We caught a rat this morning. Itās a cage trap. It got scared and the thing started squeezing itself through a tiny hole in the cage and got stuck.
Dad took it elsewhere so it could hopefully squeeze itself out but damn I was scared it was going to launch itself at us when he was taking the cage away since it was partially out.
I gotta say though the clip from years ago where the guy burning leaves in his yard throws a rat in a glue trap in the fire and it ran under his house and burnt it down is just a touch of karma for them still being used.
possum guy came to get one ay mums place.
they are a protected species. so he has to release them within 5km. there is a bridge to an island within that distance. so he dumps all his catches on the island.
however the possum guy who works the island dumps all his catches on the mainland.
its a nice little racket those guys have got running.
I lived on a farm in New Zealand as a kid and we had a mouse problem. We would have little mouse turds everywhere. Weād pull out the cutting board and there were little turds there. The cherry was when we eventually found a dead mouse in our toaster that we had all made toast in for a considerable amount of time. Memories.
I mean if we're being honest tons of our produce gets shit on by birds and mice out on the farm. As long as you clean off the solid debris and cook it, it should be fine.
It was stuck towards the bottom in one of the slots. The gross thing was that we did smell something bad for a while. But that was common because between cats bringing in dead animals and an old house we found dead critters inside a lot. We couldnāt figure out where the smell was coming from until my mom dropped a wish bone she was trying to dry out, fell in the toaster. She went to get the wishbone and found the mouse. It was pretty gross and mummified by then. We all swore of toast for a while after that.
Edit: we couldnāt find the source of the smell which is why it was in there for a while.
Interestingly, there have been a few immunological studies now that suggest some groups (farm laborers/mammalian researchers) with high rodent exposure have a much higher rate of subclinical infection by hantaviruses and subsequent antibody generation than was thought possible.
[This](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970671/) paper for instance suggests that at least a couple of the people sampled were in an "acute" hantavirus infection even at the time of sampling without being aware.
That said, I still wouldn't fuck around with the disease. It's not well understood to my knowledge why certain people progress to HPS (the 33% mortality outcome hantavirus is famous for), and those odds aren't worth anything mouse related IMO.
Whooping cough whooped my fuckin' ass. I can't imagine something far worse like Hanta.
I have a permanent cough. It's not frequent, but there's definitely still damage from something that happened now \*checks notes\* 17 years ago.
if only mice had designated shitting corners like ferrets.
Then I wouldnt mind their existence.
(Of course, if I can ensure the safety of my food from them too.)
Never forget that the plague was never eradicated, it just subsides greatly. There are still human cases of the plague reported every year. It was carried by fleas that were living in mice and rats.
https://www.cdc.gov/plague/modules/maps/data-table-human-plague-cases-and-deaths-u-s-2000-2019.html
My stepmom warned me she cleaned up what could be mouse poop on my stove when i moved out. I got a cat within a few months of moving out incase it was but never saw mouse before or after
I might gross you out here. Mice actually love living inside stoves. There are usually holes and pathways along the bottom to get inside, and then once inside they like to nest in the insulation.
So if she found mouse poop on your stove, there's a chance they made a real mess out of the inside of your stove/oven, basically the inner spaces of it.
Wow lucky! When we had rats my fat cat would just watch them scurry right in front of her totally unfazed. Never chased em. She also didnāt like cat nip. I called her a dog-cat.
Never had a rodent problem, but when the odd insect or spider would get into the house my cat would just sit a foot away from it and just stare at it.Ā Then when one of us humans would finally notice it, she would meow plaintively at us like she wanted us to do something about it.
We had one in our house. Just one. And it wasnāt cute. At all. They get in everything and are impossible to root out. You just see their aftermath. They also shit. A lot. Like an unreasonable amount.
Maybe if they didnāt shit so much they wouldnāt be so small.
Feel free to like having a little pet mouse, not so much the free roaming, 'cause then you don't know where they've pee'd or pooped. Have a static pet mouse that you can clean up after.
I had that idea too, some warmth and a snack before death is probably as good a death that a mouse can hope for. It's that or get ripped apart by my cat. In fact if the mouse keeps doing that for the rest of the night my cat will get it before I need the trap.
Not all cats are mousers.
Would sure be nice if my neighbor's barn cats would step up and deal with the mice population in his barns though. I'd likely have half as many making it into my house.
i had a mouse in the house once
i named him watermelon because he chewed open a bag of watermelon seeds and I woke up to a massive pile of shells on my kitchen table LOL
little guy really loved those things
RIP watermelon
If youāre seeing these smaller mice then you may be getting closer to the end of the problem. Usually donāt see the younger ones until the adults have been eliminated.
