Asked on May 19, 2014
How to get rid of mice?
by Jessica Hill
+182
We seem to have some unwelcome Mickeys and Minnies in our house. What is the best way to get rid of them?
I agree that 100% pure peppermint oil (not extract) does work. We have had "issues" with the pesky little furry critters in the past, but since using the peppermint oil they have vanished. Instead of putting it on cotton balls, we used some cheap glass salt & pepper shakers from the dollar store, enlarged the holes in the tops of the shakers and put in reed diffusers then added the oil. The only problem for us with using the cotton balls is that you are supposed to add more oil to them daily. As our "happy place" is 200 miles away from home, that wouldn't have been possible. We've used if for 3 years now and it works like a charm!
Snake poo is the best. I put it where they come in and presto not a mouse poo insight for 4 months. A friend of mine has a snake so that's were I get the poo from or you can ask the local pet shop.
Scatter bay leaves everywhere and plug up holes
One trick I have not tried yet but I heard works is a 5 gallon pail with a few inches of water in the bottom. Smear some peanut butter around the inside of the pail low enough so the mice can't reach it but can smell it. Then set up a board they can follow to the top of the pail... they fall in and drown since they can't get out. A buddy suggested that for my farm. I may just bury a pail in ground a ways to make life easier. Scoop dead mice out as necessary (with a net or anything you wish).
I have a house on a raised foundation, I keep Decon poison under the house in the crawl space year round. Been in house 12 plus years and never had any inside house.
I had mice, not wanting to kill them I bought a good live capture trap. I caught about 5 mice and relocated them, now no more mice and I feel better that I didn't kill them, cute little creatures just trying to survive.
Start by eliminating what they need to survive. They can't live too long without food. Use sealed containers to put all your food in. If you have pets, make sure you put the pet food in sealed containers also. Mice love pet food, grass and bird seed etc. Place traps...many traps, perpendicular to the wall. Mice follow lines/like to run against another surface. Use food or even cotton on the traps. Mice pull the cotton to use as nesting material. It's more difficult for mice to remove the cotton without getting caught. Mice are naturally curious and will investigate anything new in their environment. Rats are the opposite. They will avoid anything new in their environment. Therefore, with rats it's important to pre-bait the traps. Place the rat trap without setting it to go off. In this way, the rat gets used to eating from this "new" item without getting hurt. Once you gain their confidence, then you can set the traps. This takes about four to six days.
2 Ways:
-Pepsi - they drink it and explode
-Sponges drenched in Pepsi - they get exhausted chewing the sponge, then explode
Rats and mice dislike the smell of ammonia because it smells like predator urine. Fill a spray bottle with 1 cup ammonia and 1 cup vinegar. Mix well and spray all areas the rodents frequent. Spray cotton balls with the solution and set them in the areas as well.
Soak cotton balls in apple cider vinegar and the scent will keep them away. If you don't like the smell you can use peppermint oil and/or cinnamon oil. You have to re soak the cotton balls as the scent fades. I purchased some rodent spray and you can just spritz it around.
Use mice traps to catch them. In the future, you can tuck dryer sheets in out of the way places. For some reason, they don't like the smell. Also, caulking all cracks and little holes on the outside of the house will prevent them and other insects from coming inside.
Sprinkle crushed Penny-Royal leaves (mint family) on your outside perimeter. Sprinkle whole cloves on the inside perimeter. These remedies do not hurt people or pets. May need to be repeated. Where they are entering is the place for packing steel wool, usually at plumbing. Good luck to you.
Steel wool sometimes does not work as well as copper wool, harder to find, but stronger than mice can handle. They really don't care for cayenne pepper either, or if you can find chili pequin pepper, that's even stronger.
If you are using Peppermint Oil to rid your house of mice BE CAREFUL if you have cats!! Peppermint and also Cinnamon Oils are highly toxic to cats and can kill them! Yikes! Just do a search: Is Peppermint Oil Toxic to Cats? to find out.
