Sorry to hear about your losses but the knowledge and wakeup is invaluable. Thanks for sharing and I trust you will overcome the little ____ 'tards......... 😈

Get a mouser of a cat. I am not a cat person but have grown to love our cat due to a drastic population decrease in rodents. He leaves them for me to discard. I figure I spend about 75 cents in food for the cat for every mouse he kills. He gets those stupid house swallows too.

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Mice & Health - Food preps

two topics both related due to Mice!
Hate mice, hated them before and hate them more now!

Health;
you can catch diseases from mice, Northern Deer mice especially.
(more to follow later and it is quite serious and not a joke at all)

Mice - food preps
Thought I had a good idea with using dressers to keep food storage in my Camper, wrong. Mice got in the camper, into the food prep and storage areas, caused $50+ dollars in food damage. (edit.. that should read $150 not $50)
Heard them again, or more of them again this morning so off to buy more poison and sticky traps. I had thought that I had gotten rid of them all, but I guess more moved into the void I created.

Now looking for Fox scent or Cat sent to spray around to help keep them out as well.

I will be cleaning the dressers, turning them over and putting some sheet metal over the bottoms to keep the mice out. Will be making some metal bins or looking for metal bins to keep the rest of the food in there as well. In the past there was evidence that they can chew their way through those large plastic totes as well, so they are out. 😮

A friend thought they might have moved in because I was gone so often and so long, looking for a place up North and Working up North. Both of those things have been put on hold until my Health returns to normal or I get better to the point I can travel and work to some degree again!

Mice/Rats keep them in mind for your food preps as well.
ps, they also destroyed some clothing/winter clothing I had stored... soo, they love leather too, so keep that in mind as well.

WildE,
if you need a cheap source of metal try a local print shop and ask if they have any used printing plates.
They are made of thin aluminum and are easily cut by scoring with a knife and bending along the score.
You may have to pay a bit for them as most printshops will sell their used plates for scrap.
Any residual ink can be cleaned with paint thinner and a rag...Oh and watch the edges, these things will slice a finger open in to time!

Sorry about your preps....... those damn mice have gotten into some of my preps before too.
Some solutions: - Large glass jars with metal lids or quart size mason jars /gallon size still available second hand
- metal tins like cookie tins (available at Salvation Army thrift stores or dollar stores
- Mice hate mint: sprinkle it around or drops of mint oil
- I've also use Bay leaves around supplies.
You are SO right, WildE, those rodents can destroy supplies and lead to illness. Be careful when cleaning up mice poop.
I prefer traps to kill them. They are dead in a snap (lol) - peanut butter with a sunflower seed jammed into the bait section (they can lick off the peanut butter alright, but then when they go for the sunflower seed, they spring the trap). With poison, they could crawl away into a crevice, die, and stink to high heaven for ages.

Here is a infinite mouse trap that is cheap and never has to be re set. Supplies are, 5 gallon bucket, a beer or pop can, 2 ft of wire (coat hanger works good), -1 tbsp of peanut butter. Punch a small hole in the bottom of the pop can and run the wire in and out through the mouth. Punch a couple holes in the top of the bucket across from each other and run the wire through the holes so the can is suspended in the middle, smear the PB on the can and place a small piece of wood as a ramp up up to the edge of the bucket. Fill the bucket up with anti freeze or water. The mouse goes up the ramp and tries to jump to the can which spins, dropping the mouse into the water and drowning. The anti freeze will keep the trap working all winter and kind of pickles the mouse so it doesnt smell as bad. I leave these traps in cabins for 10 months and it keeps them mouse free. It will hold 30+ mice.
Heres a link with a pic

http://fivegallonideas.com/extremely-effective-mouse-trap/

Holy carp Sifton! Thank you so much for that website find! I'm pretty sure it's MacGuyvers first stop if he finds a five gallon bucket. LOL

I like the bucket trap, we use it for lemmings here in Labrador, but we sink the bucket in the ground almost to the lip, eliminates the need for the ramp.

I hear you, I have what seems like a never ending battle of the mouse in the house for the past two years, this year was better then last year, thank heavens and I have cats, house cats and barn cats and while they do a good job most of the time, sometimes you need to crack out the big guns in terms of traps of differnet kinds.

thanks Sifton, that trap looks great!

Wild_E - I have a really bad problem with mice in my vehicles. they come in thru the cabin filter in the glove compartment, and nothing I have done has kept them out for any length of time. I keep some emergency food in a tightly sealed metal container, but I can't leave ANY food in the open in cab. they even chewed their way into the compartment between the 2 front seats.

I'm really looking forward to building some of those traps!

I had to post this as well. Last fall I found my engine compartment stuffed full of mushrooms. Some enterprising critter was either drying them out or storing them in there.

Rah, that's nuts, I mean mushrooms. Squirrels maybe?

BetterSafe,
I ended up putting some water in he bucket with some windshield washer fluid and some older engine coolant. Some of the buckets were just placed under the front undercarage by the steering control arms. Some of the buckets had ramps, as to cut out holes in the trailer seemed, well a trifle excessive 🙂 The peanut butter did a good job, though I might add some of that cheese from a jar as well, then feed the rest to the dog.

Go to the dollar store and get the long handled trash picker uppers, then taking those soggy things out is easy as pie. I did eventually also put some stickys down, but hate those very much. There were two in the camper who where just too smart, outed every type of trap, avoided poison, avoided the bucket trap, avoided 3 types of mouse traps and one of them was the live capture as well.

The picture above reminds me of my engine only it was pine cones, straw/hay/other field grasses. Almost started an engine fire, so it took a while to clean it out, then the solutions were found.

If anyone has any other ideas and things that work for you, please feel free to share, so we can all benefit from it.
Cheers and thanks

edit; the buckets by the idler and control arms netted the biggest scores with the one bucket having in excess of some 12 of them over a few days time. .. sweet !