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General => General Discussion => Topic started by: The Walrus on July 01, 2019, 03:52:31 PM
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Okay so... found a mouse in my apartment about a month ago. First time in the 3+ years I've been living here. Put out 4 bait traps - never caught it, but came home one day and found a weak (dying?) tiny mouse in the doorway between my kitchen and dining room... slapped it with a broom to be sure it was dead, got rid of it, no mice since.
I live in the apartment on the end of my building; there is an empty unit next door to me between me and my other neighbor, then another empty unit next to her on the front end of the building. That lady is no longer living there but apparently left a bunch of old food there which brought in a bunch of mice; my neighbor on the other side of the empty unit next door has seen over half a dozen mice in her place since then since she's directly next door. I figure that's where my one mouse came from.
Well yesterday I started hearing squeaking in my living room wall that's shared with the empty unit next door, and this morning I heard an alarming amount of squeaking from the wall behind my refrigerator in the kitchen. Freaked out and told the front office about it and hopefully somebody came by today like they said and put out some traps, but what else can I do? Should I use the glue traps? I put out 4 bait traps and didn't catch anybody so I might have to go for glue (the one mouse I did find was small as hell and I wonder if it would even get caught in the bait trap; one of my bait traps was actually activated, but there was no mouse in it).
I've never had to deal with mice before let alone inside the walls. Other than putting out traps/poison is there anything I can do? I DO NOT want to see any more mice in my pad. I do keep it clean, like I said, never seen them until last month.
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Tomcat glue pads with a cracker in the middle. Inhumane but gets them all the time.
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Tomcat glue pads with a cracker in the middle. Inhumane but gets them all the time.
I used those with peanut butter rather than a cracker. But otherwise, yeah.
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I'd blast some Sonata Arctica.
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...or..
Have you had a conversation with your landlord?
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Tomcat glue pads with a cracker in the middle. Inhumane but gets them all the time.
I used those with peanut butter rather than a cracker. But otherwise, yeah.
Never tried that. I will next time.
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If a cracker works, I would continue doing that. Less messy than trying to flick a wad of peanut butter into the center of one of those.
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What to do when there are mice in the walls?
(https://i.imgflip.com/1anuhj.jpg)
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
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:lol Wow, that thread still exists...
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
Beat me to it!!
:lol :lol
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Looks like I have some reading ahead of me!
TAC, did you eat a big bowl of smart asses for breakfast? :lol Yeah, I told the landlord...
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
😆😆😆
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Glue traps tend to work the best for mice. You might need the BIG ones though to force them to walk onto the glue far enough to get stuck. If you use the snap traps, set up two next to each other, with the trigger sides butted up against the wall.
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Never had any in my apartment, but my mother did once. I got her those wall plugs and surprisingly they worked for her for a good year or so until it had to be replaced.
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Put some cats in the walls.
I'd blast some Sonata Arctica.
Or this, I guess.
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Glue traps have been set just in case. Maybe I'll catch a TAC while I'm at it. :lol
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Looks like I have some reading ahead of me!
TAC, did you eat a big bowl of smart asses for breakfast? :lol Yeah, I told the landlord...
And he/she said... ?
Living in an apartment has its drawbacks, but the benefits are that they take care of that kind of stuff.
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
:lol My very first thought when I saw the title was "Whatever method you use don't forget the keys".
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Looks like I have some reading ahead of me!
TAC, did you eat a big bowl of smart asses for breakfast? :lol Yeah, I told the landlord...
And he/she said... ?
Living in an apartment has its drawbacks, but the benefits are that they take care of that kind of stuff.
I mean I only told her yesterday. I'm just looking for advice on other things to do in the meantime. I said in the OP they were sending someone out to put out traps/poison. I just wanted to know if there was something more I could do myself because I don't generally twiddle my thumbs and wait for them to do everything
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I'd just set some traps or glue boards wherever you have seen them. They like to run along the walls.
Also, make sure all food is covered on your counters and keep your kitchen floor clean.
Don't leave dirty dishes piled up in your sink either.
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Yeah I keep my apartment pretty clean thankfully. Hope I catch one... or not, as long as they stay out of my space!
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From my experience (I've had many animal infestations, student housing yeey) poison is a lot more effective than traps. Especially because the foraging mouse will bring the poison back to the nest, killing any younglings there. That might also be more humane than just killing the foraging parents with a trap and leaving the babies to starve.