Check your drains. Most drains have cross bars, a pop-up waste, or a screen over the drain. Yours may be missing or never had any of these. If it did not, replacing either the entire drain, which is not as difficult as you might think, may be the best option. If the current drain is a standard size there are replacements for the chrome ring that you see in the tub which will allow you to install a pop-up drain or screen that will keep the little beggars at bay for less than $20.
Check if mice are coming up the actual bath tub drain, if they are then you have more problems than just the mice. If they are entering up the inside of the bathtub drain pipe, then the drain pipe is disconnected or broken somewhere under your house which means the bath water is draining underneath your house and could compromise your foundation. Your drain line to the septic tank or sewer line could also be broken or has come apart. If this is the case contact HomeAdvisor.com or AngiesList.com and get a plumber or plumbing contractor out there right a way. Have them run a camera down the drain and find out how the mice are getting into the tub drain line.
Not sure if this actually works or not, but a friend of mine used a product called Fresh Cab in her RV to keep critters out. It's pine scented as I remember. She always said it was the only thing she's found that worked. Now, I have never used it myself, and I'm sure it needs to be rotated and replaced fairly regularly, but if you are bothered by the peppermint, this may be an alternative. I'm sure amazon has it.
Check your chimney, does it have a device installed to prevent access to rodents?
Have you checked gable vents or soffit? You may find the gable vents pushed in to permit rodent access, or holes in soffit/siding. From there, rodents can gain access to the attic and walls or lower areas of home, depending upon the home's composition.
If gable vents need repairing, screw in "hardware cloth" wire mesh, with edges folded over and secured to prevent future entry.
Make sure the areas are not infested with rodents, which will require installation of high intensity strobe lights or a professional exterminator.
Mix one cup of lime and one cup of corn meal in an old bowl very well. Then place this mixture with a thin layer of “cornmeal” over the top in small foil pie tins and scatter them where ever you have rodents. They love cornmeal and will eat down into the lime mixture. This will not kill any other animals. I use this on our ranch.
Mix 1 part flour, granulated sugar and baking soda. Place in shallow dish where mice are most likely to find it. You can sprinkle a little cinnamon sugar, chocolate powder or finely chopped nuts to make it more enticing – just add a bit more baking soda to compensate. What happens is when this hits their stomachs the baking soda forms a gas which rupture their stomachs = dead mice.
potato flakes and cats and easy setting traps especially in the spring,,,besides closing all holes esp, by pipes and wires,,we live in the country..flakes blow up mice but not cats,,
Tried and true!!!!! Make a mixture of two (2) cups of Plaster of Paris, one (1) cup of Self Rising Flour and one (1) cup of Cup 'o Soup and set out on their "runs" and replentish as mixture gets lower!! This mixture "ruptures" their bodies and the problem is taken care of!! They are infestive creatures and carry many diseases and therefore are NOT needed in the hierarchy of the scheme of things!!!!! Think "Bubonic Plague"!!!!!
We use peppermint - we found even very strong peppermint tea made them avoid the area, but we didn't use pure peppermint oil, because we do have a cat. Peppermint extract seemed to work fine for us.
We live on a farm and always have trouble with mice. We bought several of the electronic plug-ins things. NO MORE MICE!! You can also get battery powered ones to put in camper and vehicles.
The buckets of water may work but are cruel. The Dollar store snap traps work the best. They are killed instantly. Don't buy the ones that look like a slice of cheese. Buy the ones 4 in a pack for $1.00. Smash TINY amounts of bait on to the pads before you set them. A large piece can be pulled off and the mouse gets away. Use peanut butter, soft cheese or strong smell like salami with a tiny piece in the bait cup smashed on as hard as you can so they have to work to get the bait. GONE. The traps are cheap enough to use once and toss.
no electricity needed.