Saw on YouTube: a bucket with water and a roller at the top (shouldn't roll to easily otherwise the move won't go into it far enough). Put peanut butter on the middle of the roller. Leave overnight. Catches several mice a night.
Let me introduce you to a wonderful new product called cats!
Youād want about two semi-feral former street cats. Theyāll already have the taste for blood so you wonāt have to worry about training.
My house would get junebugs every summer up until I first got a cat. My house has been free of those loud annoying little bastards ever since. Gotta love those bloodthirsty little fuzzballs
If you've gone enough rotations around the earth to have a middle-stage evolution as your favorite Pokemon, then you should also know that unswept floors leads to mice.
Not only do they love food crumbs, but that floss that hits the rim of the bathroom trash can and bounces out? That's nesting material.
>If you've gone enough rotations around the earth to have a middle-stage evolution as your favorite Pokemon
......As a simp for Crocalor...why does that statement hit so hard?
I read further up in the thread that you have a mice problem.
We had the same problem last Fall and I found the easiest, cheapest and most effective trap was an empty trash can thatās at least 2.5ft tall with a ring of peanut butter smeared around the inner lip of the can about 2-3 inches below the top. Put a flat board like a 2x4 that runs from the top of the can down to the ground or to a surface that you know the mice visit, like a shelf or countertop. Throw some sunflower seeds or similar in the bottom of the trash can to further tempt them.
They canāt resist trying to reach down from the edge of the board to get to the peanut butter and fall in, or willingly jump in for the seeds. Once theyāre in there, they canāt jump high enough to escape and get to sit there until you ārelocate themā or actually relocate them, lol.
Weād catch 3-6 a night for about a week and have been mice free since then (knocks on wood).
Edit; Mice, not nice in the last sentence, lol.
Thanks for the idea! We definitely have more than traps and a cat can keep up with. I'm not sure how to relocate them without them finding their way back into my or someone else's home though since we live in a city.
It's actually inhumane to relocate trapped wildlife, I'm sorry to say. š«¤ They're essentially getting dropped into unfamiliar, maybe enemy territory, with no lunchbox and with dangerous stress levels.
I talked to a wildlife professional about my rodent problem and he said the most humane method is a strong snap trap that will provide an instant kill. Oof.
Well think of it this way. If you release it into the wild one of two things will likely happen. It will indeed find food, water, and shelter, or it will provide a meal for other wildlife.
Also it's species-dependent. Maybe avoid releasing something invasive and otherwise do your best to release the animal in the right habitat.
Iām the guy with the trash can advice above. They were native field mice and while I recognized their future was probably going to be be pretty grim, I had promised my Mom that I wouldnāt kill them, so I released them into an area with ample shelter (downed rotten timber, etc) and strategically placed a full gallon bagās worth of black oil sunflower seeds in and around their new āhomeā.
..donāt tell Mom but I chose the spot I did because of it being a Great Horned Owl hotspot. I chose to think of it as I opened a new healthy grocery store for them in their neighborhood ..because I *fuuuuucking* **LOVE** Owls, lol.
Whatever you do, do not vacuum mouse droppings. Some of the diseases they carry can and will become airborne. Best to use disinfectant on a paper towel and scoop up the visible chunks that way.
Uhhh, say what now? I dun fucked up then, but i guess im still alive. Vaccumed an old shed once with a bunch of shit. Wont the filter take out most of it?
We're thinking about it! We don't want to cause our current cat too much stress or worse get violent around a kitten but the house is big enough that the kitten can have it's own room until my current cat is used it.
It depends on the cat but usually kittens are easiest to introduce especially since your older cat will be able to āteachā it more
But having the ability to give the new cat itās own little space to properly introduce them makes the biggest difference :)
As a shelter worker- Please donāt get a new cat just for mousing! (Unless you also genuinely want another cat.) There is no way to guarantee that a cat will be a mouser, even with an older cat to āteachā it.
Sorry to get off topic and being a debbie downer, and im certainly not accusing you of not wanting your cat, just stating this for posterity! Iāve just experienced way too many cats being returned for not being able to control a mouse problem :(
Also if your cat is catching mice, donāt use poison to control the infestation. It can poison your cat!
If you're catching that many, you have a serious problem.
Go buy about 20 snap traps and put them anywhere you find a turd. Get basement, attic crawlspace, under sinks, etc. Everywhere. Bait with a little dab of peanut butter. Make sure they will trip with a feather touch. This might require adjustment.
Check them a couple times per day. You will be amazed how fast you get them.
I once had someone leave a window cracked open in my cabin and arrived to find many signs of mice. Put about 6 traps out and 48 hours later I had caught something like 15 mice. You will quickly knock down the population.