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
This is glorious! :rollin :rollin
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The traps were awesome (I'm impressed that they figured out the keys; I thought this was just a part of my family folklore for years...) but this was the best:
"Why would I want to kill the mouse? I'd befriend it at the first opportunity; we could drink and surf the internet and listen to music together, it'd be awesome. He'd quickly become my go-to mouse for everything. Girl troubles? Talk to the mouse. Need someone to go to a gig with? That mouse fucking loves to mosh. My friends would love him, because he's an adorable mouse, and who doesn't love those? At clubs he's the perfect wingman, jumping on grenades so I can get with the hottest girl there. He's my best friend in the world, and I'm closer to him than I could ever be to a fellow human.
But then, early one morning I awake and go to the kitchen to make a bagel. I open the cupboard, and there he is, munching away on my bagels. My. Bagels. I blackout, and when I awake I find myself covered in blood, clutching the severed head of a girl I've never seen before and the mouse's skin is stuck to the wall with a thumbtack. I never found his body."
For some reason, I could see Kattelox posting this. I would just replace "mosh" with "power metal".
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Okay so... found a mouse in my apartment about a month ago. First time in the 3+ years I've been living here. Put out 4 bait traps - never caught it, but came home one day and found a weak (dying?) tiny mouse in the doorway between my kitchen and dining room... slapped it with a broom to be sure it was dead, got rid of it, no mice since.
I live in the apartment on the end of my building; there is an empty unit next door to me between me and my other neighbor, then another empty unit next to her on the front end of the building. That lady is no longer living there but apparently left a bunch of old food there which brought in a bunch of mice; my neighbor on the other side of the empty unit next door has seen over half a dozen mice in her place since then since she's directly next door. I figure that's where my one mouse came from.
Well yesterday I started hearing squeaking in my living room wall that's shared with the empty unit next door, and this morning I heard an alarming amount of squeaking from the wall behind my refrigerator in the kitchen. Freaked out and told the front office about it and hopefully somebody came by today like they said and put out some traps, but what else can I do? Should I use the glue traps? I put out 4 bait traps and didn't catch anybody so I might have to go for glue (the one mouse I did find was small as hell and I wonder if it would even get caught in the bait trap; one of my bait traps was actually activated, but there was no mouse in it).
I've never had to deal with mice before let alone inside the walls. Other than putting out traps/poison is there anything I can do? I DO NOT want to see any more mice in my pad. I do keep it clean, like I said, never seen them until last month.
I thought you were a cat guy? As a rule a cat's mere presence makes rodents uncomfortable enough to find new digs.
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The traps were awesome (I'm impressed that they figured out the keys; I thought this was just a part of my family folklore for years...) but this was the best:
"Why would I want to kill the mouse? I'd befriend it at the first opportunity; we could drink and surf the internet and listen to music together, it'd be awesome. He'd quickly become my go-to mouse for everything. Girl troubles? Talk to the mouse. Need someone to go to a gig with? That mouse fucking loves to mosh. My friends would love him, because he's an adorable mouse, and who doesn't love those? At clubs he's the perfect wingman, jumping on grenades so I can get with the hottest girl there. He's my best friend in the world, and I'm closer to him than I could ever be to a fellow human.
But then, early one morning I awake and go to the kitchen to make a bagel. I open the cupboard, and there he is, munching away on my bagels. My. Bagels. I blackout, and when I awake I find myself covered in blood, clutching the severed head of a girl I've never seen before and the mouse's skin is stuck to the wall with a thumbtack. I never found his body."
For some reason, I could see Kattelox posting this. I would just replace "mosh" with "power metal".
HAHAHA. Awesome. Just awesome.
I thought you were a cat guy? As a rule a cat's mere presence makes rodents uncomfortable enough to find new digs.
I am a cat guy, but I don't own any, they all live with my parents.
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Could you bring one of the cats over for a visit for a few days? :)
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Could you bring one of the cats over for a visit for a few days? :)
Haha - I've asked my mom and without missing a beat gives me a very firm "no." Plus... they're kind of fraidy cats who won't go outside. :)
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Yeah, if you bring one of them to an unfamiliar place all he/she'll do is probably hide under the couch or wherever he/she feels safe.
The only decision is now to adopt a few outdoor cats so they would deal with the problem.
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Yeah, if you bring one of them to an unfamiliar place all he/she'll do is probably hide under the couch or wherever he/she feels safe.
The only decision is now to adopt a few outdoor cats so they would deal with the problem.
The goal is to get animals out, not in! The obvious solution is to live amongst the cats and learn their secrets, then use them for my own gain, and then I win.