A 5 gallon bucket, a sheet stiff plastic, approximately 6mil thick
super glue or hot glue the plastic to the rim of the bucket. next, draw a circle in the center of the plastic and draw a pattern of 8 wedges in the circle, cut the wedges from circumference to circumference to let mice in. do not cut the circle out
Make any kind of ramps to allow mice to gain access the floor to the top of the bucket, one on each side of bucket.
sprinkle some seed around to bucket to entice and some in the bucket. That's it
Now you just have to get past the demise of a ton of mice that this will catch, because they will not be killed by this method
Be careful peppermint and other citrus oils are toxic to pets, so make sure they are able to access them.
Peanut butter in a glue trap. It's sad, but it works. Just check on them daily.
Any mouse traps
take dead mice with no poisons injested and put out side like on a stump or a table or a big stone the crows or hawks wwill eat them recycled yes?
Cats. Mine kill rats too! A rat won't last five minutes in my house. I literally went out to the shop for that long to briefly close it up - leaving the back door open, and when I came back into the house, there was a dead rat on the floor with my two kitties looking it over to see if it would still twitch. I think the poor critter came right in the open door.
Of course every once in a great while, the cats will fail to completely dispatch the poor animal to the afterlife - and for those occasions I have a bottle of chloroform in the shop (I keep it safe from tipping over and breaking of course) but I hope to ease the suffering of "the un-dead" by placing gently in a plastic tight-lidded box on a soft towel with a chloroform-soaked paper towel. It kills them in the most humane way I can think of.
Call in the Cat!
Start by eliminating what they need to survive. They can't live too long without food. Use sealed containers to put all your food in. If you have pets, make sure you put the pet food in sealed containers also. Mice love pet food, grass and bird seed etc. Place traps...many traps, perpendicular to the wall. Mice follow lines/like to run against another surface.
Cats are Great. You will need to get a Female. They are the hunters in the den. As long as we had a female, NO MICE INFESTATION, if you get a male all they want to do is eat and sleep. They have got to be one of the laziest creatures that I have ever seen. No hunting skill whatsoever. Keep that in mind when you are choose your little Exterminator...Get a Girl...Good Luck.
I found that my 9mm worked good! But ya gotta be quick and good!
Make recipe of:
One (1) Cup of Plaster of Paris
Two (2) Cups of Self Rising Flour
One (1) Package of Cup O' Soup
Take my word for this as Gospel. I used this and in "jig time" there were NO mice. Just make sure that you continue setting this recipe out long enough to make sure there are no more of them!! No poisons, no traps, just be sure that you keep any pets you may have away from the area that you have this in until you are sure you have eliminated the problems!!!!!
The absolute best way is to get ultrasonic sound generators. Believe me...as weird as it sounds, it really works!
Equal parts baking soda and hunny cornbread mix in a container with a small hole for them to get in and out. They will eat leave and never come back.
If you want to Kill them equal parts of cornmeal and baking soda works on mice and rats. Get dollar store quart containers cut a hole large enough for them to get in to eat the mixture and the the stomach juices activate the baking soda. That takes care of the problem.
I learned from a neighbor that mice hate to touch steel wool, so I found the hole where they came in, went to the hardware store and bought steel wool and packed it as tightly as I could into the hole. No more mouse droppings in my kitchen drawers and it lasts a very long time until someone or something pulls it out. And there were no more new holes to contend with and no one gets hurt.
I have an enclosed, unheated breezeway. Mice get in every so often so I put "Sticky Pads" in areas where pets can't get too. The sticky pads work every time and also trap little "creepy crawlers" as a bonus......bugs, spiders, ants, even flys. When you catch a mouse just dispose of the sticky pad in the trash!
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Ultra sound waves work. every time. I have used them in every place we have lived in. They work on spiders too .
WARNING. Do not used if you have any rodent pets like rabbits hamsters gerbils etc
It may take a week or more to make all critters leave..
Humane method and does not bother other pets like dogs and cats.