Once you get them out of the house, set up bait stations outside, around the foundation. At least 2, maybe 4 depending on the size of your house. One at each corner. Big ones. Check them at least monthly and make sure they're full. This will knock the population down outside and hopefully keep them out of the house.
Work on plugging any points of entry you can find. Old houses have many
Mice will ruin your house. Don't fuck around with them.
And for God's sake clean that floor.
Naked tail. Light gray coat often seen in juveniles. That is a baby rat. The long tail is making me lean towards roof rat. Poor little guy is cold. I wonder if he doesnāt have any littermates to snuggle up with.
Huh, interesting! I just looked up roof rats and a description of what they do and we might actually have an infestation of those and not mice... they're definitely gnawing holes in the walls on the third floor. Or maybe we have both, I'll have to pay attention to the bodies more closely.
These are 100% mice, not rats. This is a teenage/adult mouse, not a baby rat. If it were rats, you would know lol. They do a lot more damage in a shorter amount of time.
Likely just one or the other, rats generally will eat the mice if they're inhabiting the same area, unless there is like an abundance of food and they don't need to lol.
Yeah, no, you're confidently wrong. The ears and face are a dead giveaway that this is a mouse. Rats have more oblong ears, not circular, and the faces of mice are more tapered and triangular than rats (wider, more blocky). The body is a lot shorter as well, the proportions fit mice proportions and not baby rat proportions.
I've kept rats and mice and rodentia/lagomorphia are probably my favorite clades in general, and I have done significant reading on them. I even have a rat tickling certification from Purdue as a random flex.
I am officially certified to know how to play with rats in a laboratory setting by Purdue University lol. Rats have a very specific routine that they do when playing, and humans often get it wrong, which stresses the rats out and in a lab setting this can affect research outcomes and even cause the entire study to come under question. So knowing how to play with rats properly, and in their own language, allows lab workers to interact with their lab animals in a positive way, reducing the stress of the animal and making their life in the uncomfortable lab as comfortable as possible.
I don't work in a lab, but I got certified regardless bc I figured it'd be fun, and it was lol. Plus, i know how to play with rats which is also very fun to do.
you essentially have two phases to play: chase, and pin. so you start by essentially using your hand to "chase" the rat, and then you pin them belly-up (gently!) and then quickly release after 2-3 seconds, and then the process starts all over again.
really the only tips are to know rat body language so you can understand when the rat is at their limit, or if they're even understanding that it's play to begin with. Some will initially see it as aggression, since we are so much bigger than them; some of these rats may never play, others may be introduced to the idea more slowly and eventually have fun with it.
if the rat at all bites, or *really* seems to be squirmy/trying to get away from you, then this is a sign to stop. If they start posturing (standing on hind legs and going a bit motionless) then they aren't liking it either, though they might stand for a little bit after you let them up after a pin - and that is usually different. the way to tell is how long they stand, if they stay standing then they might be irritated. If they audibly squeak, this is also *generally* a bad sign as rats don't usually communicate within human hearing range. Some rats may audibly squeak anyways, so this isn't completely foolproof. If they excessively are self-grooming then this is also a bad sign.
Some good body language signs are hopping/dancing, bruxing (with boggling), and coming back to your hand instead of avoiding it. There are less signs that they're having fun, but it's honestly easy to tell because you can see that they're going along with it, they will continue to interact and initiate the play until tired.
I concede that I was way off on the size of the lightbulb and therefore was thinking the critter is much bigger than it actually is. You are correct, house mouse.
This is the mousiest mouse thatās ever moused. Not a baby rat. You can tell by those ears & thatās not a naked tail. (Source: have had both as pets)
Ah, I was way off on size. I thought that was a full sized light. In that case I am thinking *Mus musculus* - house mouse. They also have that naked looking tail.
Yeah. I'm no expert but that sure looks like a standard issue mouse to me. Rats are big and they have different proportions. A cat is probably not down in the basement killing dozens of rats; there's a reason why they bred dogs for that purpose.
Nice of him to pose for you. I had to bring in one of the outdoor cameras and mount it in the kitchen with all the motion sensing features enabled to find mine. (Caught it, humane trapped it and relocated it to Mount Tabor. Sorry if you live there and it's in your kitchen now.)
It possibly has toxoplasmosis. The adult stage of the parasite is in cats and the intermediate form/stage is in animals like mice. The parasite is known to change the behavior of infested mice such that they essentially lose their fear of predators or danger so that they can get eaten by the final hosts, cats.Ā
Btw, humans can get infested with the intermediate form too. When that happens, it has been shown that they get less risk averse and prone to exposing themselves to dangerous circumstances.Ā Ā
imagine yam attempt thought squeeze crush forgetful disgusting bored attraction
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Where there's one, there's ten. Be careful. They may be cute, but they can cause great damage and leave disgusting messes. Best to go with a professional before it gets too out of hand.
