Author Topic: What to do when there are mice in the walls?  (Read 3799 times)

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Offline The Walrus

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #35 on: July 02, 2019, 04:44:28 PM »
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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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #36 on: July 03, 2019, 07:39:26 AM »
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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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #37 on: July 03, 2019, 07:44:27 AM »
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.

Offline JayOctavarium

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #38 on: July 03, 2019, 09:00:16 AM »
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.

I just don't understand what they were trying to achieve with any part of the song, either individually or as a whole. You know what? It's the Platypus of Dream Theater songs. That bill doesn't go with that tail, or that strange little furry body, or those webbed feet, and oh god why does it have venomous spurs!? And then you find out it lays eggs too. The difference is that the Platypus is somehow functional despite being a crazy mishmash or leftover animal pieces

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Offline The Walrus

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #39 on: July 03, 2019, 01:52:13 PM »
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.
From a Mega Man Legends island jamming power metal to a Walrus listening to black metal, I like your story arc.
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Offline TAC

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #40 on: July 03, 2019, 08:12:35 PM »
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
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #41 on: July 05, 2019, 08:40:25 AM »
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.

Offline The Walrus

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #42 on: July 05, 2019, 08:43:04 AM »
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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Offline Shadow Ninja 2.0

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #43 on: July 05, 2019, 06:34:24 PM »
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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Offline TAC

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #44 on: July 05, 2019, 06:35:28 PM »
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.
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Online Stadler

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #45 on: July 06, 2019, 08:14:27 AM »
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". 


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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #46 on: July 08, 2019, 08:14:45 AM »
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

Offline The Walrus

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #47 on: July 08, 2019, 05:02:20 PM »
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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Offline The Walrus

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #48 on: July 19, 2019, 11:58:11 AM »
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.
From a Mega Man Legends island jamming power metal to a Walrus listening to black metal, I like your story arc.
"I don't worry about nothing, no, 'cause worrying's a waste of my time"

Online Stadler

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #49 on: July 19, 2019, 01:16:29 PM »
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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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #50 on: July 19, 2019, 01:26:02 PM »
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.

Offline Ruba

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #51 on: July 19, 2019, 01:50:16 PM »
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.

Offline TAC

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #52 on: July 19, 2019, 02:02:20 PM »
would have thought the same thing but seeing the OP was TAC i immediately thought Maiden or DT related
Winger Theater Forums........or WTF.  ;D
TAC got a higher score than me in the electronic round? Honestly, can I just drop out now? :lol

Offline The Walrus

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Re: What to do when there are mice in the walls?
« Reply #53 on: July 19, 2019, 02:21:21 PM »
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.
From a Mega Man Legends island jamming power metal to a Walrus listening to black metal, I like your story arc.
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