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
This is glorious! :rollin :rollin
wow :lol
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Could you bring one of the cats over for a visit for a few days? :)
Haha - I've asked my mom and without missing a beat gives me a very firm "no." Plus... they're kind of fraidy cats who won't go outside. :)
Whose side is she on? Tell her, if we don't deploy the cats the terrorists win! :)
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https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0 (https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=20039.0)
This is glorious! :rollin :rollin
Yup... too bad some of the links are to culled photo-bucket libraries. Part of the fun of reliving that thread was all regulars from back then that are nothing but memories now. Makes me feel warm, fuzzy and sad all at once.
Just checking in to say peanut butter has always done the trick for the jingle's. Just before we moved from the last house, we had a little family - caught/released one, but 'snapped' the other three. After having setup 2 traps, we caught two in one night. I doubt the traps snapped simultaneously, so rodent #2 must've been REAL hungry - to see your dead pal just a few inches away and think "meh... I'll chance it". :lol
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It was suicide
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Progress... on lunch I came home and checked the glue traps. Nothing. Came home from work now and I heard some scuttlebutt from the kitchen... no glue trap. Start getting paranoid about a buff ass mouse coming for me in the middle of the night. I spy a mouse tail from under the oven. Resistance - oh god it's been here a minute, oh GOD the smell of a dead mouse. Pull the oven back after discarding Minnie in hopes of finding Mickey. No dice but I found my first ever mouse hole, in the wall right behind the oven. Swept up and plugged the hole with a paper towel until I get maintenance to caulk it.
Mice smell fucking gross. And if you're a bad tenant at least take the fucking food out of your place before turning off the power. :censored The game goes on... At least that's the only place I have ever seen mouse shit so hopefully that's the one spot they're coming in from. I'm going to wage war on these bastards. MAN THE CANNONS!!
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For the record, mice aren't that big a deal for me; I grew up in farming town (a cousin has a huge dairy farm, my grandparents had chickens/crops) and I grew up on a lake (which is always ripe for rodents). My wife's house (before we married) was also on a lake, and now the house is unoccupied so I had a rodent problem there.
Peanut butter and mechanical traps have worked fine for me (though the best is still our four-legged feline friend).
Katt, I know it's the landlord's responsibility, especially as it's coming from a unit you do not have access to, but in the interest of your well-being and in mitigating the problem, run out and get some steel wool; it's cheap at Home Depot or Wal-mart (couple bucks). They'll chew through paper towels, they won't chew through steel wool. Stuff that in any holes/cracks you see (mice can fit in some crazy small places; if you're looking at something and saying "eh, I don't think he can fit in there"... stuff some steel wool just to be safe, because they can.
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I remember in the house I grew up in, there was a rodent problem once. Some guy came and found a hole in the wall outside they made to get into the basement. He made this type of wooden mesh and put it on the hole, it allowed anything to come out of the hole, but had tilted nails facing outwards so if you tried to go in, you'd stab yourself so you couldn't get in. It seemed like it worked pretty quickly to resolve the issue.
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From my experience (I've had many animal infestations, student housing yeey) poison is a lot more effective than traps. Especially because the foraging mouse will bring the poison back to the nest, killing any younglings there. That might also be more humane than just killing the foraging parents with a trap and leaving the babies to starve.
(https://media1.tenor.com/images/5c7378345b70eb95550028e3d8c95536/tenor.gif?itemid=5533636)
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For the record, mice aren't that big a deal for me; I grew up in farming town (a cousin has a huge dairy farm, my grandparents had chickens/crops) and I grew up on a lake (which is always ripe for rodents). My wife's house (before we married) was also on a lake, and now the house is unoccupied so I had a rodent problem there.
Peanut butter and mechanical traps have worked fine for me (though the best is still our four-legged feline friend).
Katt, I know it's the landlord's responsibility, especially as it's coming from a unit you do not have access to, but in the interest of your well-being and in mitigating the problem, run out and get some steel wool; it's cheap at Home Depot or Wal-mart (couple bucks). They'll chew through paper towels, they won't chew through steel wool. Stuff that in any holes/cracks you see (mice can fit in some crazy small places; if you're looking at something and saying "eh, I don't think he can fit in there"... stuff some steel wool just to be safe, because they can.
I actually like mice, just not as pests, and the squeaking from within the wall of my living room is really freaking annoying. I never thought about plugging steel wool in holes even though I use it every day at work, so I'll definitely go get some and put it there.
I would like to know if they actually set out poison or traps in the adjacent unit, since they literally only laid one glue strip between my fridge and the counter between it and the oven. So helpful. Bah. I'm gonna go get some poison and place them around the kitchen just in case.