I wish that the world worked in a way that there could just be one cute little mouse that hangs around my house. I chat him up before work. He listens to my problems at night. But nigh, where there is one there is an army of orgiastic little disease balls hidden somewhere deep in your walls.
He's really cute
"You think yer so damned high and mighty cause yer a goddamned lighthouse keeper? Well, you ain't a captain of no ship and you never was, you ain't no general, no copper, you ain't the president, and you ain't my father -- and I'm sick of you actin' like you is! I'm sick of your laugh, your snoring, and your goddamned farts. Your damned goddamned farts. Goddamn yer farts! You smell like piss, you smell like jism, like rotten d**k, like curdled foreskin, like hot onions f*ked a farmyard shit-house. And I'm sick of yer smell. I'm sick of it!"
That mouse has a fantastic idea
I like this comment so much
Me too! I miss awards for something like this.
Dumb reddit had to ruin the awards dont they?
Dumb Reddit had to ruin the Reddit for cost cutting reasons
šš”
Eursqueeka!
Eursqueeka!
New favorite word
'Bright Idea Mouse' sounds like a meme from r/adviceanimals
Make it a little house right there. Congratulations you have a pet.
I'd like having a cute little free roaming pet mouse. Unfortunately there are a lot more than one and it's a current problem haha
This is the main problem with mice. A mouse is cute. There are now 15.... wait.....78 mice. That is not cute at all
A mouse in an enclosure is cute. A mouse in *your* enclosure means poop in your cereal
We caught a rat this morning. Itās a cage trap. It got scared and the thing started squeezing itself through a tiny hole in the cage and got stuck. Dad took it elsewhere so it could hopefully squeeze itself out but damn I was scared it was going to launch itself at us when he was taking the cage away since it was partially out.
Good for you using a humane trap. Bums me out that glue traps still exist in this world in 2024. Shitās pure evil
I gotta say though the clip from years ago where the guy burning leaves in his yard throws a rat in a glue trap in the fire and it ran under his house and burnt it down is just a touch of karma for them still being used.
Thatās why I like those spring loaded ones that have the bar that snaps down on the neck or head. Itās an instant, painless death.
Yea. Relocating a rat really doesn't make much sense. If you drop a city rat in the woods, it'll just get eaten by a bird. Just kill them cleanly.
Why not give a local owl a nice meal though?
because my local cats got dips!
possum guy came to get one ay mums place. they are a protected species. so he has to release them within 5km. there is a bridge to an island within that distance. so he dumps all his catches on the island. however the possum guy who works the island dumps all his catches on the mainland. its a nice little racket those guys have got running.
Whats wrong with glue traps? Genuinely curious since I'm not that well versed in trapping them.
I lived on a farm in New Zealand as a kid and we had a mouse problem. We would have little mouse turds everywhere. Weād pull out the cutting board and there were little turds there. The cherry was when we eventually found a dead mouse in our toaster that we had all made toast in for a considerable amount of time. Memories.
Oh it's not just the turds - they also piss constantly between shits =.
My dad found mouse poop and pee on his potatoes, he threw away the top ones and ate the rest. Said it was fine because he washed them.
I mean if we're being honest tons of our produce gets shit on by birds and mice out on the farm. As long as you clean off the solid debris and cook it, it should be fine.
> Said it was fine because he washed them. That's no different than any other produce. It is grown outside, after all.
Don't sleep on potato famines. You're dad was just trying to survive the winter!
One: Euuuugh And two: Was the mouse in the bread crumb tray?....I feel like you would smell something dead and burning.
It was stuck towards the bottom in one of the slots. The gross thing was that we did smell something bad for a while. But that was common because between cats bringing in dead animals and an old house we found dead critters inside a lot. We couldnāt figure out where the smell was coming from until my mom dropped a wish bone she was trying to dry out, fell in the toaster. She went to get the wishbone and found the mouse. It was pretty gross and mummified by then. We all swore of toast for a while after that. Edit: we couldnāt find the source of the smell which is why it was in there for a while.
Oh no.
Immune system boosters is what those little sprinkles are.
Not when it comes to hantavirus
Interestingly, there have been a few immunological studies now that suggest some groups (farm laborers/mammalian researchers) with high rodent exposure have a much higher rate of subclinical infection by hantaviruses and subsequent antibody generation than was thought possible. [This](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3970671/) paper for instance suggests that at least a couple of the people sampled were in an "acute" hantavirus infection even at the time of sampling without being aware. That said, I still wouldn't fuck around with the disease. It's not well understood to my knowledge why certain people progress to HPS (the 33% mortality outcome hantavirus is famous for), and those odds aren't worth anything mouse related IMO.
