We found our first mouse in the house
August 1st, 2006Yesterday I was down in my basement, where I moved some blankets in front of the door in preparation for throwing them out. A little while later, I turned around to see my cat watching me, and a mouse watching the cat. I did not want the mouse to get scared and run and hide where we could not get it in the basement, so I herded it towards the cat. Freja did not see the mouse until it was about 2 inches from her head. When she did see the mouse, she chased it into the blanket and then jumped on the edges so that the mouse could not get out. My cat is very helpful like that.
I shook the blanket out outside the door and sent the mouse scurrying off into the brush in front of our brook. Hopefully, it does not come back inside. If so, I will have to set some traps. I really do not want to have to do that, though. When I was a child, we put some poison out for the mice which they gladly ate. Of course, we lived next to a large field and we later discovered a 2 foot hole in our foundation behind the sheetrock, so we got a lot of mice in the house eating the poison. We wound up having to tear down the all the walls in the basement so that we could remove their carcasses from the walls where they were piled up on top of one another. I have no interest in having that happen in my house.
Hopefully the cat will keep any more from getting in the house, especially now that we are starting to exert some measure of control over the mess.
August 4th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
We had a couple of mice when we first moved into our house earlier this summer. I put down some snap traps with peanut butter as bait, and then I went hunting for holes — they have to get in somehow. In my case, I found a possible entryway where then coax from the satellite enters through the outer wall of the house, as well where the water lines enter through the floor beneath our dishwasher.
To stop the mice, stuff the holes with steel wool. They’ll eat through just about anything else.
We killed two or three mice in the house, and haven’t seen evidence of them since, so I must’ve closed up the right holes. Keep in mind that mice can enter through surprisingly small openings.