Best Answer - Not a Cat
My cat is apparently a conscientious objector. He kills nothing. The solution is the green cakes you buy at Home Depot, Lowes, Ace, and any other hardware stores. You don't need the trap portion so save your money. Use your empty plastic bottles. Cut off the mouth portion so that the opening is just barely big enough to fit the cake into. Put these bottles in strategic places (of course, the kitchen) but also in the basement, underneath the house, and in your storage shed. Mice give birth to their babies inside your home walls and in roof rafters and crawl spaces. These cakes are desiccants that the mice will take enough of these cakes to their nest (killing their spawn).
I had a LOT of mice until I placed enough cakes around for about six months. I now have zero mice but I still keep a bottled cake or two underneath the house and in the shed. Cats are great but they can't get into the wall spaces and... you could end up with a useless cat (except for eating & petting) who turns out to be a conscientious objector (or perhaps they think that the mice are just another pet around the house).
If anyone does use a glue trap - and regrets it as i did, I found a solution. Dip a q-tip in baby oil [generous amounts] run it on all sides of the mouse repeatedly. Hold the mouse by the tail and gently pull up as the glue gets neutralized by the oil. Have a jar handy to put him in and release it at least a mile from home. Read somewhere they can find their way back if you let them go too close to where you found him. Will definitely buy the peppermint extract in the future!
mothballs scattered away from pets and left in in RVs will eliminate mice problems~
We had a 2nd floor walk-up apartment in Center City Philadelphia and, at the sight of the first mouse, I did the peppermint oil/cotton ball thing. The building had mice in the 1st, 3rd and 4th floor apartments, but not ours. The landlord even called to say he was sending an exterminator and offered us his services. But there was absolutely no need! Peppermint works. (I also line my 13-gal. kitchen trash can with Mint-X trash bags from Home Depot).
Last year I started traps I caught 77 mice and 4 pack rats . We have 5 cats and they don't go near the pack rats . I seen a spray at Lowe for mice was going to buy some but no tellers anywhere , they said go to the self checkout, well I refuse to do that people need jobs ( the ones that want to work ) so I left it on the counter and went home . 30 miles away , I'm in the mountains .
A few years ago our whole neighborhood had mice everywhere from too much construction in the neighborhood and we also got skunks that moved in under our shed. I'd read coyote urine (yuk!) worked or ammonia. I went with the ammonia. I bought tiny glass jars on amazon (like what they use for jelly samples). We used a nail to make holes in the cover, tucked a piece of old towel in the jar and filled with the ammonia. We tucked them everywhere! Under the shed, deck and around the inside of the cellar. I got ones with a gold color lid so they are easy to spot so we can refill as needed. We have cats and wild bunnies in the yard and didn't want them to ingest the ammonia so the jars worked great. The skunks moved out and so did the mice....now to get rid of the tunneling chipmunks......
I have a solution for mice getting into your garage through the air vents. Measure your vents from the inside of the garage. Get punched, patterned tin sheets, tin snips (and the appropriate drywall screws from your local hardware store. Cut the tin sheets to size and secure to wall with screws at 1 inch intervals (mice are amazingly able to squeeze through small spaces). I did this a month ago and haven't seen ANY evidence of mice in my garage since. Outside in the wide open spaces is an entirely different story, but I would NOT use poison--cats, coyotes and other wild critters rely on mice for snack food.
Someone told me to use chips of Irish Spring soap. It works great and doesn't fade. They won't go near it! I put the chips in my motorhome and have never had a problem with mice!
I live in my RV and I made the mistake of boondocking next to a hill that had a mice infestation the size of New York, respectively ....MICE CITY, HUGE INFESTATION.....and they chewed their way into my RV B4 I realized it so now I am gonna try out ur suggestions as I am able to....THANX for SO MANY OPTIONS TO TRY INSTEAD OF POISON!