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For the record, mice aren't that big a deal for me; I grew up in farming town (a cousin has a huge dairy farm, my grandparents had chickens/crops) and I grew up on a lake (which is always ripe for rodents). My wife's house (before we married) was also on a lake, and now the house is unoccupied so I had a rodent problem there.
Peanut butter and mechanical traps have worked fine for me (though the best is still our four-legged feline friend).
Katt, I know it's the landlord's responsibility, especially as it's coming from a unit you do not have access to, but in the interest of your well-being and in mitigating the problem, run out and get some steel wool; it's cheap at Home Depot or Wal-mart (couple bucks). They'll chew through paper towels, they won't chew through steel wool. Stuff that in any holes/cracks you see (mice can fit in some crazy small places; if you're looking at something and saying "eh, I don't think he can fit in there"... stuff some steel wool just to be safe, because they can.
Is it possible to write a sentence and not have parenthesis? :lol
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For the record, mice aren't that big a deal for me; I grew up in farming town (a cousin has a huge dairy farm, my grandparents had chickens/crops) and I grew up on a lake (which is always ripe for rodents). My wife's house (before we married) was also on a lake, and now the house is unoccupied so I had a rodent problem there.
Peanut butter and mechanical traps have worked fine for me (though the best is still our four-legged feline friend).
Katt, I know it's the landlord's responsibility, especially as it's coming from a unit you do not have access to, but in the interest of your well-being and in mitigating the problem, run out and get some steel wool; it's cheap at Home Depot or Wal-mart (couple bucks). They'll chew through paper towels, they won't chew through steel wool. Stuff that in any holes/cracks you see (mice can fit in some crazy small places; if you're looking at something and saying "eh, I don't think he can fit in there"... stuff some steel wool just to be safe, because they can.
Is it possible to write a sentence and not have parenthesis? :lol
I try (very hard, too), but no.
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So I almost bought the poison but I had a question and wasn't really sure what the answer was. Say I lay the poison out, like even putting some in the hole behind the oven, and then plug it back up with steel wool so they never come in again. Let's say they eat the poison... then they just die in the walls? How common is that, is that a bad plan to just try to kill them and let them rot away in the walls? I mean, there's probably a couple dead ones in there anyway because they're old buildings, and there are probably a couple dead ones in the crawlspace under the building... but also I don't want to risk a bunch of rotten disgustingly smelling corpses just sitting in the walls.
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For the record, mice aren't that big a deal for me; I grew up in farming town (a cousin has a huge dairy farm, my grandparents had chickens/crops) and I grew up on a lake (which is always ripe for rodents). My wife's house (before we married) was also on a lake, and now the house is unoccupied so I had a rodent problem there.
Peanut butter and mechanical traps have worked fine for me (though the best is still our four-legged feline friend).
Katt, I know it's the landlord's responsibility, especially as it's coming from a unit you do not have access to, but in the interest of your well-being and in mitigating the problem, run out and get some steel wool; it's cheap at Home Depot or Wal-mart (couple bucks). They'll chew through paper towels, they won't chew through steel wool. Stuff that in any holes/cracks you see (mice can fit in some crazy small places; if you're looking at something and saying "eh, I don't think he can fit in there"... stuff some steel wool just to be safe, because they can.
Is it possible to write a sentence and not have parenthesis? :lol
I try (very hard, too), but no.
Danielewski?
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For the record, mice aren't that big a deal for me; I grew up in farming town (a cousin has a huge dairy farm, my grandparents had chickens/crops) and I grew up on a lake (which is always ripe for rodents). My wife's house (before we married) was also on a lake, and now the house is unoccupied so I had a rodent problem there.
Peanut butter and mechanical traps have worked fine for me (though the best is still our four-legged feline friend).
Katt, I know it's the landlord's responsibility, especially as it's coming from a unit you do not have access to, but in the interest of your well-being and in mitigating the problem, run out and get some steel wool; it's cheap at Home Depot or Wal-mart (couple bucks). They'll chew through paper towels, they won't chew through steel wool. Stuff that in any holes/cracks you see (mice can fit in some crazy small places; if you're looking at something and saying "eh, I don't think he can fit in there"... stuff some steel wool just to be safe, because they can.
Is it possible to write a sentence and not have parenthesis? :lol
I try (very hard, too), but no.
That's (actually) funny.
