Day 1
The LTLP climbs into the loft to fetch some clothes that she’d previously stored. The bag has been chewed open and the clothes munched upon. She expresses some dissatisfaction at this.
Day 2
I purchase some mousetraps. I set the mousetraps in the loft, using small pieces of bread as bait. I shut my finger in a mousetrap. It really hurts.
Day 3
I climb into the loft to check the traps. The mouse has taken all the bait from each trap, but has been caught by the final one. I am crestfallen as I look into its still, furry face. I dispose of both mouse and trap, feeling horrible. It is possible that the mouse had a friend, so I re-set the remaining traps, but I have no heart for doing so. I shut my finger in a mousetrap. It really hurts.
Day 4
There is another mouse!!! It has sneaked the bait from each trap, without triggering it. Yay for the mouse!!! I re-bait the traps, shaking my head in amusement.
Day 5
Once more, the bait has been taken with no disturbance to the mousetraps. The little scamp. I re-bait the traps, this time using peanut butter. It says on the internet to use peanut butter, as this ensures that the traps are triggered. I hate peanut butter, but I expect the internet knows what it’s talking about.
Day 6
The mice have eaten the peanut butter, but again the traps have not sprung. I clearly have not set the traps properly. I test the traps accordingly. I shut my finger in a mousetrap. It really hurts. I try some of the peanut butter when I am re-baiting. I suppose it is quite nice, actually.
Day 7
Mice have no idea about PR. If they would just serve up a casualty occasionally to keep me feeling sorry for them then they would be in a far better position in the man/mouse war. As it is, I keep baiting the traps and they keep eating the bait and escaping. So they are fighting a losing battle.
Day 8
A mouse has started building a nest in one of the mousetraps, using loft insulation and bits of cabling from my Sky TV. I re-bait the traps. Meanwhile, I am developing a serious peanut-butter addiction.
Day 9
Success!!! I actually hear a trap being sprung, in the early hours of the morning. I leap up, and climb into the loft. A mouse has the very end of his foot caught in a mousetrap, and is looking at it with annoyance. I look at the mouse, crestfallen. The mouse looks at me. It then runs off, taking the trap with it.
Day 10
Bait gone; no further mice captured.
Day 11
My only hope is that the mice will evolve a fatal nut allergy. The traps are undisturbed, aside from one, which has been moved several feet and then shat upon.
Day 12
Bait gone, no mice. I am running out of peanut butter, as the mice and I have eaten most of it. I move to a chocolate spread model. As yet I have nothing else to report.
Dude, buy some humane traps. Killing them only empowers the Mouse Nation. Others will come.
What Cliff said. Plus there’s no death involved which makes me feel a little better about it. They can’t help having cute little faces and hands and a bladder problem. Just remember to take the trap a LONG way from your house before letting them go, as they have internal sat nav.
Use apple, 100% kills over here.
Use the chocolates from the box that you were given for Christmas that no one likes, and squuidge it onto the bait bit. The mice that were our guests were very partial to marks and spencers belgian collection, particularly the truffle ones.
AK-47, the very best there is. When you absolutely, positively, got to kill every mouse in the loft; accept no substitutes.
The plastic ones are actually better than the old-fashioned wood ones with a metal spring. I use a bit of chocolate. David’s idea is brilliant, as no one here likes the slime chocolates with artificial fruit flavour in and I bet that the mice wouldn’t mind. I quite like truffles.
I have caught mice by pouncing on them with a cushion. This also works well, apart from the two mile walk before letting them go because of the satnav. They bite when you pick them up, but they’ve only got little teeth and it hardly hurts at all.
[voice=arnie]
Uzi 9mm
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Perhaps they’ll die of chronic obescity. Good plan with the peanut butter.
Miauw …….!
To be honest, Jonny, I always assumed that you were actually operated by little mice in sailor suits, pulling the levers in your head like that Viz cartoon about David Beckham. Your failure to catch any of the ones in the attic would seem to be powerful corroboration – chances are they’re the same mice. They’ve got to go somewhere when they’re off-duty, after all…
Well, what do you know. Our mice emigrated. I know you must have them, because what you describe is precisely what happened here, about a month ago. And now, without a single trap ever having been sprung (though with fewer finger casualties), we appear to be mouse-free. Odd.
Classic JonnyB. Made me laugh lots. I have had these same experiences, but not described them anywhere near as well.
My iPad makes the very concept of a mouse redundent
..what do you mean get off? I’ve only just come on.
Would you like to borrow Otis?
Having introduced mice into our previously mouse-free home, his skill at tracking and torturing them before killing them persuaded the others to leave.
Rats!
Hm. The spam software has gone a bit borked, so apologies if your comment took ages to appear – it seems to have put loads into moderation.
Perhaps mice gnawed through the wires.
Thank you for your… constructive… suggestions. I confess that I am a little torn RE the humane ones as I have heard that they become traumatised and then die outside in the cold when you release them. But that could be one of those ‘I have heards’ that is actually rubbish.
I’ve just looked up the last time I had a mouse. If anything even more of a debacle.
https://www.privatesecretdiary.com/2005/11/395/
(use ‘next post’ to scroll through)
Huh! not impressed. You only got mice – No. 10 has rats! – the furry kind as well as the politicians.
What about peanut butter-flavoured superglue?
When we had a mouse, I got a humane trap. Having done it’s job, and having transported said rodent beyond sat-nav range, I put the trap away in the shed pending any further visitors.
The following summer I noticed a mouse skeleton in the trap! Not quite so humane any more!
I have no suggestions as I’m busy hyperventilating.
Whatever you do, kill them. Think of the bubonic plague!!!
!!! [for good measure]!!
A mouse took a walk through a deep, dark loft
Jonny B saw the mouse, and the mouse buggered off
Where are you going to little brown mouse?
You eat my peanut butter and then shit in my house?
What about baiting the trap with poisoned peanut butter? Just remember not to try any.
We had a rat – a horrid, nasty, filthy, intelligent rat. We also had a dog who would look, very brightly, towards the disgusting scrabbly rat-noises and put his head to one side to indicate that He! Noticed! The! Rat! Then he would sigh deeply, job well done, and go to sleep. I do not suggest the dog solution, particularly if the dog in question is a quite beautiful but utterly thick Irish Setter.
I have no other useful ideas – we moved away and left the rat in possession.
I have a mouse too, it taunts me by eating the chocolate spread (that I bought especially according to the instructions on the box) straight out of the trap without triggering them. Is perhaps all the advice on catching mice WRITTEN BY MICE? We have been conned into feeding them. I need to get a cat.
Time for professional help. Norfolk must be alive with rat catchers.
Put an overdose of sleeping tablets in THEIR peanut butter.
But remember…you must not eat it.
Tall glass, chocolate in bottom, mouse jumps in, stuffs itself stupid, has a sleep, cant climb back up, dies – RESULT!
I feel like a bit of a mentalist, but I am really sorry for the mouse that got the trap stuck on the end of his foot. Awwwww.
Good post though, those mouses are running rings round ya!
I have had success with slivered almonds in a humane trap – caught several young mice in the trap at the same time. You still have to kill the mouse though – setting them free in the countryside is really just feeding mouse predators. You can kill them in the freezer.
Goos luck – mouse hunting can become a bit of an obsession.
When i was a student we caught a mouse sleeping on the warm patch on top of the video recorder.
i seem to remember my house mate catching him in a sieve and freeing him ‘somewhere amusing’ on campus.
pretty sure the sieve continued to be used for the following two years…
good luck…