I KEEP poison out at all times in areas where mice like to enter. I THINK I have eliminated all points of entry, but you NEVER can be sure they will not find or create a new one. I have dogs and one must be very careful to put the poison where they can NEVER have access to it. I also use glass jars to contain the poison and drill/cut a hole in the lid the size of a dime. In all the years 21 to be exact I have had ONE mouse die in a stairwell to the basement wall. The poison makes them LEAVE the area seeking water. I have had a few die in the house but always where they could be seen as they are seeking water and most places they LIVE, no water available. I have had them chew through heavy totes so yes, never store food in plastic long term if you suspect or know you have mice. The season(fall) is also prime time for these wee invaders so keep a sharp eye out for evidence. They ca even destroy CANNED food by urinating on cans so if like me you have basement cabinets where you store them be sure to check there too.
Cayenne pepper sprinkled around point of entry and/or any areas you see mouse dirt. Works instantly. No harm to mice. Best deterrent I've ever used except when I had cats. Reapply as often as you want. I've never had to reapply and it's been almost a year since they've a mouse has ventured into my place.
The word "they've" in my above post doesn't belong. Please ignore it.
how to fix clogged drains
We use the peppermint oil on cotton balls, in the house (just in case) and in the camper. It seems to work in both places---haven't had a mouse since we started this way to keep them away.
A farmer told me that a natural poison you can make but won't harm your pets (if they eat it or the dead rodent) is equal parts honey corn muffin mix (such as Jiffy) and baking soda. He uses it for mice and pack rats. The baking soda reacts with their stomach acids the same way it would with vinegar and because rodents can't burp or pass gas it kills them. Dogs and cats can pass gas (as any of us with furry friends I'm sure knows 😉) so the mixture doesn't affect them if they were to get into it. I can't stand the sticky traps and the more humane spring traps, with the crafty little devils in our house, I find the traps unsprung with the peanut butter eaten away. I don't like the idea of dead mice in my house tho so I think I'll try the clove oil ideas shared on here first. I'd prefer not kill them if I can help it but I'm very tired of them getting into the pantry. 😠
Mice like sweets, which I found out the hard way. I had left an open roll of peppermint Life Savors on the downstairs table. Mouse ate the whole roll. I found him dead awhile later, shriveled up like a prune. He apparently had been headed for the basement floor drain, looking for water. That happened twice. Expensive way to kill a mouse. I prefer the new and improved traps with peanut butter.
This isn't for everybody, but I started using rodent birth control about three years ago. We had a parade of rats on our fence tops at night. I started leaving out rat food, not poison, water, and a product from Senestech that comes with a special station for dispensing it. I made them a feeding station on the top of a wood pile, not next to my house, but in the yard. I no longer see rats around, the rats grow old and die without reproducing, if my local predators catch one it does not harm the owl, cat, or fox that eats one. We had our house rat-proofed first, the company says they prefer to live outside, but they had destroyed our attic insulation. The company cleaned the attic, replaced the insulation, and sealed up the points of entry. No more house rats and they check every six months, no more rat parades. I decided to keep the feeding/birth control station up. Sometimes there are few rats using it, in the summer a few more show up, but the more, the merrier because I know they are all sterile, they claim the male rats are also sterile. You might get your neighbors interested in this enough to help you maintain a feeding station since they are also reaping the benefits.
Another non poison around pets is to sprinkle dried instant mashed potato flakes. They love them and after eating they drink water and it explodes in their stomach.
I cut stalks of peppermint/spearmint (whichever is growing late season) and put them in the back interior of my drawers and cabinets. Never have a problem with mice. They get left over the winter, and replaced next season from the garden.
We wanted to get rid of the mice,(tiny field mice) but not kill them. We knew how they were getting in, so we put a little peanut butter in one of those plastic "Have a heart traps" and the mouse goes in, but cannot get out. Than my husband put it in the back of his truck, and let it loose, miles from our house. You may have to do this a few times, as we ended up catching 4 of them, but it is a more humane way of catching and getting rid of them. Also my husband let them go in the same place in case they were a family, lol....