On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:00:58 +1000, YMC wrote:

I guess there may
be more than one mouse in the house hahaha.

Mouse smell. If you have a mouser cat and it suddenly starts sniffing
around, especially along a route, then you know you have had a visit.

"YMC" wrote in message

And I set up a trap using the "humane mouse trap"
http://www.humanemousetrap.com.au/
I bought it at Bunnings for about $2.60.

That was great buying. I've got 3 of those traps and they've all cost me
over $8. But I swear by them since one night we caught 6 mice using just
one trap.

"terryc" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:00:58 +1000, YMC wrote:

I guess there may
be more than one mouse in the house hahaha.

Mouse smell. If you have a mouser cat and it suddenly starts sniffing
around, especially along a route, then you know you have had a visit.

At night, the cat seems to go into hunt mode as if its waiting for another
mouse to show up. I've been keeping it indoors for a day+ now.

I... ah crap, I opened the front door and it ran straight out. Damn I can't
see the cat now. My friend is so going to be so ****ed at me.

Yeah, I was surprised it was so cheap. Its Bunnings at Nunawading.

"YMC" writes:
I already had traps set up near my compost bin. Nothing close to the house
to avoid the obvious.

Is it possible that your stealthy visitor might be a native marsupial (an
antechinus) and not a pest rodent?

I have a small worm farm and noticed it was being visited by, I guessed,
a town rat. Around midday I chanced upon it, and it froze in the grass
right in front of me, so I got a good look at it, and it looked exactly
like a rat to me. But I noticed it had a baby clinging to its back, so I
asked here, and respondents declared it could then not be an introduced
rat.

So I ceased setting a trap near the farm, and accept that I'm losing
worms to this visitor whatever it is.

Question to all: is the antechinus totally carnivorous, to the extent
that I could safely put out a grain-based rat poison to nab any pest
rodents with no likelihood of harming the native species?
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)

g'day john,

Question to all: is the antechinus totally carnivorous, to the extent
that I could safely put out a grain-based rat poison to nab any pest
rodents with no likelihood of harming the native species?

good question hope we can get an answer, i had never given it much
thought as i felt the native rodents had a different food chain to the
ferrel ones, as it is only the ferrel models that want to live in our
homes with us. and in all the baiting we have done for the ferrel's we
have never seen anything but dead ferrel's.

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 07:35:22 +0000 (UTC), John Savage
wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

I get house mice and native 'mice'. When I read up on them it turns out
the native sorts actually hunt the house mice! All very handy, but I
can't have them living in the walls either. I catch them all in 'humane'
traps and let them go in waste land or bush land if they are obviously
not mice. I really hate killing critters. The rats were a different
matter. I got a traditional spring trap and killed them. They were
definately rats and bold enough to run through a room with people in it.
I figured they carry too many diseases to just be let loose somewhere.
Probably the mice do too, but they are less likely to survive where
there is snakes and owls and other birds off prey.

Sometimes I borrow my daughters cat - she might catch a mouse, but often
the mice just move out when the cat smell becomes too much for them. It
didn't work during the worst of the drought.

jules

YMC wrote:
Rats! Sometime back I saw that there were mice in my compost bin. I don't
put food scraps there except vegetables - but it must be nice and warm
inside during Winter time.

One of them got into the house. I was watching the History channel yesterday
when I heard something rattling away at the toaster. I paid no attention to
it. When I went to make some toast - out popped a small little mouse.

It ran into a small hole inside a cupboard wall. (Meaning its not in the
cupboard but somewhere in its interior gaps.)

I got one of the old fashion traps and one of the new modern plastic
eco-friendly ones which doesn't kill the animal.

I thought of borrowing my friend's cat for the weekend. Its quite good at
catching mice apparently. But I don't know how
effective that would be.

Would it help?? I know its an odd question to ask.