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So I almost bought the poison but I had a question and wasn't really sure what the answer was. Say I lay the poison out, like even putting some in the hole behind the oven, and then plug it back up with steel wool so they never come in again. Let's say they eat the poison... then they just die in the walls? How common is that, is that a bad plan to just try to kill them and let them rot away in the walls? I mean, there's probably a couple dead ones in there anyway because they're old buildings, and there are probably a couple dead ones in the crawlspace under the building... but also I don't want to risk a bunch of rotten disgustingly smelling corpses just sitting in the walls.
How common is that? EXTREMELY common. Sometimes you will notice a smell, sometimes not. When we ripped out the walls in my wife's old house, behind one wall next to a staircase, we found easily 10 or 12 skulls from over the years.
Bear in mind that we're not talking about zombies here; the mouse will die, and in about two weeks will be just bone. Not to gross you out, but if you have mice in the building already, you've already had "rotten disgustingly smelling corpses just sitting in the walls" already. They only live about a year or so in the wild. Don't get me wrong; perfect world this isn't happening, but you have mice, so you're going to have this; if you poison them you will have one or two more waves and that's it, as opposed to 10 generations of mice "corpses".
(https://i.imgur.com/5LJ4TUJ.jpg)
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Well we decommissioned my brothers 120 gallon fish tank a month or so ago, in doing so we found a dried up fish that must have jumped out and behind the tank but managed to get onto a ledge of the cabinet holding the tank up (so it was hidden in a way, it never hit the floor to notice). We were thinking, how did we never smell that? But I guess when you have a house with two dudes, a cat, the tank itself, well one dead carcass didn't amount to much :lol
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Well we decommissioned my brothers 120 gallon fish tank a month or so ago, in doing so we found a dried up fish that must have jumped out and behind the tank but managed to get onto a ledge of the cabinet holding the tank up (so it was hidden in a way, it never hit the floor to notice). We were thinking, how did we never smell that? But I guess when you have a house with two dudes, a cat, the tank itself, well one dead carcass didn't amount to much :lol
Oh god :lol :lol
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AHHHH.
So I stopped hearing squeaking in the walls. Plugged up the holes. Everything was cool, I thought just last night I had this problem fixed. And just a minute ago before I got ready to leave and go back to work I see a fucking mouse just walk slowly out in the middle of the living room, right in front of me. No sunlight in the room, just a floor lamp, and it stopped. I picked up a slipper and swatted it to death, and I feel absolutely terrible, I'm actually shaking a little. Innocent creature. But I did not want to let it get away. It must've been old/dying to be that slowly and not move at all when confronted.
Ugh. Fucking apartments.
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You might still have the problem licked; if he (or she??) was really moving that slow and was in the middle of the floor in daylight, it might have been in dire straits at that point and that's a good sign for you (and your crusade).
And I'm sorry you had to go through that (I'm being sincere; it's not an easy thing).
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Yea, I don't know if I could stomp a mouse like that, but I get it too with the frustrations and well, yea a rodent in the middle of your living room. Stadler might have a point though, maybe that mouse was kind of trapped or fucked due to your work and you kind of just finished them off there. I'm no expert, but the fact it was a weakling might be a good sign.
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It must've been old/dying to be that slowly and not move at all when confronted.
It was a mercy kill then and you were ending its suffering. Don't beat yourself up about it.
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(https://popcorninmybra.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/tumblr_o4f30qxqqf1uctr63o1_500.gif?w=615)
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Ugh, it was still twitching and moving as I picked it up and threw it away. Goes against my morals not to kill living things (most insects excluded, FOR REASONS! we can debate that later though). Like a mouse is still a complex organism. But yeah, I guess I shouldn't beat myself up over it. It had to have been weak as hell because it was just walking slowly through the center of the room, like Frodo stumbling towards Mount Doom and got caught by the Eye of Sauron :lol except there was no happy ending for it this time. The one I saw a month or so ago at night? Darted along the walls, peeked out from behind the bookshelf at both ends, reacted to movement and sound immediately. This one I guess was starving/poisoned/dying, so yeah, mercy kill.
Actually I thought about it and they've been doing maintenance work on the unit the crazy lady at the end of the building lived in. So I'm willing to bet that mouse found its way to my place (on the other side of the building) after running away from that unit. They didn't chew through the hole I plugged up behind the oven, so I can only assume there's a hole behind my dryer/washer (will check tonight) - and if it isn't that, it's gotta be from the grated hole in the floor of my furnace room under the stairs; the slats are thin but probably still wide enough for a mouse to squeeze through. Guess I'll just put a piece of wood over that.