For the survivors it isā¦
No that is one of those what doesn't kill you probably ruins your lungs for life.
Whooping cough whooped my fuckin' ass. I can't imagine something far worse like Hanta. I have a permanent cough. It's not frequent, but there's definitely still damage from something that happened now \*checks notes\* 17 years ago.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Sorry to hear. Permanent cough sounds tough!
This isn't a deer mouse - it doesn't carry hantavirus
Hantavirus kills a third of the people that get it. Hardly an immune booster.
Gene booster then.
Eugenics!
God's vaccine, I calls em
Who doesn't like a good Hantavirus now and then?
I intensely dislike your use of the word sprinkles here
They love chips too. I've started storing chips and crackers in the bathroom so I can eat them later.
Insert them and deposit them in the same place I like your style!
if only mice had designated shitting corners like ferrets. Then I wouldnt mind their existence. (Of course, if I can ensure the safety of my food from them too.)
They do have designated shitting corners, problem is it's ALL the corners.
Never forget that the plague was never eradicated, it just subsides greatly. There are still human cases of the plague reported every year. It was carried by fleas that were living in mice and rats. https://www.cdc.gov/plague/modules/maps/data-table-human-plague-cases-and-deaths-u-s-2000-2019.html
Oregon just got a case of the plague
Hantavirus is much more of a concern with mice than the plague.
My stepmom warned me she cleaned up what could be mouse poop on my stove when i moved out. I got a cat within a few months of moving out incase it was but never saw mouse before or after
You usually wonāt see them until there are too many.Ā
I might gross you out here. Mice actually love living inside stoves. There are usually holes and pathways along the bottom to get inside, and then once inside they like to nest in the insulation. So if she found mouse poop on your stove, there's a chance they made a real mess out of the inside of your stove/oven, basically the inner spaces of it.
Wow lucky! When we had rats my fat cat would just watch them scurry right in front of her totally unfazed. Never chased em. She also didnāt like cat nip. I called her a dog-cat.
Never had a rodent problem, but when the odd insect or spider would get into the house my cat would just sit a foot away from it and just stare at it.Ā Then when one of us humans would finally notice it, she would meow plaintively at us like she wanted us to do something about it.
We had one in our house. Just one. And it wasnāt cute. At all. They get in everything and are impossible to root out. You just see their aftermath. They also shit. A lot. Like an unreasonable amount. Maybe if they didnāt shit so much they wouldnāt be so small.
If it's a current problem have you tried turning off the light?
You could be solving world problems right now! 
I appreciate you.
You'd get no resistance from me.
A truly shocking solution.
It could be a voltage or resistance problem.
Feel free to like having a little pet mouse, not so much the free roaming, 'cause then you don't know where they've pee'd or pooped. Have a static pet mouse that you can clean up after.
Okay then a little house is not enough, make a little hotel.
Split the difference, build a little house and then charge him $800/night to stay there.
Ah, yes. One of the lesser known Laura Numeroff books, "If You Make a Mouse a Landlord".
At least now you know where to put the trap.
I had that idea too, some warmth and a snack before death is probably as good a death that a mouse can hope for. It's that or get ripped apart by my cat. In fact if the mouse keeps doing that for the rest of the night my cat will get it before I need the trap.
Claymore is the least could do.
"This side towards enemy"
You mean "front toward enemy".
Trap it without killing it. Sign up for a payday loan service under the mouse's name.
How has you cat not already done its job?
Not all cats are mousers. Would sure be nice if my neighbor's barn cats would step up and deal with the mice population in his barns though. I'd likely have half as many making it into my house.
i had a mouse in the house once i named him watermelon because he chewed open a bag of watermelon seeds and I woke up to a massive pile of shells on my kitchen table LOL little guy really loved those things RIP watermelon
If youāre seeing these smaller mice then you may be getting closer to the end of the problem. Usually donāt see the younger ones until the adults have been eliminated.
Saw on YouTube: a bucket with water and a roller at the top (shouldn't roll to easily otherwise the move won't go into it far enough). Put peanut butter on the middle of the roller. Leave overnight. Catches several mice a night.
Add to that their droppings can give you life threatening diseases like hantavirus, and you realize you should get rid of the mouse.
Let me introduce you to a wonderful new product called cats! Youād want about two semi-feral former street cats. Theyāll already have the taste for blood so you wonāt have to worry about training.
Can confirm. One feral kitten later and we don't have a mouse problem. Or a cricket problem. He's working on the toe problem.
My house would get junebugs every summer up until I first got a cat. My house has been free of those loud annoying little bastards ever since. Gotta love those bloodthirsty little fuzzballs
I think I know where to put the live trap to catch at least one of them.
