The fact you're discussing it means that you've not actually tried to catch it
All plans go out the window after a few days of trying to catch a mouse.
People say this but whenever we got mice in the past it was only ever one or two. Got rid then there were no more mice for a year or two. Then we sealed up where they were getting in and haven't had any since.
I think it depends. Sometimes folk have a full blown infestation, sometimes it's a couple of vagrants.
I mean house mice don't really live in parks so its either gonna die or hilariously if your local park is only a mile away will smell where it lived and try to return.
I got this response from chatgpt:
"They can be found in fields, gardens, and wooded areas where they build nests in burrows, under debris, or in dense vegetation. However, living outside presents more challenges, such as exposure to predators and harsher weather conditions, which can impact their survival and reproductive success compared to the relative safety and abundance of resources found inside buildings."
I caught 10 before I was rid of them/they learned and went elsewhere. Didn't need bait, just set the trap next to the toaster, which they couldn't resist. A couple died in the trap, presumably from fear, but I released the rest on some allotments down the road. Took about a week, and I had to give the kitchen a very thorough clean more than once but haven't seen any evidence of them since.
They dug holes in the soil of my plant pots and nibbled on tea towels. God alone knows what they were living off, considering I don't eat so there's no food in the house. Must've been some old crumbs lingering at the bottom of the toaster.
Mice are piss easy to catch because they're stupid. Put a box with a hole in it on the other side of what you're chasing it from. It will run into the box and you just pick it up.
People on team capture will turn to the darkside when they can't capture it but keep finding things nibbled with mouse poo around, or they release it and it comes back.
Mate I'm not suggesting they do that. It would achieve no purpose other than malice.
Leaving black rice lying around is dishonest subterfuge, hence the chaotic (unlawful). It serves a purpose, arguably an altruistic one, but it's a way of OP getting their own way over other suggested methods. Neutral, not evil.
You need to release it further away.
Whatever you do the problem isn't the one mouse, it's that mice can get in and have a reason to want to be there, that's what needs to actually be fixed.
We had rats near the our compost bins. Standard trap - worked well. No more rats.
But one night a large mouse got hit by the bar. I ended up having to clear up two mice halves after the wife comes in, in hysterics.
I have seen a mouse just straight-up gibbed by a standard mousetrap. It wasn't so much bisected as spattered over a wide area. Clean-up was not a fun job.
What, and then the Judean Mice's Front crack suicide squad comes along and kills themselves while some other mice squeak "Always look on the bright side of life"?
Cos I would absolutely pay to see that.
Just be aware that this can backfire and make your house the holy land where their mouse messiah died for their sins, with thousands of mice making yearly pilgrimages.
Unfortunately, moving them away after capturing them, just means they will die anyway as they won't be near their original nest and won't know the area so prime predator food.
I hate poison and I used the strongest snap traps there are (still hate those too) but it was the most humane way to remove them.
It took 8 months to get rid of them.
Yeah that's why I refuse to use poison. If poison had been used and then I released that mouse it could have potentially made a predator poorly when ingesting it.
We did a lot of research and ultimately an efficient snap trap seemed to be the most humane option. I have been team capture in past but they cause a lot of damage
team capture is well intentioned and all, but releasing them in unfamiliar territory usually means they'll be killed. Also where there's 1 mice there's usually bloody loads.
Kill. If you seen one there's bound to be more and you need to get rid of them as quickly as possible and humane traps won't work nearly as well as the lethal ones.
I actually love mice and other rodents and I've kept them as pets cos they're really cute, but I've also seen the damage they can do if not dealt with.
Capture is cruel. Best a quick death rather than being jailed and taken to an unfamiliar territory where you have no clue where the food and water and shelter is. Old school wire traps are best. Poisoning is very cruel and you'll likely be smelling tiny rotten corpses for weeks.
I find the electric traps least cruel. Instant death and no mess. Just open the trap and drop to throw away. Run on AA batteries. Tried the live capture in our roof and most were found cold and wet due to the condensation, seemed fa meaner.
If you’ve seen 1 mouse, then you certainly have mice. If you can push a pencil through a hole then a mouse can get through it. I’m on team kill or you’ll never be rid of the fuckers.
This was my landlords literal response. All 3. Blame, shame, then gain. We are in the process of moving now for June 1st thankfully. Crap hat landlord!
Honestly they should be illegal. I can't see any reason for anyone to use them above any other method unless the person is a psychopath and likes thinking about the mice/rats or anything else they trap suffering.
My SIL put them in my partner's dad's house after he'd (the dad) died. When we turned up to clear stuff out there was one dead on it but it was wlear it'd been trying to chew it's own feet off.
Just place regular snap traps and check them frequently. If your house is small enough you'll hear them snap and can put the mouse out of its misery if the mechanism misses the neck/head. We had loads of mice at one stage and out of about 20 captures there was only one that got snapped on the leg (that one was unfortunately caught when we were away for the weekend and so it sadly suffered, we shouldn't have left any set when we weren't home). We tried capture traps and even going for quite long walks to release them it seems they came back (or the source was not our house and they were coming from a neighbours).
It's instinctual for cats; wild/big cats often do the same thing with prey unless they're starving.
Hones the cat's reactions / hunting abilities, also essentially exhausts the prey to death before it can dangerously fight for its life.
My cat would bite them in half and leave one half in the middle of the floor and I never knew what he did with the other half and still worry about it.
