Keeping the mice away

What methods have been successful for you? For a time, I had peppermint oil infused cotton balls around the garage, and bay leaves sprinkled inside my car's trunk. I added dryer sheets, and for about a year, my unheated, drafty, old, single-car, timber garage smelled like Christmas and I had no mice problems. Then, last weekend, I took my car out of hibernation and there, in the trunk, was a mouse nest made of dryer sheets and cotton balls! Mothballs have always worked well for me, but they make my garage and car stink like holy hell. Somebody here has got to have a better idea.

Rat tape on all the harnesses. Snakes.

I have always heard that if mice are present, there is probably an easy food source nearby, like a stored bag of pet food or corn. Remove the food and the mice go elsewhere. It's like Holiday Inns always having a restaurant.

Decon

Dryer sheets.

a cat, a puddle of anti freeze. a bucket with a ramp on it.... cornmeal with concrete mix.... chocolate.

a cat

corn snake

Use a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Put a piece of wire or a rod through a soda can, then across the top of the bucket. Place a board on the bucket so that mice can walk right up. Fill the bucket with a bit of water and bleach, then smear peanut butter on the can. The mice are attracted to the peanut butter, but roll off the can and into the water. They are trapped and die, and you can collect a whole lot of them.

Have you tried commercially available poison?

Traps require daily rounds for resetting, deterrants are a halfway solution...

Remove all found sources, seal extraneous entrances with great stuff foam, and resort to chemical warefare. The stuff you can get at lowes/home despot works better than alot of the "combine this and this" solutions.

Dryer sheets, mothballs, and Irish Spring are often mentioned, but they don't work.

Bucket trap.

Irish Spring, neighborhood cat.

I find that conventional mousetraps, while terribly unreliable, provide a solution whilst giving the mice a sporting chance at survival. The triggers on modern mousetraps tend to be fairly hard to trip, so that even with peanut butter smeared on the trigger, mice have at least a 50/50 chance of getting the peanut butter without setting off the trap. In fact, I'd say my success rate is closer to 10/90 in favor of the mice. I'm beginning to think the PETA people have paid off the Victor mousetrap company and are intentionally selling traps that ineffective by design! It's a damned conspiracy, I tell you! Where the hell are my meds!!!?

slowride wrote: Irish Spring, neighborhood cat.

???? I fail to see how showering with your neighbor's cat is going to get rid of mice.

The cat gets pretty pissed after getting wet, and it takes it out the mice. :)

We back onto a large field out in the toolies. We have mice.

I'm allergic to cats, so I can't have one, but I am very nice to the neighbourhood cats that come visit and help clean up the mice.

Also use the electric mouse thingies - they plug into a wall and emit a high volume, high frequency noise that allegedly repels them. Though not enough to deter them from coming in and eating the Wilsarin I leave out for them.

Wilsarin kills them, but it dries them out so they don't really stink when they die inside your house walls, surrounded by the MOTHER of all Wilsarin hoardings. Not that I have any experience with that. cough

And seal up all the potential entrances you can find.

Dryer sheets have worked well for me in the past, before neighborhood cats decided to patrol my back yard - now I have no mice problem. Bear in mind, dryer sheets have a limited life span and eventually they will lose effectiveness and need to be replaced. The downside to cats is paw prints all over the cars... and they crap all over my yard...

In reply to pinchvalve:

Not likely PETA-approved, but looks effective.

For our travel trailer, I use a combination of moth balls on the ground underneath, poison traps and peppermint oil on the inside, with a few Fresh Cab things thrown in for good measure. Seems to be working so far.

They eat it and and bring the rest back to the nest. It makes them thirsty so they go out to look for water and don't make it back. Problem solved!!! I have been using this since for ever and it has always worked. You will need to re bate if the block gets taken away. Once the bate block is left un touched for a week or so you know your problem is solved.

My hesitation with poison is my cats getting an already poisoned mouse. But I'm loving the bucket.

I recall the last time we had this conversation we ended up with a Legitimate peta canoe. That was fun.

Years ago, at my folks summer camp we used lots of moth balls. worked pretty well.

Boy, this comes up at an opportune time. Had a bit of excitement driving my Opel GT to a cars & Coffee Saturday morning. While driving a mouse popped out of the left defrost vent, ran across the dash and into the dash cubby-hole then reappeared in the passenger footwell then back behind the dash. I drive the car a few times a month and didn't have the mouse a couple weeks ago. Looking I now see traces of mouse. I keep an ultra-sonic repeller plugged in but find they work in straight line out from it only. Put 2 different kinds of mouse traps and mouse poison in the car Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning got that bugger. Keeping the traps in till I drive the car again later this week and want to know what else I can do to keep them away. No food source in the garage so I'm not sure why it came in now. Wife is a bit paranoid about mice and bugs so she has mothballs everyplace. Sometimes have them when construction in the neighborhood occurs but no construction going on right now. Thanks for the info, will try some of these.

Park you valuable car six feet in the air on a car lift, then grease the cylinders. Everyone has an empty lift right.

I had mice in my Fit, which seemed to be coming in via the glove box. They were entering via the HVAC intake, chewing through the cabin air filter and getting in via the upper glove box. I got some 1/4" galvanized screen and screwed it to the firewall to cover the HVAC intake and have had no more mice in the 2 years since. Also did the mod for a colleague's Fit with the same result.

I love the Coke can/bucket idea for mass trapping.

We can still get the Victor snap traps with the metal trigger, and they work very well (jujubes for bait). The plastic triggers that look like a piece of cheese don't work worth anything.