Vermin!

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I Exist.




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I'm sure I've mentioned before about trying to be kind to most critters. I really do try. But there are certain vermin that I really am just hateful of, and ants and field mice are very firmly in that category.

We have both of them in this house, and it is driving me right up a wall.

It's not a matter of cleanliness so much as a matter of the house is falling to pieces around us and we don't have an indoor cat, but I'll admit that if ever there was incentive to clean my room and replace all my furniture with metal shelves and put my bed on stilts, this is it. I'm not afraid of them, but I am hateful, especially in regards to finding that mice have invaded the lower cabinets and I have to bleach-wash every pot and pan before using it. Or in seeing one dart under my door and then zip out when it hears me gasp because rawr is my immediate reaction to something being in my peripheral vision, in my space uninvited. (It just is, yes, I'm territorial like that. No, pets do not trigger that impulse, just vermin.)

If ever there were a time I wished for a super-power that wasn't flight, this would be the time. I would make the little wretches disappear in an imploding ball of flame that singed nothing else and left not even an ash behind. (Very unkind of me, I know. No, they are not cute, they are high-speed miniature plaguebearers with extreme reproductive capabilities and massive incontinence issues. Yes, they have a place in the ecosystem. My room is emphatically NOT that place. A pet rat may be different, I suppose, but not these vile things.)

So then. The question becomes how to, er, encourage them to have an existence failure. Or at least decide this place isn't very comfortable. I know a couple of basics- no food left out, airtight containers, traps with peanut butter, glue traps, steel wool in crevices. Sadly, some of this advice I can't use, like steel wool in the gap under my door wouldn't be quite so helpful, it's a 1 or 1.5ish inch gap. That's a lot of steel wool to keep in place. And even then, getting up in the middle of the night to grab some water or use the bathroom would set up a hell of a racket with that scraping.

So then, what else, any advice? No cats indoors due to allergies in the family, so that's out. And much as I would like to poising the mice and take the population down that much, there are cats in the neighborhood who are wonderful critters, and I don't want to see them harmed by eating a downed mouse. So that's out. I've heard a trick, mixing hot cocoa powder with plaster of paris and leaving the powder mix in a place where they seem to congregate, but I'm sort of iffy to try that one, even if plaster of paris is supposedly nontoxic. I've heard very mixed reviews on the plug-in screechers, the 'ultrasonic pest deterrent' things, and knowing the sensitivity to high pitch in my family, I have the feeling they'd drive us all up a wall, too. I've heard about dried sanitized ferret droppingas and predator urine granules, but ew. Mixed reviews on peppermint oils. And they don't seem to be falling for the snap traps anymore, and the glue traps don't seem to be helping as much as we hoped, except for catching spiders. (Quite effective for that though, I'll admit.)

So then.

Sure, it's quite common, natural for these things to find human homes inviting. But I'm still not at all comfortable with the idea of a furbound plaguebearer field mouse being in my room when I'm supposed to be sleeping, and I'll welcome suggestions if you have them. (I'm quite sure they're field mice, they're smaller than 'house' mice are supposed to be, and after all, I do live across the way from a state hunting preserve.)

->Razzi

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NathanLister's avatar
Glue traps a positively evil, vile things. You catch them on the glue trap, and then what? Let them starve to death, chew their own limbs off? Mice will struggle so much on them that they'll dislocate their bones to escape. It's an extremely cruel method, some people would call it torture. :|

What is wrong with using something that kills the animal quickly, and doesn't torture it like a glue trap does?