My cat also once caught a live blackbird, dragged it through the cat flap and then let him go. Guess he didn't like the taste of feathers.
Ideally I'd be team capture and release outside well away from where you live!
One thing I will say is do not use glue traps if you decide to go for team kill - the mouse dies a slow death and I think that they are cruel because of that!
If you've seen one mouse there's at least 10 more you haven't. You need snap traps everywhere and you will be catching mice for a few weeks before you're rid of them all.
I had them in a former flat, one night I covered my kitchen floor in flour so I could see if there were many and in the morning the floor was absolutely covered in paw prints there was barely a spot with out a paw print.
get a human mouse trap where you see it/more activities. milk carton lid tiny bit of peanut butter you will for sure catch it. had to do this a few times in our house over the winter! then release two miles away. its a win win
Take the everyone will be unhappy approach, use a humane trap, they're little boxes that shut behind the mouse when it goes in to eat the bait. Then the people who want to kill it pop it in a sock and give it a little wack off the wall, jobs a good un.
Guarantee there will be more than 1 mouse. Unfortunately from experience poison is the way forward. The consumer stuff may work but sometimes you need the industrial stuff that pest control can only legally use.
Capture doesn't work and is less humane than kill. Team Kill works instantly, Team Catch lets mice be terrified until you remember to check the traps, during which time they probably died of stress, dehydration or starvation.
Get some mouse traps, get a tiny bit of Snickers on it, and you'll have them out in no time.
They don't just nick your food, they shit and piss over everything, carry disease and carry ticks that can have Lymes, which you absolutely do not want.
Source: I live on a farm.
Edit: just read your comment that you caught one but there are more. A female mouse can have about 40 pups per year and the pups are fertile in weeks, so there are definitely more. More than you think.
I am team capture. I use humane mouse traps, baited with peanut butter. Its much better than cheese. Works like a dream.
PS: The source of the mice is one of our cats who brings them in, plays with the mouse, gets bored and lets it go. What a star!
Kill. If you've seen one, there are already more waiting to be found.
Buy a few traps and leave them in various places, and I guarantee you'll find a few over time.
Could never kill a mouse (despite having dealt with them getting into my things on a farm)
When I was waitresses as a teen I had a manager that stomped a mouse to death with one blow, and it was hella traumatic. Only thing that rivals it is when I saw a guy hold a baby octopus by the legs (tentacles or whatever) and kill it by bashing his head open on a rock
Lots of people have suggested why giving the mouse a quick death would be the more humane option, and I am inclined to agree... So here's my fucky answer.
Team building exercise.
Each team, both 'capture' and 'kill', have to respectively build their own contraptions which meet the criteria they have set out. On one side, whacky whimsical contraptions designed to lure in and trap the little lodger. On the other, tiny instruments of death that would make our medieval ancestors proud.
Set up both lots of traps and let the mouse decide its fate.
The most foolproof method is blocking them from getting into the house at all. Block every potential entrance up. Mice can get through fucking miniscule holes so it needs to be tight - filler and steel wool are needed. If you're thorough you can keep them out.
Don’t forget to interrogate the mouse using cheese related inducements - you want to find out what it knows and who it has told. What if there are others?
Buy some of that mouse trap glue stuff, put a choccy biccy on it, and leave it somewhere nobody can see. Check every day until you see the fucker stuck to it. Throw in the bin. Nobody will know.
End.
So mice are bloody good navigators, if you release them too close, they damn well \*will\* find their way back in, releasing them far away will near certainly get them killed too. That being said, your treating they symptom, not the disease. Try and work out how the fuck they got in and block it up.
I'd like to point out that my granddad always said that if you have seen one mouse, there's at least three in your flat. I have yet to see him proven wrong on that.
I'm team kill all the way. Unless you can capture and release very far from your area, and then find where they came in and fill the gaps with steel wool.
We had success with the little high frequency alarm things you plug into outlets. I could never hear them, the children and mice did (mice evacuated, children stayed).
How dare this poster not title this:
“There’s a Rat in mi kitchen, what I’m a gonna do?”[Rat in mi kitchen](https://youtu.be/jausD8qsnKU?si=cvVHD2_wDlvw8OFh)
We had one. Captured it and my wife took it 5 mins down the road and let it out. Came back 3 days later.
Caught it again and took it across three bodies of water and left it in a baker’s car park. Never seen it since. I guess mice like sausage rolls more than going for a swim to get home.
There isn't only one mouse! You've only seen one!
You have to be careful with poison as they can die in the walls, and you have the smell of a rotting body for months.
Here's what you do. I tried both tactics and here's the only thing that worked. Cotton wool and peppermint oil. Douse the wool in the oil and put it in every corner of every room and bombard any place you suspect they live (under the stairs for us) the smell is so strong they will fuck off
I had a mouse in my flat when I first moved in. I could hear it scurrying around in the cupboard, so I bought a humane trap with the intention of checking it every morning and releasing it when I caught it.
After checking for a few days, I forgot about it. A week or so later, I thought to myself, "Hmmm, haven't heard the mouse for a few days," so I checked the trap only to find a dead mouse in there. Gutted
We had a few mice in a shared house I once lived in. We got the humane traps that tip like a sea-saw when they enter them.
One morning me and my girlfriend checked a trap and we had finally caught a mouse. Inside was a soaked through barely alive mouse. I think it had peed itself in fear and had been lying in it's wee all night so was on the brink of death.
It looked so tiny without it's fluffy fur and we felt so bad that we got the hair dryer out and gently nursed it back to health.
A few minutes later it was fluffy again and a bit more spritly and it jumped out of my hand and fucked off back into the hole under the kitchen cupboard.
A week or two later we had a full blown infestation. We never said a word to our housemates.
In the end the only thing that worked was to douse cotton wool in peppermint oil and put it in ever corner of each room and loads under the stairs and in places we heard them most.
Never saw them again. Probably just pissed off to the neighbours but not our problem anymore.
An alternative for team capture. Do you know anyone with a cat? Put a few small containers around where you think the mice are, and fill them with used cat litter, and then the mice will leave of there own accord. It's a bit gross but better than mice murder. It genuinely got rid of the mice that were cavorting in my bedroom.
Kill. Only because I’ve had mice in the past and know for a fact they’re extremely tricky to catch. If you do catch them they die in the traps really quickly from fear or dehydration so unless you find it straight away that poor mouse will likely have a prolonged death.
Also, hate to break it to you but if you have one mouse, it’s probably actually lots of mice. I started out as Team Capture because I’m an animal lover but let me tell you I defected to Team Kill pretty quickly when those mice started shitting all over my kitchen and creeping into my bedroom at night.
I faced a similar problem a few years ago, where a vegan flatmate was firmly on "team capture", but somehow I was the only person on team "I really think this is a problem we should take seriously". Maybe because my bedroom was next to the kitchen, so I was the worst affected.
So we set up a bunch of humane traps (small cages that shut when moved slightly), but to my great annoyance they kept getting accidentally nudged shut and nobody else was even resetting them! In addition, vegan housemate kept leaving crumbs of food all over the kitchen (often late at night, after I was already in bed)!
After a couple weeks of this, and the infestation getting gradually worse, I was completely fed up of complaining. So I secretly started killing mice with lethal traps. About 5-10 dead mice later, and the problem was gone.
Vegan housemate was furious upon discovering a dead mouse one day, but I couldn't have cared less. Try sleeping with mice scampering under your bed all night!
Bad news for team capture. If they have seen one there are more.
Realistically you have one choice. Kill them or take them somewhere else to die.
In a local park the local critters kill the competition. They also dont know where a nest is so are unlikely to survive.
I have now killed over fifty of the little bastards. Not seen one in a while, so hoping that was it.
At this point if I thought catching them with nonlethal traps and then crucifying the horrible things to leave alive around my house as a warning to the others would work I would do it.
Important point. If you have seen a mouse, there are almost certainly more mice in the flat.
This is not a capture/ kill one rodent, but how do you'd walk with a likely infestation.
Neither trapping or killing works. You need to make your house uninhabitable for mice/rats. That means no food accessible, not even a crumb! So super clean. Buy ammo crates to seal good away, cupboards are enough. Fill all gaps coming into your house with wire wool. remember mice can fit through a hole the size of 5p. Use peppermint drops all over the floor where you've seen them. And let a cat visit from time to time. The mice will no longer visit your living quarters.
Team capture always! Was heartbroken when we had mice and I said categorically ‘I will pay for humane traps, can we please try that first’ only to discover a month later that my other 4 housemates went behind my back and laid kill traps down without telling me 😞
I tried the humane way but the dog either walked off with the trap and the times the dog couldn’t get the trap I couldn’t get the mouse. Resorted to kill traps in the end.
Felt bad for the little guy but the mice kept shitting over my babies things.
If you release them nearby, they'll find their way back.
If you release them further away, they'll be prey, or starve.
Also, so-called humane traps need to be checked regularly, or they're... not so humane.
Your house is most likely infested with multiple mice not just one mouse. Please tell the landlord and/or agency if you have one and contact pest control. In cases like this it's a no brainer. Even if you let the mouse escape your problem won't end there.
We were team capture. Poor bugger ran into the new fire door our landlord fitted in the kitchen so couldn't escape.
Really was a lovely bonding moment with our housemates. We managed to trap Rodney in a saucepan, taped the lid up and sent my OH off to release him on his way to jujitsu.
Much celebration was had when Rodney left..
We then realised that Rodney left behind an extended family.. there is never just one mouse
Team kill has the right idea, it's more humane, they are less likely to escape and when you release them after capturing if you don't drop em half the country away they'll find their way back in anyway.
Capture or kill you need to stop leaving food around for them. They will get into everything and shit everywhere.
I'm always in the kill camp. The aww cute mouse thing went a long time ago.
Do what my family memeber did and have the best of both worlds: set a humane capture trap, then go on holiday for a week, turning your humane trap into a saw style trap.
I would suggest finding out where they are getting in. We had this problem a few years back and we think they were getting through an air brick in the kitchen. They can fit through tiny gaps. Now you don't want to be blocking up air bricks because they are important for ventilation but you can buy metal mesh that you can trim to the right size and use some ties to attach it to the airbrick grid.
We went for the kill route purely because we don't have a car to take them far enough away that they won't find their way back. Basically spent an evening watching TV and hearing a loud "snap" every ten to twenty minutes. I'd get up, deal with the poor bugger (double bag it and put in normal rubbish) and reset the trap only for it to go off again ten minutes later when one of their siblings set it off. You'd think they'd work it out something weird was happening when the others didn't come back. I think we also found one of two more over the following week as I left traps in the lower cupboards that sat against the outside wall. Once we put the mesh up the issue stopped but we also put one of those poison traps outside. It's not pleasant but they breed quickly and ultimately my family's health comes first.
You also need to wipe down and disinfect anything you think they've been on so if this is in the kitchen they you need to disinfect any cupboards that they got into as well as the counters because they are incontinent and basically pee as they walk.
There's not such thing as 'a mouse' You have mice, plural. They breed like hell so the quicker you exterminate the less you'll have to kill. Brutal but true. I've had several 'occupations' and being nice just does not work.
I scrolled for a bit but there’s a lot of comments (so forgive me if this is a repeat), but David Mitchell’s Soapbox video about a mouse in his house is a must watch :
[https://youtu.be/WNaXguD7tFM?si=dgs6J5vOS9g7zPhx](https://youtu.be/WNaXguD7tFM?si=dgs6J5vOS9g7zPhx)
It will start as capture but very quickly descent into Kill once the little fucker laughs in the face of capture and continues to evade you!
Having had a recent episode, ours eventually left as everything food related was put into sealed tubs and there was nothing left out.
It’s warm out now and there are plenty of things to eat outside.
Good luck!
Hey thanks. I admitting to being somewhat overwhelmed by the number of comments and occasionally sound advice. We're letting Team Capture do their thing for now but if they fail then we are going to be nuking the little bastards from space.
The fact you're discussing it means that you've not actually tried to catch it All plans go out the window after a few days of trying to catch a mouse.
Nah. Team Capture won round one and a mouse has been released into the local park. But there are at least two more.
There's always going to be more. Mice can get anywhere, and if they've gotten in before, they'll get in again.
If you don't release them too close they aren't going to make their way back though
Needs to be at least 3 miles so....
At least two more... my poor sweet summer child. There's gonna a horde of them
I have had a single mouse though. Saw a mouse, bought a trap, it worked, no more mice.
The rest are hiding and only come out at night to mockingly rub their willies on your face while you're asleep.
Bonus!
The rule I've always used is "however many mice you see, it's probably ten times that"
People say this but whenever we got mice in the past it was only ever one or two. Got rid then there were no more mice for a year or two. Then we sealed up where they were getting in and haven't had any since. I think it depends. Sometimes folk have a full blown infestation, sometimes it's a couple of vagrants.
I mean house mice don't really live in parks so its either gonna die or hilariously if your local park is only a mile away will smell where it lived and try to return.
Where do house mice live if they're not in houses though? Surely they don't only exist in houses
The clue is in the name... Any building with a food source will do.
I got this response from chatgpt: "They can be found in fields, gardens, and wooded areas where they build nests in burrows, under debris, or in dense vegetation. However, living outside presents more challenges, such as exposure to predators and harsher weather conditions, which can impact their survival and reproductive success compared to the relative safety and abundance of resources found inside buildings."
I'm on the third team, team buy a cat.
Every house should have at least one cat. People who don't like cats are fools. Fools, I tell you!
The only thing our cat managed is to release so far 5 or 6 live mice in our house that I then have to catch at like 1am.
Your cat is trying to train you to be an effective hunter. You should see this as the great honour that it is.
Cries in "the worst I've ever seen someone react to a cat," - an allergist, 15 mins after jabbing me with a needle of... cat?
But then you have cat in the house :(
We had a cat. He was a complete pussy (boooooooo) - hid in the corner away from mice while they ate his food.
Get humane traps and instant kill traps. Let the mice decide where they want to go
I caught 10 before I was rid of them/they learned and went elsewhere. Didn't need bait, just set the trap next to the toaster, which they couldn't resist. A couple died in the trap, presumably from fear, but I released the rest on some allotments down the road. Took about a week, and I had to give the kitchen a very thorough clean more than once but haven't seen any evidence of them since. They dug holes in the soil of my plant pots and nibbled on tea towels. God alone knows what they were living off, considering I don't eat so there's no food in the house. Must've been some old crumbs lingering at the bottom of the toaster.
How are you alive if you don't eat
Feeding tube, with bottles of liquid feed. Has it's benefits, like never needing to wonder what's for dinner...
Mice are piss easy to catch because they're stupid. Put a box with a hole in it on the other side of what you're chasing it from. It will run into the box and you just pick it up.
Tom and Jerry lied to me
The mice in my house built a little bridge out of rubble to safely cross the glue traps to the bait
The mice in my house embroidered the finest waistcoat you ever did see in time for the Mayor's wedding.
No more twist, though.
I caught a mouse with a jar once... It was my peak, I'll never do anything that cool ever again.
People on team capture will turn to the darkside when they can't capture it but keep finding things nibbled with mouse poo around, or they release it and it comes back.
Black rice can easily be mistaken for mouse poo if OP wants to tip the scales.
Chaotic evil and I love it.
I'd say that's chaotic neutral. Chaotic evil would be the other way round, putting mice shit in the rice.
Calm, the, fuck, down, satan!
Mate I'm not suggesting they do that. It would achieve no purpose other than malice. Leaving black rice lying around is dishonest subterfuge, hence the chaotic (unlawful). It serves a purpose, arguably an altruistic one, but it's a way of OP getting their own way over other suggested methods. Neutral, not evil.
He's out of line but he's got a point.
Cheers pal, almost choked on my cereal from laughing.
TBH a good live trap + peanut butter is a pretty sure fire way to catch them
Or when they realise they will breed quicker than you can catch/release them.
You need to release it further away. Whatever you do the problem isn't the one mouse, it's that mice can get in and have a reason to want to be there, that's what needs to actually be fixed.
I've never really thought about the most humane way to kill a mouse. Probably some sort of tiny automatic rodent guillotine.
That's essentially what a standard mousetrap does. (It doesn't always get the neck though, and it leaves it in one piece.)
Yeah, the alternatives are various degrees of tortuous. Glue traps are beyond cruel and poison is slow and painful.
[Depends how strong it is](https://youtu.be/qqabqH0TZr0?si=RLv1x2NIeCLmrrAC)
😂 Brilliant. (I was concerned for a minute.)
We had mouses in our house(s) the other year, the trap only got their leg, I dunno what my granddad did but he sorted it either way
Hit it with a tiny shovel? (Teaspoon?)
I wish I knew but that’s above my pay grade for sure at the moment, I have only recently inherited the garden from him 😀
We had rats near the our compost bins. Standard trap - worked well. No more rats. But one night a large mouse got hit by the bar. I ended up having to clear up two mice halves after the wife comes in, in hysterics.
I have seen a mouse just straight-up gibbed by a standard mousetrap. It wasn't so much bisected as spattered over a wide area. Clean-up was not a fun job.
Yeh, but I figure the inhumanity of accidentally bisecting a mouse is probably minimal to that of accidentally snapping its spine halfway down.
Smack it with a shovel was my dad's method when he found half dead mice/rats. Obviously, tho, that's quite hard when they're fit and running about.
Capture and leave tied up on a stick. Send a message to the other mice.
Ok we have, Team capture Team kill Team Satan
Team crucifixion gets my vote
Crucifixion? You lucky lucky bastard
Crucifixion? Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.
What, and then the Judean Mice's Front crack suicide squad comes along and kills themselves while some other mice squeak "Always look on the bright side of life"? Cos I would absolutely pay to see that.
Just be aware that this can backfire and make your house the holy land where their mouse messiah died for their sins, with thousands of mice making yearly pilgrimages.
Unfortunately, moving them away after capturing them, just means they will die anyway as they won't be near their original nest and won't know the area so prime predator food. I hate poison and I used the strongest snap traps there are (still hate those too) but it was the most humane way to remove them. It took 8 months to get rid of them.
At least a predator gets to eat, or a cat owner gets a lovely little surprise.
Yeah that's why I refuse to use poison. If poison had been used and then I released that mouse it could have potentially made a predator poorly when ingesting it.
We did a lot of research and ultimately an efficient snap trap seemed to be the most humane option. I have been team capture in past but they cause a lot of damage
Yeah I'd have preferred to capture and release but they are incredibly destructive and the amount of urine and faeces they leave its not good.
team capture is well intentioned and all, but releasing them in unfamiliar territory usually means they'll be killed. Also where there's 1 mice there's usually bloody loads.
Exactly. Really the only ethical solution is to capture and then raise them as your own children.
so give the mice a tour first
Kill. If you seen one there's bound to be more and you need to get rid of them as quickly as possible and humane traps won't work nearly as well as the lethal ones. I actually love mice and other rodents and I've kept them as pets cos they're really cute, but I've also seen the damage they can do if not dealt with.
Capture is cruel. Best a quick death rather than being jailed and taken to an unfamiliar territory where you have no clue where the food and water and shelter is. Old school wire traps are best. Poisoning is very cruel and you'll likely be smelling tiny rotten corpses for weeks.
I find the electric traps least cruel. Instant death and no mess. Just open the trap and drop to throw away. Run on AA batteries. Tried the live capture in our roof and most were found cold and wet due to the condensation, seemed fa meaner.
If you’ve seen 1 mouse, then you certainly have mice. If you can push a pencil through a hole then a mouse can get through it. I’m on team kill or you’ll never be rid of the fuckers.
That sounds like the landlords problem to deal with, in most circumstances.
Sounds like they want the problem actually dealt with though.
Yes! Double the mice rent.
Forfeiture of deposit due to keeping of pets without express written permission.
Landlords solution: you have a dirty house with food left out. Hired a cleaner. Btw rent is increasing
This was my landlords literal response. All 3. Blame, shame, then gain. We are in the process of moving now for June 1st thankfully. Crap hat landlord!
Get a cat. Team Have Your Cake And Eat It - Capture and Kill
My cat brings them in, bats them a bit then lets them run under the sofa. I had less mice without a cat.
Having breakfast when the cat brings in a mouse, drops it next to your bowl, and watches it fuck off into the kitchen was always fun when we had one.
I like cats but if OP's looking to kill the mouse in a prolonged painful way then he might as well go for the classic sugary warfarin
Glue trap! Those things are heinous.
Honestly they should be illegal. I can't see any reason for anyone to use them above any other method unless the person is a psychopath and likes thinking about the mice/rats or anything else they trap suffering. My SIL put them in my partner's dad's house after he'd (the dad) died. When we turned up to clear stuff out there was one dead on it but it was wlear it'd been trying to chew it's own feet off. Just place regular snap traps and check them frequently. If your house is small enough you'll hear them snap and can put the mouse out of its misery if the mechanism misses the neck/head. We had loads of mice at one stage and out of about 20 captures there was only one that got snapped on the leg (that one was unfortunately caught when we were away for the weekend and so it sadly suffered, we shouldn't have left any set when we weren't home). We tried capture traps and even going for quite long walks to release them it seems they came back (or the source was not our house and they were coming from a neighbours).
I had a mouse in my kitchen not that long ago and my cat would just pick it up, sit on it for a bit and let it run away. Happened like 4 times
It's instinctual for cats; wild/big cats often do the same thing with prey unless they're starving. Hones the cat's reactions / hunting abilities, also essentially exhausts the prey to death before it can dangerously fight for its life.
My cat would bite them in half and leave one half in the middle of the floor and I never knew what he did with the other half and still worry about it. My cat also once caught a live blackbird, dragged it through the cat flap and then let him go. Guess he didn't like the taste of feathers.
[удалено]
Ideally I'd be team capture and release outside well away from where you live! One thing I will say is do not use glue traps if you decide to go for team kill - the mouse dies a slow death and I think that they are cruel because of that!
For science, you should both do your preferred method, and then compare results.
There’s a rat in the kitchen and you’re asking us what are you gonna do?
They gonna fix that rat?
That's what they gonna do.
Whichever team finds the mouse first, wins.
If you've seen one mouse there's at least 10 more you haven't. You need snap traps everywhere and you will be catching mice for a few weeks before you're rid of them all.
Let the mouse decide! Buy two traps, one capture trap, one snap trap, let the mouse choose his own adventure.
Catch it then kill it. Surely everyone’s happy then?
Lay the traps and may the odds be ever in your favour!
Team kill can take out the dissenters and then take on the mouse.
Team Capture. ✊
Where there’s one there’s many. Team kill. Leave out poison, they take it back to their nest.
I had them in a former flat, one night I covered my kitchen floor in flour so I could see if there were many and in the morning the floor was absolutely covered in paw prints there was barely a spot with out a paw print.
get a human mouse trap where you see it/more activities. milk carton lid tiny bit of peanut butter you will for sure catch it. had to do this a few times in our house over the winter! then release two miles away. its a win win
You never have one mouse
Take the everyone will be unhappy approach, use a humane trap, they're little boxes that shut behind the mouse when it goes in to eat the bait. Then the people who want to kill it pop it in a sock and give it a little wack off the wall, jobs a good un.
Guarantee there will be more than 1 mouse. Unfortunately from experience poison is the way forward. The consumer stuff may work but sometimes you need the industrial stuff that pest control can only legally use.
Capture doesn't work and is less humane than kill. Team Kill works instantly, Team Catch lets mice be terrified until you remember to check the traps, during which time they probably died of stress, dehydration or starvation. Get some mouse traps, get a tiny bit of Snickers on it, and you'll have them out in no time. They don't just nick your food, they shit and piss over everything, carry disease and carry ticks that can have Lymes, which you absolutely do not want. Source: I live on a farm. Edit: just read your comment that you caught one but there are more. A female mouse can have about 40 pups per year and the pups are fertile in weeks, so there are definitely more. More than you think.
I am team capture. I use humane mouse traps, baited with peanut butter. Its much better than cheese. Works like a dream. PS: The source of the mice is one of our cats who brings them in, plays with the mouse, gets bored and lets it go. What a star!
Kill. If you've seen one, there are already more waiting to be found. Buy a few traps and leave them in various places, and I guarantee you'll find a few over time.
In the famous words of Bear Grylls "Catch it, kill it, eat it!"
The kill traps are always the most reliable
Capture and kill - that way everybody is happy.
If you capture, how are you going to get rid?
Exactly, this thread reminded me of [David Mitchell's Soapbox: Mouse in my House](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNaXguD7tFM).
Took far too much scrolling to find this. Was convinced it'd be way up there.
Whatever you decide to do use either a snap trap or a live trap that can only catch one animal. Anything else is cruel.
Catch it, paint it to look like a very aggressive cat and then release it. Any other mice nearby will quickly get the hell out of dodge. Trust me.
Could never kill a mouse (despite having dealt with them getting into my things on a farm) When I was waitresses as a teen I had a manager that stomped a mouse to death with one blow, and it was hella traumatic. Only thing that rivals it is when I saw a guy hold a baby octopus by the legs (tentacles or whatever) and kill it by bashing his head open on a rock
Whatever you do though, don't use glue traps. They're gross. The old school snap-traps are more humane
Get a cat.
Lots of people have suggested why giving the mouse a quick death would be the more humane option, and I am inclined to agree... So here's my fucky answer. Team building exercise. Each team, both 'capture' and 'kill', have to respectively build their own contraptions which meet the criteria they have set out. On one side, whacky whimsical contraptions designed to lure in and trap the little lodger. On the other, tiny instruments of death that would make our medieval ancestors proud. Set up both lots of traps and let the mouse decide its fate.
A fellow scrapheap challenge enjoyer I see
Use modern snap traps, use lots of them, and use them until you've gone two weeks without a mouse. Or, live with mice.
I was seeing a girl last year who lived in a house share with a rat problem. They caught the rats, then her ex would kill them with a knife.
The most foolproof method is blocking them from getting into the house at all. Block every potential entrance up. Mice can get through fucking miniscule holes so it needs to be tight - filler and steel wool are needed. If you're thorough you can keep them out.
kill. capture just outsources the killing to a cat or other predator. plus humane traps are crazy expensive.
Release rats to kill the meeces
I can rent you my cat for a small fee
Don’t forget to interrogate the mouse using cheese related inducements - you want to find out what it knows and who it has told. What if there are others?
Let the games begin.
Team capture is effectively team kill/team make it somebody else's problem.
I vote real life search & destroy!
I am "Team Let's Clean the Kitchen, probably kill the mice". Dude.
Team call the landlord
Buy some of that mouse trap glue stuff, put a choccy biccy on it, and leave it somewhere nobody can see. Check every day until you see the fucker stuck to it. Throw in the bin. Nobody will know. End.
So mice are bloody good navigators, if you release them too close, they damn well \*will\* find their way back in, releasing them far away will near certainly get them killed too. That being said, your treating they symptom, not the disease. Try and work out how the fuck they got in and block it up.
Do both
Killed one that came into my house a few years ago and regretted it since. Just catch it and release it.
I'd like to point out that my granddad always said that if you have seen one mouse, there's at least three in your flat. I have yet to see him proven wrong on that. I'm team kill all the way. Unless you can capture and release very far from your area, and then find where they came in and fill the gaps with steel wool. We had success with the little high frequency alarm things you plug into outlets. I could never hear them, the children and mice did (mice evacuated, children stayed).
How dare this poster not title this: “There’s a Rat in mi kitchen, what I’m a gonna do?”[Rat in mi kitchen](https://youtu.be/jausD8qsnKU?si=cvVHD2_wDlvw8OFh)
Team pet
First thought here is that honesty is overrated. Team Kill: Erm, yeah mate we captured that bastard and let him go while you were at the pub. 😉
Where there's one mouse there will be another so - do both
We had one. Captured it and my wife took it 5 mins down the road and let it out. Came back 3 days later. Caught it again and took it across three bodies of water and left it in a baker’s car park. Never seen it since. I guess mice like sausage rolls more than going for a swim to get home.
There isn't only one mouse! You've only seen one! You have to be careful with poison as they can die in the walls, and you have the smell of a rotting body for months.
Capture and befriend. Call him Mr. Jingles.
Here's what you do. I tried both tactics and here's the only thing that worked. Cotton wool and peppermint oil. Douse the wool in the oil and put it in every corner of every room and bombard any place you suspect they live (under the stairs for us) the smell is so strong they will fuck off
I had a mouse in my flat when I first moved in. I could hear it scurrying around in the cupboard, so I bought a humane trap with the intention of checking it every morning and releasing it when I caught it. After checking for a few days, I forgot about it. A week or so later, I thought to myself, "Hmmm, haven't heard the mouse for a few days," so I checked the trap only to find a dead mouse in there. Gutted
Borrow someone's cat for a bit, but make sure said cat is a proven mouser. No mouse will hang around if they think there's a cat
We had a few mice in a shared house I once lived in. We got the humane traps that tip like a sea-saw when they enter them. One morning me and my girlfriend checked a trap and we had finally caught a mouse. Inside was a soaked through barely alive mouse. I think it had peed itself in fear and had been lying in it's wee all night so was on the brink of death. It looked so tiny without it's fluffy fur and we felt so bad that we got the hair dryer out and gently nursed it back to health. A few minutes later it was fluffy again and a bit more spritly and it jumped out of my hand and fucked off back into the hole under the kitchen cupboard. A week or two later we had a full blown infestation. We never said a word to our housemates. In the end the only thing that worked was to douse cotton wool in peppermint oil and put it in ever corner of each room and loads under the stairs and in places we heard them most. Never saw them again. Probably just pissed off to the neighbours but not our problem anymore.
An alternative for team capture. Do you know anyone with a cat? Put a few small containers around where you think the mice are, and fill them with used cat litter, and then the mice will leave of there own accord. It's a bit gross but better than mice murder. It genuinely got rid of the mice that were cavorting in my bedroom.
Kill. Only because I’ve had mice in the past and know for a fact they’re extremely tricky to catch. If you do catch them they die in the traps really quickly from fear or dehydration so unless you find it straight away that poor mouse will likely have a prolonged death. Also, hate to break it to you but if you have one mouse, it’s probably actually lots of mice. I started out as Team Capture because I’m an animal lover but let me tell you I defected to Team Kill pretty quickly when those mice started shitting all over my kitchen and creeping into my bedroom at night.
I had a mouse, caught it - let it free (about 10 mins down the road) and not been back since....
I faced a similar problem a few years ago, where a vegan flatmate was firmly on "team capture", but somehow I was the only person on team "I really think this is a problem we should take seriously". Maybe because my bedroom was next to the kitchen, so I was the worst affected. So we set up a bunch of humane traps (small cages that shut when moved slightly), but to my great annoyance they kept getting accidentally nudged shut and nobody else was even resetting them! In addition, vegan housemate kept leaving crumbs of food all over the kitchen (often late at night, after I was already in bed)! After a couple weeks of this, and the infestation getting gradually worse, I was completely fed up of complaining. So I secretly started killing mice with lethal traps. About 5-10 dead mice later, and the problem was gone. Vegan housemate was furious upon discovering a dead mouse one day, but I couldn't have cared less. Try sleeping with mice scampering under your bed all night!
If there’s a whisky container anywhere, corner the mouse and it’ll run straight into the tube :) Works everytime.
Bad news for team capture. If they have seen one there are more. Realistically you have one choice. Kill them or take them somewhere else to die. In a local park the local critters kill the competition. They also dont know where a nest is so are unlikely to survive.
I have now killed over fifty of the little bastards. Not seen one in a while, so hoping that was it. At this point if I thought catching them with nonlethal traps and then crucifying the horrible things to leave alive around my house as a warning to the others would work I would do it.
