We’ve been having a mouse crisis at Landlady’s house. It’s quiet, safe and seldom occupied by humans, and rather less than hermetically sealed. So of course the mice love it.
We have traps everywhere, and about twice a week I go around and remove bodies. Lately some Archimedes among them has figured out how to get bait off the snap traps without dying, and so she has been experimenting with different types and styles of trap. Thursday night when she came up it turned cold, and in one night she recorded a record number of kills in various traps including the bucket. No doubt the cold drove in mice that don’t normally actually live inside the house. So she looked for traces of light coming into darkened rooms, and then broke out a can of expanding foam…
That’s the door to the utility closet where the non-functional water heater resides. I agree that it’s not currently needed, but maybe some sort of tape would have been a better choice: We’re going to have a terrible time getting that door open next time we need it. On the other hand, till then there sure won’t be any mice coming through. No drafts, either.
🙂 Yeah, Landlady was loaded for bear Saturday. And it turned really cold overnight…
…and not a single trap caught a single mouse overnight. So maybe all that expanding foam made a difference.
Inspect the foam low down and around the tap periodically, rodents can chew through it without any problem if hungry/cold enough. I am thinking of placing a cloth tube filled with sand across the sills on my workshop to see if that helps keep them out. And funny you mention it, but they have figured out how to eat the PB off the snap traps without setting them off here too. The rolling can over water trap has worked well (I built 3 for myself and family members), I think we caught the last one that ate the trap bait in the barn.
Now that is problem solving!
bucket traps filled with antifreeze, work right through winter for you.
The Victor brand M260 electric trap works absolutely awesome. Kinda expensive but extremely effective, you can get 9-10 of the little SOBs in one go. Then dump it out and do it again.
Also had good luck wadding up hardware cloth or small grid chicken wire to pack the holes, then hitting it with foam. Gives it more strength and makes it harder to chew through
You don’t need antifreeze in the bucket traps, if you use a metal bucket.
The mice cannot chew their way out and if there is more than one mouse in the bucket, after several days the strongest mouse will eat the weaker.
If you don’t check the bucket over winter, there generally will be one mouse body and some bones left.
Kinda gruesome if you think about it though.
Trouble is if you don’t put water or antifreeze the mice can jump out of a regular five gallon bucket. You’d need to use a garbage can instead of a bucket.