Thread: Mice. Heaps of bloody mice.

You may recall that recently we had a rat problem; the bastards got into the underfloor cavity beneath our bath, the young died in situ… and then stunk. Second time this has happened. Anyway I fixed that mess up, and made some improvements along the way (who new bloody bathroom - opportunistic wife). We made violent war on the rats and caught both ship rats and some very large Norway rats (it was the latter that had made it into the bathroom floor). I haven’t caught a rat in over a month now, and there is no evidence of their presence in the usual places as I keep those areas meticulously clean so I can easily spot new rat droppings.

During this process I bought a dozen new mouse traps, very effective plastic ones with a hair trigger mechanism that has always produced a mouse when set off. I set up the traps in pairs, wired to a short length of timber, so if anything tried to run away with my trap (e.g. a rat), he’d have a large appendage to deal with.

The problem is that we are catching crazy numbers of mice, every day. Not Aussie mouse plague crazy, but averaging 6-7 a day, every day for 7 weeks straight. Record is a full house (twice) of a mouse in every one of the 12 traps, some days its just a couple. Definitely seem to catch more close into the house when it’s wet. Warm dry nights seem to be less productive. I reckon we’re up close to 300 trapped mice by now since mid-March. Mix of baits - keeping them fresh is the key. Peanut butter, dripping, mackerel, jam, cheese. We catch them around the back of the garage and in front of the wood shed.

We have two resident moreporks that are here most evenings at the same time. We didn’t used to have them so close, so regularly, they are almost part of the family now. No prizes for guessing why they are here…

I wonder what is driving this apparent sudden increase in the mouse population. There’s no new food sources that we can think of. No new habitat or any changes to habits and procedures around the block. We’ve always run mousetraps just as a precaution, but going back years you’d catch one or two every now and then. Nothing like now. When we reorganised the shed in March (again), we could see we had a problem as there was suddenly a bucket load of mouse droppings in the dark corners that definitely wasn’t there in late January.

What’s up I wonder? I’d love to know what governs these pest populations, what drives their coming and going. If we’ve caught this many already, how many are there FFS??? With the predictions of another warm winter and warm years to come with a persistent La Nina, what do we have in store?

(We also have this incredibly annoying small black fly problem as well (the Aussie cluster flies), it’s driving the whole community bonkers, especially those poor buggers they don’t have fly screens like ours.)

Here’s 5 from this morning, I found another 2 this arvo when I got home. I’m quite sure if I doubled the number of traps I would be catching a lot more!

Sounds like you need more traps

Same down here, its gonna make the trout fishermen happy. . .

Originally Posted by dannyb

Sounds like you need more traps

Yeah too true… but its time-consuming every morning, cleaning, rebaiting and resetting. It’s a hands and knees job getting into the places I’ve worked out I get maximum hits, not a huge amount of fun in the rain… And to be honest I’m not getting round to checking them in the evening like I should because I think I’m catching them in the day as well and could probably increase my numbers if I checked all the traps at dusk too.

Originally Posted by Tentman

Same down here, its gonna make the trout fishermen happy. . .

what has your weather been like compared to normal @Tentman?

Dry weather and warm I think. Weve caught 10 mice in a week.

Check out Shawn Woods on you tube, his life revolves around mouse traps. Got some awesome ideas there.

With the really growthy summer here there has been a lot more grass and weed seeds in waste areas, so I expect they have got an extra couple of litters in.

PS last winter a friend sent us a photo of two mice caught in the same trap !

Have you got cats?.
They clean up a lot.

Sent from my SM-J530Y using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Moa Hunter

PS last winter a friend sent us a photo of two mice caught in the same trap !

We’ve had several double ups, in the Victor rat traps. Since we finished off the rats I’ve kept the rat traps going, but they often get cleaned out of bait without getting tripped. Because a lot of the mice we are catching are very small. Sometimes however, they’re unlucky. I’m hoping that one day I will get a three-in-one.

I’ve also caught several mouse tails, but only tails. Severed clean off at the rump by the nasty Victor. I’ve also caught my finger. Don’t do that.

My Staffies have learned the very hard way not to lick traps.

Check out his vid with " the greatest trap" look for a picture with a yellow trap.

Originally Posted by erniec

Have you got cats?. They clean up a lot.

Take a look at the picture to the immediate left of what you are reading now. That is why we do not have cats. If we did….

Set trap at 90 degrees to wall you dont need bait as they run along walls and over trap . we have couple set permanently in house for the odd ones that come in house .

Originally Posted by 40mm

Check out Shawn Woods on you tube, his life revolves around mouse traps. Got some awesome ideas there.

Oh man I’m so gonna build a rolling mouse trap.

It would very interesting to see how many youd catch in one night with the type of trap that just keeps catching them. Ie 20L bucket with water in it with a rotating reel or bottle mouted over it with bait jammed in the end, the mice fall off the bottle or tube that will rotate with the mouses weight and drop into bucket of water.

There are vids on YT of dozens and dozens of them dropping in in one night