Thread: Mice
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Old 06-11-2002, 02:23 PM
Druss
 
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Default Mice

"Drakanthus" wrote in message
news
My mouse traps are catching mice nearly every day under the garden shed. I
keep disposing of the corpses and re-baiting the traps with cheese. But it
occurred to me today - why? Are mice really a problem (outside)? I've
heard
they can carry disease and eat certain garden veg such as beetroot - but

do
they actually do any other damage or harm outside? What diseases are they
supposed to carry and how would they be transmitted to humans? Since

buying
the traps a few months ago I must have killed at least 50 mice. It's

getting
a bit tedious disposing of the corpses each day and I'm wondering if I'm
actually achieving anything anyway. Advice welcome.
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As far as I remember one pair of mice can easily produce over a thousand
subsequent offspring, in the form of children, grandchildren etc, in one
year. Thus with you killing 50, you're not really making much of an impact.
As to damage, they ate half of my stored apples last year, they were raised
on a metal platform, with smooth legs, how they got on it I do not know, but
between the ones they'd gnawed and the one's scratched and covered in
droppings well I didn't appreciate it.

I try not to store anything edible in the shed anymore, and I think they are
quite happy eating my beetroot, and various other crops outside.

Still I won't do anything about them since I reckon they were here first and
they will feed many other predators about the area.

It's only when my neighbours complain that they don't mind rats and mice as
long as they respect his garedn fence and stay on their own side, then i
have to do something about them.

Although on the funny side, I did, on my neighbours behalf call in the local
ratman, to sort out the compost heaps and he left his little plastic trays
full of poison and the rats ate them, the trays that is. The poison was goe
in hours, and the trays about a day later, though no bodies turned up
anywhere !!!

Duncan