Killing mice

(I was worried about the level of previously unseen violence lurking within my male friends, who are, on the whole, a bunch of wusses. They all said killing a mouse made them feel more of a man.)

Didn't much enjoy doing it, but it was him or me.

But try to make sure that the cat is a reliable mouser. Last week I saw a cat sitting on a porch. Not three feet away a squirrel was eating the remains of a pumpkin. The cat showed no hostile intent towards the squirrel.

One morning when I was a child one of the cats was chasing a mouse, and I helped the cat. The mouse ran behind the sofa, so I pulled it away from the wall; the mouse ran beneath the vacuum cleaner, so I picked it up; and so on.

Imagine if PETA googles this thread.

MDK MDK MDK MDK MDK!

(One reason why I could never been an animal rights activist is the homicidal fury that builds inside of me when an uninvited creature appears in my home.)

Surprise birthday parties must be a real hoot with you.

Raging Dan wants to respond but Pervert Dan is hogging the keyboard with his laughter and hooting.

the landlord asks if we've seen them
when she sets traps, i just spring them
the roommates say we should kill them all
but they stay up w/ me on nights you never call

and some nights you never call"

-casiotone for the painfully alone "we have mice"

Rah! And cheers for Dan's mania and the song quote.

Fair enough. But now you know there's a much better, kinder option DON'T YOU Yanc3y?

Wholesale methodical slaughter of any animal is bad, but I fully reserve the right to crush any rodent I find within the confines of my home with extreme prejudice.

Jacob said he’d lived with someone once, over on the mainland, who had a cat.

“Super,” Parrish said. “And now you tell me, you tell me in your recollection of that cat from once upon a time, you tell me that cat got any more excited and up in the air about a bowl of cream or a mouse and a fish than it did over a plain old bowl of your plain old dry cat food like any cats eat every other day. You follow me?”

Jacob did. He could remember offering the cat a piece of salmon that had fallen out of a sushi roll. The cat had sniffed it, licked it, and then wandered off, monumentally uninterested.

“So here’s what you’re going to do,” Parrish said, between chews on the end of his unlit cigar. “You’re going to go and you get yourself a candy bar. Plenty of peanuts in there, you make sure. Not just a hunk of peanuts—not one where they’ve got solid peanuts from here to there and they glue it all over itself with little squirts of caramel or something. What I’m saying is I’m saying something with some chocolate, and maybe a little nougat so it’s soft and it crumbles easy. Because this isn’t a big mouse, is it?”

Back when I lived with a bunch of other girls in an old house, there was this kind of tubby little white mouse that used to sneak up from under the kitchen floor and into the cupboards under our sink. The other girls were trying to kill him, but I sabotaged their traps - he never got caught. I couldn't help it.

We've had a little furry friend in the house for a week or two, so I put down a couple of traps on Sunday night. Only the second night and he's caught already.

And yes, they're left alive, stuck to the trap, but so long as you kill them pretty quickly and don't torture them, I reckon that's alright. (I put the mouse and trap in a bag and crushed him underfoot.)

I couldn't be doing with the humane trap thing - if it works I can't let it out anywhere nearby (or it'll go in someone else's house or come back to ours using its super mouse homing instinct), but also I don't reckon they work as well and I want the little fuckers out of my house as soon as possible.

That's my second mouse killing now and I'm starting to get a taste for it.

we have a mouse. i am going to have to kill it.

if you must kill it do not use sticky traps

i dont really want to kill it but my understanding is that catching it and then releasing it elsewhere just means it will die elsewhere

i wish i had a cat

can't you protest on philosophical grounds

i dont really want to kill it but my understanding is that catching it and then releasing it elsewhere just means it will die elsewhere

Better to die a free mouse in the great outdoors imo.

I recommend electronic traps btw. Pretty quick and not messy.

i was trying to catch a mouse for weeks, to no avail. bought all kinds of traps in which i put all kinds of allegedly mouse-attracting treats. nup. didn't even steal them, just left them alone.

eventually stepped on the mouse one day (by accident!) while talking on the phone. that did the trick, so that's my recommendation. talk on the phone until you accidentally squish the mouse.

house here just got lucky with a neighbor cat that hangs around our garage/kitchen 20/7. seen him catch 2 week and noticed a definite decline in mice presence. named the lil dude Dark Shark

uh, 2 -this- week

I can think of few things more entertaining than sucking up mice with a vacuum cleaner.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 17 January 2003 15:48 (7 years ago)

never change

No Nicole, you should feel righteous and RUGGED! Beating rodents to death = CLASSIC.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 17 January 2003 16:17 (7 years ago)

dan 'plainview' perry

haha this thread pre-bump is absolutely classic, Pete and Dan especially

lure it out by tapdancing with it

so i managed to trap a mouse under a garbage can. (this is after plugging all the holes i found, laying sticky traps and poison over the last few months)

now what?

also: my neighbour's cat was useless.