At the moment its just one. I hope. Occasionally I leave the doors open when
I do my cooking - must have got in that way.

jules wrote:

snip

Probably the mice do too, but they are less likely to survive where
there is snakes and owls and other birds off prey.

snip

jules


Y'know, I often wonder about that. I reckon lots and lots of native
carnivores would kark it if it weren't for the introduced rabbits and
mice. I know our local black snake has been growing fat on the mouse
plagues we get occasionally. I wonder what would keep him going if the
mice weren't there?

That's why I have no problem letting the mice go from my humane traps.
The likelihood of their survival away from their colony of origin is
slim to put it mildly and I figure most of them will end up in a
kookaburras dinner menu or a snake's or a kestrel's.

Not saying we need to welcome the bloody-introduced-species, just
pondering the fates of the mice that we catch...

--
Trish Brown {|:-}

Newcastle, NSW, Australia

"Trish Brown" wrote in message
...
jules wrote:

snip

Probably the mice do too, but they are less likely to survive where
there is snakes and owls and other birds off prey.

snip

jules


Y'know, I often wonder about that. I reckon lots and lots of native
carnivores would kark it if it weren't for the introduced rabbits and
mice. I know our local black snake has been growing fat on the mouse
plagues we get occasionally. I wonder what would keep him going if the
mice weren't there?

there is always a predator/predatee(? is that a word?) balance that forms
after a while. without so many mice, the snake may well live elsewhere - or
possibly not exist at all as his mother may have lived elsewhere/not had
enough to eat in order to reproduce. more likely, without exotic mice, he'd
be eating something else which presently do not live there, because the mice
live there instead & have crowded them out. i don't think we can _know_ what
(for e.g.) your backyard or mine would be like had mice, cats, english
sparrows, & every other thing _not_ been introduced by other people in the
past. there's no way to tell what would have happened once something else
entirely has incontrovertably happened instead. however, quite clearly,
australia would have black snakes aplenty in the absence of european mice.
they'd be eating something else & their habitat patterns might just be
different accordingly, or exactly the same but with a different food
source - or, in the absence of so many humans transporting mice about, there
may have been so many snakes in your area that they reach plague-like
proportions themselves, & subsequently receive a population correction from
mother nature because there is not enough to eat... (or any one of a number
of other hypothetical possibilities). nature keeps animals (and plants), &
the animals or diseases that kill them, in a balance. (it might not be a
balance we approve of, but our opinions actually don't count :-) european
mice, without enough predators (say, cats, dogs & humans - themselves all
introduced species as well), will crowd out similar indigenous species
(which your snake would eat, except that they're not _there_ because of
mice.) there'd have just been a different balance & different animals
occupying different places, but we can't know what it might have been like.

That's why I have no problem letting the mice go from my humane traps. The
likelihood of their survival away from their colony of origin is slim to
put it mildly

er, no..!
how have mice come to prosper? by moving away from their origins (whether by
accident or on purpose) & expanding their habitat.

by my observation, there are two groups of animals in the world - those
which prosper by being smart & adaptable (e.g. humans or dogs) & those which
aren't very bright but prosper by sheer reproductive capacity (mice,
rabbits, kangaroos). with the latter, they may thwart themselves at every
turn & be killed in droves by predators, yet survive in massive quantities
because they have so many babies, a few of whom survive to reproduce. the
animals which plague us tend to be of the latter variety. they are just
adaptable enough to make sure a few of them always survive a new situation.
they are always able to find other individuals to mate with, because those
individuals are already nearby, having previously been relocated, or
relocated themselves, for whatever reason.

then again, i suppose there is a third group of animals which are neither
wickedly intelligent, nor are they highly reproductive. they would be the
animals which either become endangered if someone or something moves in on
them, or become domesticated if they are useful to us & placid enough.

and I figure most of them will end up in a
kookaburras dinner menu or a snake's or a kestrel's.

i think a lot of them probably do, but there will always be enough
survivors, of that you can be sure. if you release a thousand mice in a
lifetime, & only 50 of them subsequently survive to have offspring, there
are still a LOT more mice in the world than there would have been had you
killed all 1000 instead of letting 50 survive.

