Lil Abner wrote:

I told my wife to set a few traps under the couters because they had
gotten into a box of macaroni.
She insisted on using glue traps and didn't bait them
This evening I killed a little mouse near the cat's bowl.
Looked outside a little bit ago and saw three apparently going for the
dog's bowl.
They ran under the mower and under the dog's house when I turned the
light on.
These are about two inches long minus the tail. there are probably a
bunch of them and their parents and grandparents.
We've never had a problem before but do now.
What's the best way to get rid of them?

i prefer snap traps over poison (then i don't
have any worries about poisons getting into the
rest of the yard if i bury the mice or feed them
to the crows) i don't buy any traps with the
big plastic trip pan they break even more easily
than the others.

peanut butter put on the trip pan works
fairly well, i always put just a little on
top and then put most of it on the bottom
so that the mouse has to push up the trip
pan to get at the rest of it. seems to
get them.

my first winter here i trapped over 30 mice in
just a few weeks. they had gotten in the walls.
after trapping them we sealed up what we could
find to make it harder for them. now i have a
few each year that leave tracks in the snow. i
put out traps when i see the tracks and that
usually gets them. then i plug up whatever new
holes they've made.

to encourage owls we have a nice flat layer
of limestone mulch around most of the house out
a ways. and they do get some of them as i can
hear them hunt sometimes. we also encourage
snakes during the warmer months. removing
any piles of dead grass and burying them deep
so that the mice won't nest near the house helps
a lot too. oh, and we don't have outdoor pets
so no extra food is out there and we don't feed
the birds (we do have bird baths to encourage
them being around and that does work, but for
food they have to forage and help out getting
the bugs in the gardens).


songbird