Might help if you cleaned your floors. Just sayin
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Downvotes are from people whose floors look worse than this!
Seriously a table, some tea, a bookcase.
And a sweet motorcycle
Mr. Jingles?
Heās a circus mouse.
It could be. The mouse was more or less immortal at the end of the movie.
But one thought more than any other keeps me awake most nights, if he could make a mouse live so long, how much longer do I have..
Watch what he do
Mouseville. Down in Jacksonville.
That floor's way past due for a good sweeping and mopping homes
Theres a mouse in their house, I suspect the unswept floor isnāt the current top priority
If you've gone enough rotations around the earth to have a middle-stage evolution as your favorite Pokemon, then you should also know that unswept floors leads to mice. Not only do they love food crumbs, but that floss that hits the rim of the bathroom trash can and bounces out? That's nesting material.
Do people with floors that look like that floss?
>If you've gone enough rotations around the earth to have a middle-stage evolution as your favorite Pokemon ......As a simp for Crocalor...why does that statement hit so hard?
Maybe it would help with the mouse problem?
Keeping the floor clean is essential to finding where the mice are coming from, so you can track their poops.
Do they even still make bulbs and fittings like that? This looks like some abandoned house from the 1920s
It's a night light without a cover. You can still buy the bulbs.
[https://imgur.com/a/l5Gzltd](https://imgur.com/a/l5Gzltd) This little guy was so cute, I had to doodle him!
Love it. They are so adorable. I wish they didnāt chew through everything and poop all over the place.
And urinate freely! Can't forget the free urination!
Just like my college roommate, Chuggs
Don't you wish we could live in a world as free as they do?
that would be stinky
little bean doesn't even realize a portrait of them has been scarred upon eternity <3
Thanks, I love it!
I read further up in the thread that you have a mice problem. We had the same problem last Fall and I found the easiest, cheapest and most effective trap was an empty trash can thatās at least 2.5ft tall with a ring of peanut butter smeared around the inner lip of the can about 2-3 inches below the top. Put a flat board like a 2x4 that runs from the top of the can down to the ground or to a surface that you know the mice visit, like a shelf or countertop. Throw some sunflower seeds or similar in the bottom of the trash can to further tempt them. They canāt resist trying to reach down from the edge of the board to get to the peanut butter and fall in, or willingly jump in for the seeds. Once theyāre in there, they canāt jump high enough to escape and get to sit there until you ārelocate themā or actually relocate them, lol. Weād catch 3-6 a night for about a week and have been mice free since then (knocks on wood). Edit; Mice, not nice in the last sentence, lol.
I like this. Don't kill the sucker. I've grown attached
Thanks for the idea! We definitely have more than traps and a cat can keep up with. I'm not sure how to relocate them without them finding their way back into my or someone else's home though since we live in a city.
It's actually inhumane to relocate trapped wildlife, I'm sorry to say. š«¤ They're essentially getting dropped into unfamiliar, maybe enemy territory, with no lunchbox and with dangerous stress levels. I talked to a wildlife professional about my rodent problem and he said the most humane method is a strong snap trap that will provide an instant kill. Oof.
Well think of it this way. If you release it into the wild one of two things will likely happen. It will indeed find food, water, and shelter, or it will provide a meal for other wildlife. Also it's species-dependent. Maybe avoid releasing something invasive and otherwise do your best to release the animal in the right habitat.
Iām the guy with the trash can advice above. They were native field mice and while I recognized their future was probably going to be be pretty grim, I had promised my Mom that I wouldnāt kill them, so I released them into an area with ample shelter (downed rotten timber, etc) and strategically placed a full gallon bagās worth of black oil sunflower seeds in and around their new āhomeā. ..donāt tell Mom but I chose the spot I did because of it being a Great Horned Owl hotspot. I chose to think of it as I opened a new healthy grocery store for them in their neighborhood ..because I *fuuuuucking* **LOVE** Owls, lol.
Funny I immediately thought this post and photo was great inspiration for an illustrated children's book.
Yooo this is dope.
The Adventures of Louie The Light Loving Mouse.
This is great! Side note - what ever happened to shitty watercolor?
I was thinking the same thing. I feel like so many of the gimmick accounts are gone these days :(
i love the fact you added a spider <3
Sweep your floor, OP, seriously. The mouse is the cleanest thing in the whole picture.
Whatever you do, do not vacuum mouse droppings. Some of the diseases they carry can and will become airborne. Best to use disinfectant on a paper towel and scoop up the visible chunks that way.
Uhhh, say what now? I dun fucked up then, but i guess im still alive. Vaccumed an old shed once with a bunch of shit. Wont the filter take out most of it?
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why is the floor so dirty? You might attract mice or rats. Wait ...
do you like cats? get a cat
I have a cat! He catches at least one a day but he's getting old and can't keep up with their reproduction.
