, baiting it with some cat food. All he would find the next morning would be some little mousie footprints, the occasional tuft of fur, and of course, little nuggets. Of course, we would still see him at the cat food dishes from time to time.

I suggested facetiously, of course, that this was a highly intelligent mouse, and that perhaps we should capture him alive, and sell him to the local pet store for breeding stock. Thoughts of "Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIMH" came to mind.

So Chet bought a live trap, which was a pretty ingenious device, and baited it with peanut butter. He set it under his recliner, since he had been hearing rustling underneath, and finding little souvenirs in the mornings.

We let the cats out, and were going about our business, when suddenly, we started hearing a bit of a ruckus under the chair. Success! Or so we thought.

Chet raised the footrest on the recliner, and instead of a mouse, we found Camas, our special-ed kitty, trying frantically to get into the live mouse trap to get the peanut butter. The mouse was nowhere to be found.

I finally decided, after a few more episodes of cat food raids that the mouse was to be named "Balls" for his incredible ability to sneak food out of the bowls of his primary predator, when said primary predator was sitting less than five feet away.

 

[MichaelBA]

In my hometown, racoons are slaughtering the kitties.

Two neighbor cats got recently mauled, one to death, and the other one-eyed and crippled.

My father was once cornered in the basement of one of our houses by a snarling group of them, and he beat them all to death with a 2x4.

 

[Jason Pancake]

Just get a computer. This was taken last night after about an hour of looking for the cause of the stench that had permeated the house...


Mouse Trap

 

[Joe Szott]

Yeah, definitely:

mice < cats

 

[Max Leung]

Jason: Wow, I think you found a bug mouse!

Was the stench from the rotting corpse, or burning flesh from the heat?

(P.S. This is a very entertaining thread)

I caught a few mice when I was younger. Lots of blood was spilt - some of those traps can nearly snap a mouse in half!

I was creeped out once when the trap tripped, but the mouse wasn't completely dead - it had its eyes wide open, staring at me as it struggled for 10 seconds before going silent - an accusing look in its eyes.

 

[Kevin M]

.....so....does he wander around saying..."CHEEEEESE...CHEEEEEESE"?

 

[Micah Cohen]

After the incident that started this thread, I of course cleaned everything down to the sparkly white porcelin in my kitchen, fumigated and steamed till you could do surgery on my stove top.

And low and behold, the next day... Two teeny poops on my stove top! Someone's been pooping on my stove top again! And, just within reach, two freshly-set Cocoa Puff & Peanut Butter Delights, untripped.



This morning... I found a mouse snapped in one of the traps. DEAD, thankfully, but yet another mouse.

It's getting chilly, is the thing, I guess, and they are all coming indoors looking for a warm place to live.

SNAP! HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA! Gotcha!

MC

 

[Jason Pancake]

Max,
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) it was the rotting that gave it away. I guess it's better than burning or shorting something out.

 

[Max Leung]

Yuck!

Micah, how are the critters getting in anyways?

 

[Micah Cohen]

There are no obvious ways into my house. No exterior holes, that is. But, between houses, there are ways. These houses are antique, 100 years old, attached with common walls. And I have seen (in renovations-in-progress jobs) easily from one house into the next thru the joists and bricks. So, mice can get into my elderly neighbors' houses, where they may find food, and then pop over to mine for a change of pace, an after-dinner romp in the ceilings, or a (last) desert of Cocoa-Puffs and peanut butter.

There's one in here somewhere. I heard him skitter across the ceiling last night when I was sitting in the kitchen. But he has not touched the single trap I have set for him. Yet.

Tonight I plan to toss some moth balls into some access spaces in the ceilings of my kitchen and my basement. I hear they hate moth balls.

MC

 

[MichaelBA]

Haley's Hints says mothballs work.

It also says that you can bait a trap with a gum ball or even a cotton ball, which mice apparently love to use to build their nests.

I have, however, read around the internet that some people tried mothballs to NO effect at all.

Cat?

 

[Micah Cohen]

Too much responsibility.

MC