Invaded!
30 April 2006, 10:39
In the summer it was spiders – not the lethal kind, you understand – we gave those to Sydney back in ‘Nam. No, we get the dreaded White Tails, the ones that bite you and leave a flesh-eating bacteria in your skin. Or so the legend goes.
Husband told me that one day, while he was changing Scout, a White Tail careened a hair’s breath from her precious bottom cheeks. He didn’t tell me for ages as he knew I’d freak. I’m not arachnist or anything, but I hate White Tails. I saw about 6 in the house during summer. We did, however, manage to escape the wrath of everyone’s anitpodean nightmare – cockroaches (which won’t be killed by a fair slap of a shoe. I swear cockroaches are guarding the the gates of Hell), so I guess we got off pretty likely. Still…
Now the weather has turned cold, our house has turned into a veritable iceblock overnight. Last night, I went to get a glass of water in the kitchen (half asleep, mind) and a little furry mongrel skittered past me on the bench. A frikkin’ mouse. The first of the winter mice. Last winter we got rid of them with a mountain of rat sac, but now Scout’s around I’m a bit worried about having poisons lying around the house.
Anyone know of any good remedies that will, if not kill them (I know they’re “god’s creatures” and all, but I won’t have the rodents crawling over my daughter at night. Shudder.) then deter them from the house? They live behind the oven, I think, where it’s warm and toasty.
Permanent Link | - if your house is getting cold, here’s what you can do (but it’ll cost you some dough): get insulation blown into your walls! we had this done in our coop building. they came in, drilled holes in the walls, blew in fibrous insulation, sealed up the holes and left. the added benefit is that we no longer have mice because now the walls are filled up and there’s no place for them to go! :)
or you can just buy mousetraps which is a heck of a lot cheaper but decidedly more gruesome.
— gleek May 2, 01:51 AM # - Ummmm.. what’s a conro???
Gleek – fabo idea and yes, our house gets cold cos of the wooden floorboards. Unfortunately, we need to replace some of the weatherboards before we can do much about insulation. Maybe next Winter… guess it’s mousetraps then (McG has been told we’re not to get a cat until Scout’s at Daycare and I don’t have to take care of two tiny tots at home)... guess who’ll be taking care of those (the mousetraps that its)?
— Kinki May 2, 09:47 AM # - Ahh, mice. not very nice. You can get these really, really sticky pieces of paper, that you leave in the mouse’s path – in your case, behing the oven, and they can’t see it or smell it, so they end up running right over it, and being completely stuck…but alive. so you’ve caught them, but just have to figure out how to kill em. we thought drowning would be ‘humane’ but …we’re still scarred from the experience. BUT it did manage to solve our mice issue. we caught them all! no more mice.
— prue May 2, 09:48 PM # - Oh No No NOOOOO! We had those in Japan and they trapped a massive rat in our apartment and it was all too horrifying as it took aaaaages for the poor thing to die (we set it when we were on vacation and came back to the sight). Do they sell those in Australia??? No no, too awful, too awful…
— Kinki May 3, 01:55 AM # - If you’re against having a cat, traps are the only way to go.
Poison is bad. The mice eat it, then crawl into the walls and die… leaving you with the land of interesting smells.
Putting insulation into the walls won’t stop the mice, but it will give them a wonderful place to nest (mice love insulation).
The best bet if you don’t want a mess is to buy live traps. They are usually a little box with a hole and a wind up bit on the front. A mouse goes in, it spins them around and puts them in a holding cell, then it’s ready for the next one. You just check the trap every couple of days and release them outside (far away from your house).
If they’re living in your stove, you’ll want to do something quick though. My sister had mice in her stove. They made a home in the insulation for the oven (and apparently used a large part of that insulation as a toilet).
She had to throw the whole unit away, as when she turned the oven on, the smell of warm mouse pee filled the kitchen.
— Tone May 16, 11:05 AM #