NOW WHAT?!

sing to it

i was thinking of shimmying some bond paper underneath - followed by another and then affixing them to the side so i can transport the guy out.

i guess that's what i'll do that he's calmed down.

these things aren't like dags are they? once he's a few blocks away he's gone, right?!

IIRC, you need to bring them at least a mile away or he'll find his way back.

My neighbor would often catch mice with a sticky trap, but she was too squeamish to dispose of the lil' critters, so she'd call me. The best solution I could think of was to throw the mouse and trap in a grocery bag, tie it tight, then toss it in the trash. I figure it'd suffocate pretty quickly, which seemed among the least horrifying (to me) options, given that death was a given regardless.

We have a cat, so no mice inside, but if you've ever seen cat toy with a mouse, you know that the cat solution is sort of like imposing a cross between slow suffocation and blunt trauma. For what it's worth, I've not seen cats catch mice inside. I think the gist is that having a cat keeps the mice (just smart enough) outside.

ok. he's now sealed inside the bin and ready for relocation (aside from all the jumping around he's doing). looks like i'm going for a walk.

hmmm
after i eat.

We get mice in the kitchen every winter. They've always been manageable with humane traps but seem more persistent this year. There's a cat in the house for 23 hours of the day but he ignores them. Anyway, is there a pet-friendly way of poisoning mice, by which I mean trapping the mice and them being poisoned/dead where they are rather than them being able to crawl off and die (and perhaps being a risk to the useless cat)? UK-based, if that makes a difference.

I had rats last year and my cat caught one of them, so I was worried about him getting poisoned after the exterminator had been, but they said he'd have to eat at least 2 rats whole to ingest enough poison to hurt him. He never actually eats rodents though, just carries them around in his mouth looking all pleased with himself

xp get one of those electric rat traps from Amazon. We used to live in this flat in London that had huge gaps in walls, under doors, etc, and they would come in from neighbours’ attics. I specify rat trap because iirc the charge is much stronger and kills instantly. Anyway no poison or drawn out suffering involved.

some bloodthirsty mofos itt by golly

my mice advice is learn to love them, embrace their quirks, make them soft little beds of milk thistle down, ask them how their day was, confide your secrets to them, go on grand adventures together, begin to fall ever more deeply in love, marry your mice, have a beautiful honeymoon in saskatoon, come back and establish a domestic routine, grow bored and disillusioned, return home early one day to find your mice cheating on you, throw all their belongings out on the lawn and then get a divorce. whatever you do don't have children with them! that just makes it ten times worse, believe me.

this thraed may hold additional wisdom:

A mouse in the house

the one-two of cat's post into calstars' on that linked thread still probably my favourite ilx moment of the last 5 years

we had a terrible mouse problem a couple months ago, but a combination of well-placed conventional snap traps and some poison solved it very quickly. i really hate having mice in the house and am ragebaited by cat’s twee post. hearing them in the walls, having to empty out pantries when they get into them, the jumpscare of seeing their movement in the corner of your eye. awful

dlopson

you will never defeat the mice

they are god's perfect poop factories

with acceptance comes peace

Cripes! I saw the thread title and the first thing that popped into my head was that it would make a good band name. So I did crtl-F and found I wrote this almost 21 years ago (back when my ilx persona was still heavily influenced by Ask A Drunk):

If I were to assemble a musical consort for the purpose of providing public entertainment, I would christen it 'Killing Mice'.

beginning to suspect that ilxor 🍍🥧 is not a cat after all

lol, I honestly thought this was an ilm thread

I think poster cat has acted superstitiously, I mean suspiciously on the dogs thread previously

I had to duct tape up my in-wall bathroom heaters because the little fuckers were using them as off ramps for their thoroughfare within the building

during my poor as fuck upbringing, for years my bed was a sheet of foam on the floor of a box bedroom with 3 of us in there. I remember waking up a.m. hours with the little fuckers scuttling about right next to my head!

I cut up some beer cans and blocked their entries.. also, coarse steel wool is good for little gaps and cracks

Thanks all. Always good to be reminded that killing animals might not be necessary but it feels like it's hit a point - moving them in non-killing traps has always been enough before but they seem too prolific/intrusive this year (including one having got into a clothes drawer, somehow).

no judgment homie, you gotta do what you gotta do ☮️