Not saying we need to welcome the bloody-introduced-species, just
pondering the fates of the mice that we catch...

you're probably right in that most of them are caught pretty quickly. it's
the ones who aren't caught who go on to colonise new areas. which clearly
happens, otherwise australia would not be covered in a thick coating of
mice, rats, cats, goats, foxes, & every imaginable kind of feral pest!!
:-)
kylie

On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:50:16 +1000, "YMC"
wrote in aus.gardens:



I got one of the old fashion traps and one of the new modern plastic
eco-friendly ones which doesn't kill the animal.

I thought of borrowing my friend's cat for the weekend. Its quite good at
catching mice apparently. But I don't know how
effective that would be.

Would it help?? I know its an odd question to ask.


Never mind about cats or old fashioned traps whether eco friendly or
not get one of these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho12/3517640973/

from Woollies or Coles

They are the best traps I have ever used for mice, so sensitive gets
the little ******* every time. Peanut butter is the best bait - mice
cannot resist it.

You don't even have to touch the dead mouse, to release it just take
the trap to your bin open the jaws by squeezing the back part and the
mouse is in the bin, put the trap back (the peanut butter will still
be there) and it is ready to catch the next little blighter.

They are absolutely brilliant traps, promise.


Regards
Oscar

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:00:58 +1000, "YMC"
wrote in aus.gardens:

I borrowed my friend's cat for the weekend.

And I set up a trap using the "humane mouse trap"

http://www.humanemousetrap.com.au/

I bought it at Bunnings for about $2.60.


Still think these are better and you can use the mouse in your compost


http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho12/3517640973/

And you get two in a packet for about the same cost.


Regards
Oscar

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius

Oscar Trint wrote:

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:00:58 +1000, "YMC"
wrote in aus.gardens:

I borrowed my friend's cat for the weekend.

And I set up a trap using the "humane mouse trap"

http://www.humanemousetrap.com.au/

I bought it at Bunnings for about $2.60.

Still think these are better and you can use the mouse in your compost


http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho12/3517640973/

And you get two in a packet for about the same cost.

We've got them. Have caught two mice in them. On both occasions the mouse
was caught by one front foot only and struggled to escape with a severly
broken leg. I'm no animal rights activist but felt sorry for the mice.

Had to dispatch the mouse which some people would not like to do. Would be
better if the trap killed the mouse outright.

On the other hand, the bugger of a rat (or rats?) that we have in the
garden that eats our fruit and avoids all the baits, poisons and traps, I
would happily sentence to that fate.

On 10 May 2009 15:20:49 GMT, Tom N wrote in aus.gardens:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho12/3517640973/

And you get two in a packet for about the same cost.

We've got them. Have caught two mice in them. On both occasions the mouse
was caught by one front foot only and struggled to escape with a severly
broken leg. I'm no animal rights activist but felt sorry for the mice.

That's bad luck but that has never happened to me - have used them for
years and get periodic plagues, the traps have always killed em,
except once when a very young tiny mouse (presumably its elders having
been caught previously) was actually caught inside the trap unharmed.
Chucked the trap and mouse in a bucket of water to solve that problem.


Regards
Oscar

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius

Oscar Trint wrote:
On 10 May 2009 15:20:49 GMT, Tom N wrote in aus.gardens:



http://www.flickr.com/photos/psycho12/3517640973/

And you get two in a packet for about the same cost.
We've got them. Have caught two mice in them. On both occasions the mouse
was caught by one front foot only and struggled to escape with a severly
broken leg. I'm no animal rights activist but felt sorry for the mice.

That's bad luck but that has never happened to me - have used them for
years and get periodic plagues, the traps have always killed em,
except once when a very young tiny mouse (presumably its elders having
been caught previously) was actually caught inside the trap unharmed.
Chucked the trap and mouse in a bucket of water to solve that problem.


Regards
Oscar

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius

I caught two little grey mices in a humane tilt trap last night

returned to the neighbours as a compliment for their white ants
arriving here after they sprayed last month