On 11/04/2015 19:46, Timothy Murphy wrote:
stuart noble wrote:

If a mouse is caught in a trap, does it worry the other mice?
Or will they just ignore their dead brother?

Without a food source one assumes they would have pushed off elsewhere

Actually the mice got very little if any food -
conceivably there were a small number of crumbs on the floor.
I suspect they came in out of the cold.

Figuring out exactly how they got into the room(s) and closing the gaps
off with a stainless steel mesh ought to help.

Chances are there is a rusted through air vent grating somewhere.

I find Nutella makes excellent mouse bait. The odd one gets inside our
loft from time time time usually in late Autumn. That is by climbing a
vertical wall and finding a small gap somewhere under the eaves.

Dead mouse doesn't put the others off, merely prevents them from
throwing themselves on their favourite trap. For some reason the same
trap almost always gets them out of a choice of three that are all
strategically located close to wall edges near ingress or egress route.

There is some grain based rodent bait up there as well but the traps
usually work more rapidly if I hear scuffling in the loft space. I don't
like the idea of them sharpening their teeth on mains cables.

Squirrels have attacked my garage in much the same way. They did a lot
of damage dislodging tiles and to the roof underfelt.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown