Well shit, we have mice

[expectantsteelerfan]

We tried taking care of it ourselves but they aren't going away.  Does anyone know, if I call an exterminator, what can I expect them to do?  Anyone have a ballpark of what it might cost?

And in case you are in the mood to be totally grossed out, we've found droppings and things chewed in our kitchen (ick ick ICK), in our laundry room where we had previously kept our dog food just sitting in it's bag but now is in an airtight container, but then also really random places like our office where there is absolutely NO food, a closet where we store towels for the powder room, a closet in the basement where we store beach towels, and a box of rags in the laundry room.  Any ideas why they are in the places where we store towels but not food??? Or what to do about that???

[dizzycooks]

Ick!! The only place we've had mice are in the garage in bird seed or winter jackets. I no longer store jackets there....

[minerswife17]

Move

[minerswife17]

Do you like cats?

[jag01]

I HATE mice. We had them in the house a couple times. They would eat the peanut butter off the trap without setting the trap off. What finally worked was a fishy cracker with the peanut butter, so they would have to work at getting them off, setting off the traps. Good luck!

[justbecause]

I just jumped up on a chair '50s housewife style.
I'm sorry. Mice freak me out. Growing up, I had the attic room and you could hear them scratching. Ugh.
We have several cats so no mice. They only get in the shed and then it's peanut butter traps for them.

Maybe they are in the towels to find bedding? Ick ick.

[Katiedid]

We had mice in our attic a few years ago. The mice had definitely multiplied since they found their way in. They were coming in from a small hole in the vent. You'll need to have the exterminator find the point of entry I would think to make sure you don't get additional mice after the extermination. I don't remember how much it cost...$300 sounds about right, but I'm not certain. Good luck!

[lexus]

Trapping them does nothing if you don't figure out how they are getting in.

[lala]

Mice aren't the end of the world. They always find a new way to get in. We trap them until we have a few nights w/ no catches and then the problem is solved for another year or so. I just figure it's what happens.

They probably find the food or other bits they want and then retreat to a cozy area.

Have you set traps?

[lindsay9911]

We have a cat exactly for that reason. Im terrified of mice. We had one when dd2 was a few weeks old and DH was working nights. I literally spent hours in the bathtub in the middle of the night bc I was so scared. Lol so ridiculous now that I look back on it.
I would use traps and not poison bc they will die in the house.

[cna]

Burn it down.

[Kcthepouchh8r]

Jul 27, 2015 21:26:04 GMT -5 lala said:

Mice aren't the end of the world. They always find a new way to get in. We trap them until we have a few nights w/ no catches and then the problem is solved for another year or so. I just figure it's what happens.

They probably find the food or other bits they want and then retreat to a cozy area.

Have you set traps?

This. We have an older home and have a decent sized yard so they kind of come with the territory. We generally don't see them until fall when the temperature drops. We put out traps and they go away. I do freak out the few times I've seen them but not the end of the world.

[momin2013]

A coworker of mine once said they had solved their problem by setting traps, but also by wrapping steel wool around pipes where they went out of the house, and stuffing it into any holes going to the outside as well.

This reminds me of the time we had a major infestation of mice in my old workplace. Like they would just go running a few at a time down the hall all day long; it was horrible. One day I was standing near my desk and one came charging right at me. I literally jumped three feet in the air and came crashing down into my filing cabinet. Not my finest moment.

[lattelady5]

I'm not scared of them but they gross me out. Ick.

We haven't had any in our house but had them when we lived in an apartment. We did traps and eventually poison (pre kids and pets and knowing poisoned mice were dangerous to owls.) They never fully went away.

We have a cat now. She's maimed two bats and I bet if we ever had a mouse, she'd get it.

[NandaB]

Ugh. I'm sorry. They are in your towels getting nesting materials. Same as the office, any chewed up papers? When we first moved into our old, not previously well maintained house we had mice. I ALWAYS found them. I have great luck :-\

You really need to check for visible holes like under your sinks and in your attic /crawl space. They can get through tiny spaces. Steel wool around piped and un little cracks is good because they can't chew it.

[nowa]

I second putting in thick steal wool in and around any holes they're using to get in. That's what a good prst control company would do. We did it our in our NYC apartment and it solved the problem, no traps.hou just have to make sure you check all possible locations (behind washer /dryer, stove, etc)

[NandaB]

Also, I've heard that dryer sheets may repel them, so id probably put a shitload in my room and my kids rooms, but even though I'm a country girl, I can't sleep.when I can hear mice because all I can think of is them climbing on me and sitting on my nose while I sleep

[expectantsteelerfan]

Ok so dh called an exterminator and he came yesterday. They checked to find out where they are coming in (2 areas of concern, 1 in the office where a cable comes in but the hole is too big, he put mesh in there and we will caulk around the hole) and our garage door doesn't close tightly so we will need to do some weather stripping or something to try to fix that. He also found a dead one behind our stove (we had set poison traps, which he switched out for the snapping traps) and we have also since trapped another one. Hopefully this will fix the problem! I'm glad we had him come because although we could have set the traps ourselves, I would have been really paranoid forever about where they were getting in.

[dr.girlfriend]

Sorry, I se eyou already called an exterminator, but just for future reference. We took care of it ourselves. We put all food in pantry containers -- we got the OXO pop-top ones. They are a bit of an investment, but we love them. We also put the dog food in an air tight container, and take the food up if there are leftovers after the dog eats. We added additional weather-stripping around the garage door, and did a deep clean -- turned out they had taken dog food and stored it away in the broiler drawer of our oven, in the cups of a silicone muffin tin that was there. Ugh. Finally, we did that poison that they eat that drives them outside for water -- I forget what it's called, but anyone at Home Depot should be able to tell you. It was blue crystals in a little plastic tray. We only put it in the places DS had absolutely no access too -- in the basement (with a slide latch 5 feet high on the basement door), under the sink (magnetic lock on that cabinet), and in the garage. It seemed to work. We had no further droppings anywhere. They only came after our last dog died, so I think getting a new dog helped too.