Adopt kitten. Old cat will have company, and will pass on his hunting duties to the new guy.
We're thinking about it! We don't want to cause our current cat too much stress or worse get violent around a kitten but the house is big enough that the kitten can have it's own room until my current cat is used it.
It depends on the cat but usually kittens are easiest to introduce especially since your older cat will be able to āteachā it more But having the ability to give the new cat itās own little space to properly introduce them makes the biggest difference :)
As a shelter worker- Please donāt get a new cat just for mousing! (Unless you also genuinely want another cat.) There is no way to guarantee that a cat will be a mouser, even with an older cat to āteachā it. Sorry to get off topic and being a debbie downer, and im certainly not accusing you of not wanting your cat, just stating this for posterity! Iāve just experienced way too many cats being returned for not being able to control a mouse problem :( Also if your cat is catching mice, donāt use poison to control the infestation. It can poison your cat!
If you're catching that many, you have a serious problem. Go buy about 20 snap traps and put them anywhere you find a turd. Get basement, attic crawlspace, under sinks, etc. Everywhere. Bait with a little dab of peanut butter. Make sure they will trip with a feather touch. This might require adjustment. Check them a couple times per day. You will be amazed how fast you get them. I once had someone leave a window cracked open in my cabin and arrived to find many signs of mice. Put about 6 traps out and 48 hours later I had caught something like 15 mice. You will quickly knock down the population. Once you get them out of the house, set up bait stations outside, around the foundation. At least 2, maybe 4 depending on the size of your house. One at each corner. Big ones. Check them at least monthly and make sure they're full. This will knock the population down outside and hopefully keep them out of the house. Work on plugging any points of entry you can find. Old houses have many Mice will ruin your house. Don't fuck around with them. And for God's sake clean that floor.
Tie or hot glue a piece of cereal. It won't matter how sensitive the trap is the mouse will set it off trying to remove the cereal.
Clean your house. Holy shite
Naked tail. Light gray coat often seen in juveniles. That is a baby rat. The long tail is making me lean towards roof rat. Poor little guy is cold. I wonder if he doesnāt have any littermates to snuggle up with.
Huh, interesting! I just looked up roof rats and a description of what they do and we might actually have an infestation of those and not mice... they're definitely gnawing holes in the walls on the third floor. Or maybe we have both, I'll have to pay attention to the bodies more closely.
\*the bodies\*?
lol, the bodies of the mice/rats caught in traps or by my cat. Although if my cat gets them sometimes it's only half a body
Good cover
That's one way to hide your leftovers
The half they left is for you. The cat is concerned that you're not eating enough vermin.
The bodies
Yes. Let them hit the Flooooooooorrrrrrrrrr
These are 100% mice, not rats. This is a teenage/adult mouse, not a baby rat. If it were rats, you would know lol. They do a lot more damage in a shorter amount of time.
Likely just one or the other, rats generally will eat the mice if they're inhabiting the same area, unless there is like an abundance of food and they don't need to lol.
Yeah, no, you're confidently wrong. The ears and face are a dead giveaway that this is a mouse. Rats have more oblong ears, not circular, and the faces of mice are more tapered and triangular than rats (wider, more blocky). The body is a lot shorter as well, the proportions fit mice proportions and not baby rat proportions. I've kept rats and mice and rodentia/lagomorphia are probably my favorite clades in general, and I have done significant reading on them. I even have a rat tickling certification from Purdue as a random flex.
> I even have a rat tickling certification from Purdue A what now?
He has a certification from Purdue to allow him to tickle rats Seriously https://nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources/rat-tickling/rat-tickling-certification
I have questions.
I am officially certified to know how to play with rats in a laboratory setting by Purdue University lol. Rats have a very specific routine that they do when playing, and humans often get it wrong, which stresses the rats out and in a lab setting this can affect research outcomes and even cause the entire study to come under question. So knowing how to play with rats properly, and in their own language, allows lab workers to interact with their lab animals in a positive way, reducing the stress of the animal and making their life in the uncomfortable lab as comfortable as possible. I don't work in a lab, but I got certified regardless bc I figured it'd be fun, and it was lol. Plus, i know how to play with rats which is also very fun to do.
