h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For some reason a mouse seem to have decided to settle and, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I need to kill it. I’m not sadist or anything like that (I’m even a vegetarian) but that mouse (or mice --> I hope its not that bad…) NEEDS TO DIE!!! I don’t care if they rule the world!
It seems to a developed an immunity to the poison I put down – which it happily eats – and it also eats the cheese in the evil sharp looking French traps I’ve got without setting them off!
Any help, advice or just general guidance is needed and welcome. I’m asking here as I couldn’t really find a guide entry…
Thanks

nukes are really good for pest contro except for cockroaches........

but the best thing to do is lay a few traps mice always fall foul eventually..... I think they just wanna keep us on our toes

What's a French trap?

A good old-fashioned mousetrap should do the trick. Bait it with chocolate.

RTC

Try humane traps. They don't kill the mouse and you can then drive it 10 miles away and release it in the countryside. Place the traps in known runs, behind appliances, kitchen units, furniture etc.

Or failing that get a cat!

turvy

A French trap is the only thing they had at my pharmacy and appears to be much like a normal trap except it says ‘Made in France’ on it and has an abnormally large number of spikes.
I also don’t have the car or the bus fare to get out of London to release the Satan type creature (if it could be caught). Cats...well... I hate animals. Not all animals. Just...mostly.

Why are you shopping for mousetraps in a pharmacy?

Get yourself down to Robert Dyas, they'll sell you an ordinary mousetrap-style mousetrap.

RTC

Nukes are still an option

small ones of course

I seem to remember hearing something about using Coca Cola. It might just be a myth, but the story goes that mice can't burp, so the gas from the Coca Cola accumulates in their stomach until it ruptures and kills them. Plus, they like to drink it because of the sugar. Just a suggestion.

Building on the coca cola thing: find reasonably big container, fill it with alcopops and leave it somewhere where the mouse could get to drink. I'd suggest the combination of a simple plastic washing bowl and some sort of ramp down into it. 1 drowned mouse, plus it died happy.

If the mouse is eating the bait and the trap is not going off, there is a problem with the trap. Usually you can set the trap so that the release bit is right on the end i.e. it will go off really easily.

If it still doesn't go off use, as RF suggested, chocolate. Melt it onto the bait bit and then the mouse can't steal it. Peanut butter works too. Cheese is a pretty crap bait as it dries out and then is much easier for the mouse to remove without triggering the trap.


Please don't use poison - it takes a long time to kill the animal, you risk other animals ingesting the dying mouse, and the chemicals involved are not good to have in the environment.

bait with peanut butter. This type rarely fails: http://www.tonycolter.com/photos/potd/potd-20031107.jpg

Can be messy. If you're only after one mouse, chuck the trap and the mouse when you're done rather than trying to hold the thing open while you shake out the sticky corpse.

I endorse the assertion not to use poison. If the mouse ingests the poison it will then crawl off somewhere and die. The first indication that you have a dead mouse is when you begin to smell it - and mice can find the most inaccessable holes. Mine were hiding in the small space beneath the kitchen cupboards underneath the sink.

The good old spring loaded mousetrap is the best. It does kill the mouse instantaneously. Having caught my finger in a mouse trap and can vouch for its effectiveness. It was painful. It will go through a mouses neck or skull without any problem.

I had an infestation of mice a few years ago. A few mouse traps scattered around the house got rid of them in a week. It was the first time I had deliberately set out to kill an animal and I didn't like it one little bit. If they had more acceptable toilet habits they wouldn't be a problem, but they don't, so they have to go.

Donald

We had a mouse once who not only went in and took the bait without setting off the trap, but also left a small acorn in it's place. Laughing in our face it was.

That cheese thing is just a myth. I think you're better off with a small piece of sausage. And you don't want a dead mouse laying about. I know what it smells like when a rat lies dead and undiscovered for a few months. Perhaps you could put flypaper next to the trap, should make it harder for the mouse to walk away easily.

The extra load of traps that I set last night seems to have brought me good and bad news. Good news in that they caught 3 of them and bad news in that I’m guessing there are more out there.
I also feel strangely guilty and shamed about it. I’m not that used to killing things... I suppose I’ll get used to it after time...
Thanks for all your advice. I’ll now be buying fizzy drinks, alcopops and uranium fuel rods to start the long road to nuclear capable mice traps. Also lots more food by the looks of it. These mice are going to be eating better than me
Thanks
bye

*Caution: extremely inhumane pest-removing method coming up*

Mix jam with polyfilla. Leave mixture somewhere the mice go. Mice eat mixture, Polyfilla sets in their stomachs, they starve to death. No more problem.

Again, you've got to find where they've crawled off to to die.

RTC

There is that. It didn't bother us, because we used to use it in the outhouses- I didn't really care about little corpses out there.

When we had, a number of years ago, a mouse infestation in the garage, we found where the nest was, closed the doors on the garage, disturbed the nest, an and splattered the critters with broom sticks and shovels *splat* Though I think if we'd hae left em much longer they'd have killed emselves by chewing through the live cables they'd been nibbling at for some reason

I used to be caretaker in a Victorian built school wchich played host to mice every witner. So I know the answers you need.

I know that poison is a bad answer it makes your house stink of rotting mouse flesh for a fortnight.

If you want my fool proof method the price is that you have to change your name to something Tony Curtis related.

A hefty price. Could i just find something connecting Curtis to an evil tree? i'll have to think about... and... erm... remember who Tony Curtis actually IS. I know I should know but I'm just no good with names! Forgot my own once...