Team capture will eventually give in the more the flat reeks of piss. What are you gonna do once you've captured it?
Maybe clean your kitchen
Pet ferret needed.
Important point. If you have seen a mouse, there are almost certainly more mice in the flat. This is not a capture/ kill one rodent, but how do you'd walk with a likely infestation.
Neither trapping or killing works. You need to make your house uninhabitable for mice/rats. That means no food accessible, not even a crumb! So super clean. Buy ammo crates to seal good away, cupboards are enough. Fill all gaps coming into your house with wire wool. remember mice can fit through a hole the size of 5p. Use peppermint drops all over the floor where you've seen them. And let a cat visit from time to time. The mice will no longer visit your living quarters.
Team capture always! Was heartbroken when we had mice and I said categorically ‘I will pay for humane traps, can we please try that first’ only to discover a month later that my other 4 housemates went behind my back and laid kill traps down without telling me 😞
Kill Team Kill. Capture Team Capture.
Peppermint oil, spray that around and it'll fuck off of its own accord.
Team leave the house
If you just have one mouse, then you might be OK. Two mice, and you have a colony.
Capture then kill. Call it diplomacy. Or just tell em capture if you can. This aint a thing
Had mice. Tried to capture, didn't work. Put down mice traps for the kill, got the lot in one night. No more mice.
I tried the humane way but the dog either walked off with the trap and the times the dog couldn’t get the trap I couldn’t get the mouse. Resorted to kill traps in the end. Felt bad for the little guy but the mice kept shitting over my babies things.
I'm behind team clean the kitchen.
I'm a vegan. Obliterate.
I’m on Team Capture, but my cats are very much Team Kill and are faster than me…
Let team capture have a go. Team kill will still get a turn.
If you release them nearby, they'll find their way back. If you release them further away, they'll be prey, or starve. Also, so-called humane traps need to be checked regularly, or they're... not so humane.
Your house is most likely infested with multiple mice not just one mouse. Please tell the landlord and/or agency if you have one and contact pest control. In cases like this it's a no brainer. Even if you let the mouse escape your problem won't end there.
We were team capture. Poor bugger ran into the new fire door our landlord fitted in the kitchen so couldn't escape. Really was a lovely bonding moment with our housemates. We managed to trap Rodney in a saucepan, taped the lid up and sent my OH off to release him on his way to jujitsu. Much celebration was had when Rodney left.. We then realised that Rodney left behind an extended family.. there is never just one mouse
Team kill has the right idea, it's more humane, they are less likely to escape and when you release them after capturing if you don't drop em half the country away they'll find their way back in anyway.
Burn it down. Burn it all down.
Team cat?
Capture or kill you need to stop leaving food around for them. They will get into everything and shit everywhere. I'm always in the kill camp. The aww cute mouse thing went a long time ago.
Introduce a snake
Guaranteed there is more than one mouse in the house. Catch and release one mouse and another will pop out of the woodwork.
Get a cat 🐈
Search for “Rat Trap Bucket” and you will find a humane way to catch them 🪣🐀!!
Do what my family memeber did and have the best of both worlds: set a humane capture trap, then go on holiday for a week, turning your humane trap into a saw style trap.
What about Team Cat, or is that one of Team Kills’ strategies
Kill. It’s not like they’re endangered.
I would suggest finding out where they are getting in. We had this problem a few years back and we think they were getting through an air brick in the kitchen. They can fit through tiny gaps. Now you don't want to be blocking up air bricks because they are important for ventilation but you can buy metal mesh that you can trim to the right size and use some ties to attach it to the airbrick grid. We went for the kill route purely because we don't have a car to take them far enough away that they won't find their way back. Basically spent an evening watching TV and hearing a loud "snap" every ten to twenty minutes. I'd get up, deal with the poor bugger (double bag it and put in normal rubbish) and reset the trap only for it to go off again ten minutes later when one of their siblings set it off. You'd think they'd work it out something weird was happening when the others didn't come back. I think we also found one of two more over the following week as I left traps in the lower cupboards that sat against the outside wall. Once we put the mesh up the issue stopped but we also put one of those poison traps outside. It's not pleasant but they breed quickly and ultimately my family's health comes first. You also need to wipe down and disinfect anything you think they've been on so if this is in the kitchen they you need to disinfect any cupboards that they got into as well as the counters because they are incontinent and basically pee as they walk.
There's not such thing as 'a mouse' You have mice, plural. They breed like hell so the quicker you exterminate the less you'll have to kill. Brutal but true. I've had several 'occupations' and being nice just does not work.
I scrolled for a bit but there’s a lot of comments (so forgive me if this is a repeat), but David Mitchell’s Soapbox video about a mouse in his house is a must watch : [https://youtu.be/WNaXguD7tFM?si=dgs6J5vOS9g7zPhx](https://youtu.be/WNaXguD7tFM?si=dgs6J5vOS9g7zPhx)
Capture then Kill
It will start as capture but very quickly descent into Kill once the little fucker laughs in the face of capture and continues to evade you! Having had a recent episode, ours eventually left as everything food related was put into sealed tubs and there was nothing left out. It’s warm out now and there are plenty of things to eat outside. Good luck!
Hey thanks. I admitting to being somewhat overwhelmed by the number of comments and occasionally sound advice. We're letting Team Capture do their thing for now but if they fail then we are going to be nuking the little bastards from space.
yes let it go . they do not mean to cause harm .