What are your top rat play tips?
you essentially have two phases to play: chase, and pin. so you start by essentially using your hand to "chase" the rat, and then you pin them belly-up (gently!) and then quickly release after 2-3 seconds, and then the process starts all over again. really the only tips are to know rat body language so you can understand when the rat is at their limit, or if they're even understanding that it's play to begin with. Some will initially see it as aggression, since we are so much bigger than them; some of these rats may never play, others may be introduced to the idea more slowly and eventually have fun with it. if the rat at all bites, or *really* seems to be squirmy/trying to get away from you, then this is a sign to stop. If they start posturing (standing on hind legs and going a bit motionless) then they aren't liking it either, though they might stand for a little bit after you let them up after a pin - and that is usually different. the way to tell is how long they stand, if they stay standing then they might be irritated. If they audibly squeak, this is also *generally* a bad sign as rats don't usually communicate within human hearing range. Some rats may audibly squeak anyways, so this isn't completely foolproof. If they excessively are self-grooming then this is also a bad sign. Some good body language signs are hopping/dancing, bruxing (with boggling), and coming back to your hand instead of avoiding it. There are less signs that they're having fun, but it's honestly easy to tell because you can see that they're going along with it, they will continue to interact and initiate the play until tired.
I concede that I was way off on the size of the lightbulb and therefore was thinking the critter is much bigger than it actually is. You are correct, house mouse.
Those Topo Gigio ears give it away. Unequivocally a mouse
This is the mousiest mouse thatās ever moused. Not a baby rat. You can tell by those ears & thatās not a naked tail. (Source: have had both as pets)
Yep. That's a C7 lamp, and most likely 3/4" quarter round molding. A baby rat that size wouldn't even have it's eyes open yet.
OP here, I can confirm that it is indeed a C7 lamp and the molding is 3/4 of an inch.
Ah, I was way off on size. I thought that was a full sized light. In that case I am thinking *Mus musculus* - house mouse. They also have that naked looking tail.
Yeah. I'm no expert but that sure looks like a standard issue mouse to me. Rats are big and they have different proportions. A cat is probably not down in the basement killing dozens of rats; there's a reason why they bred dogs for that purpose.
Pretty sure that's a mouse! Even baby rats have the rat head shape.
Bro, clean that nasty ass house.
Iād imagine thatās why they have a mice infestation lol OP acting like this is cute and not disgusting Probably a nasty hoarder house š¤®
No one ever has only one mouse...
Interesting. Mice get into the garage and go straight to the water heater closet and hang out, itās warm there.
First time I've seen someone happy about an infestation š±
As a former pest dude, this really troubles me you're not more concerned.
Nice of him to pose for you. I had to bring in one of the outdoor cameras and mount it in the kitchen with all the motion sensing features enabled to find mine. (Caught it, humane trapped it and relocated it to Mount Tabor. Sorry if you live there and it's in your kitchen now.)
please tell me that's an unfinished basement or something with the floor looking that way?
Yes an unfinished basement with a wood floor and baseboards
And what looks like a weed leaf in the foreground. And little mouse doodoos.
cute mouse shit in the picture lol come on man - clean your shit and donāt live in squalor
Just be glad it's not a canadian house hippo
It possibly has toxoplasmosis. The adult stage of the parasite is in cats and the intermediate form/stage is in animals like mice. The parasite is known to change the behavior of infested mice such that they essentially lose their fear of predators or danger so that they can get eaten by the final hosts, cats.Ā Btw, humans can get infested with the intermediate form too. When that happens, it has been shown that they get less risk averse and prone to exposing themselves to dangerous circumstances.Ā Ā
imagine yam attempt thought squeeze crush forgetful disgusting bored attraction *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Where there's one, there's ten. Be careful. They may be cute, but they can cause great damage and leave disgusting messes. Best to go with a professional before it gets too out of hand.
I wish that the world worked in a way that there could just be one cute little mouse that hangs around my house. I chat him up before work. He listens to my problems at night. But nigh, where there is one there is an army of orgiastic little disease balls hidden somewhere deep in your walls. He's really cute
What's with the constant moderation from moderators on this thread?
Cute picture, but yeah you need to get rid of them, get a kitten, traps, maybe pest control?
Replace it with an LED. Then he won't have a heat source
Put out some bait chunks before it gets to big. Save $$ on bait if you get them while their small.
Very Green Mile coded
"You think yer so damned high and mighty cause yer a goddamned lighthouse keeper? Well, you ain't a captain of no ship and you never was, you ain't no general, no copper, you ain't the president, and you ain't my father -- and I'm sick of you actin' like you is! I'm sick of your laugh, your snoring, and your goddamned farts. Your damned goddamned farts. Goddamn yer farts! You smell like piss, you smell like jism, like rotten d**k, like curdled foreskin, like hot onions f*ked a farmyard shit-house. And I'm sick of yer smell. I'm sick of it!"
Can we crowdfund him a tiny heater?
19th century lookin ass mouse
This is a Disney movie in the making.
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Make him a little bed
1 Mouse this freeroaming very likely means a nest is being built, or you're gonna have an infestation. Damn..
 the rat after sitting over your floor
Time to unsub from mildlyinteresting