If you live in the country it’s gonna happen… a mouse (or two, or three) will eventually find itself scavenging through your home. When we lived in the trailer they were impossible to keep out! And even now that we are in our new home we have been visited by several mice.
We’ve tried everything to get rid of them: poison, sticky pads, snap traps, those dumb plug in devices that are supposed to keep mice away, even keeping cats around… none of them worked.
Then finally we found these things called Mice Cubes. It’s a little plastic box that has a door which opens inward, but won’t open back out. So the little mouse can easily slip into the trap, and will be absolutely stuck.
I LOVE these things!
See, when we used rat poison, the mice would die in the vents, in the walls, or even in the middle of the floor (yeah, I almost stepped on a dead one barefooted one night!).
Then they would start to stink and we couldn’t get to them to remove the smell. That was horrible.
Snap traps didn’t always work. Sometimes the little boogers managed to lick the peanut butter right off the trap without even setting it off, leaving behind nice little “presents” for me as a thank you gift.
And when the occasional mouse did get caught, it was just nasty. Not to mention how much it scared me to try to set the trap without catching a finger in it!
The sticky pads didn’t always keep it’s catch. Too many times I’d find mouse hair and poop stuck all over a sticky pad where one evidently was caught, but somehow managed to struggle enough to free itself.
But these mouse cubes are impossible to escape from. Just put a little piece of peanut butter cracker in the far end, and dare the little rascals to try it. It never fails.
I noticed evidence of a mouse in our pantry the other night, so I immediately went out to buy some cube traps. I set two of them out that night.
The next morning I went to see if I’d caught anything, and sure enough both traps had a mouse in them. Now I’m wondering exactly how many mice are in our house?
The good thing about these traps is that they are reusable. So, I’ll be setting them out again tonight to see if I can catch anymore.
There is one downside to these cubes. You are left with a live mouse, and the question of what to do with it!
My kids enjoy watching them inside their little plastic cages. Of course, Jada wants to keep them as pets.
Everyone always teases me because I can’t bring myself to kill the cute, fuzzy little pests. We always take them to some neighboring corn field and let them go.
That part I’ll leave up to you. But, if you have a problem with mice, let me tell you, this is what you need to get! I get mine at Walmart for super cheap. Totally worth it!
So, what about you? Do you have a rodent problem, or a solution to share with us? I’d love to hear how you are handling these pesky invaders!
A city girl learning to homestead on an acre of land in the country. Wife and homeschooling mother of four. Enjoying life, and everything that has to do with self sufficient living.
We are now up to 9 mice caugt and I’m SURE we still have them, the side bar had droppings yesterday when I moved the papers off, and I could hear one in the crawl space behind the wall behind our toilet last night. UGH… We’ve caught most on the sticky traps, 2 on snap traps, and Kendra dropped my cube trap behind the dishwasher. (I had set it up carefully balanced – and she was rough opening the door and pulled the machine away from the wall … yes, she knew it was back there, she just forgot)
Shuddering…..
To keep mice out of your vehicle, make sure to push the re-circ button to close the air vent before you shut off the ignition. My husband works in a car dealership, and they often have to take apart the whole air system to get rid of a bad smell… and it’s always a dead mouse trapped in the fan. By shutting the vent, they can’t get up there.
One thing I was told a long time ago was to put dryer sheets out. Put them behind furniture or any little holes you think the mice may be using. They don’t like them. We put dryer sheets in our RV and pop-up camper to keep them out and so far (knock on wood) we’ve never had a problem. But man, the mice and rats do seem to be worse this year and bolder too.
Glue traps are very cruel. We have had personal experience with those and I never want to go there again! These sound like a great option, thanks!
you can buy some of that foamy stuff in a can that you spray into cracks or holes, the stuff expands when it drys and its ugly, but good for places that really wont be seen but need to be stopped up. also, you can buy steel wool and wrap it around your pipes and stuff under the house, or any where I guess, the mice dont like to pick through it. dont ever put mouse poison under your house, it does kill them , but it also attracts them.
I laughed out loud a little bit when you said your kids were content to keep the mice as pets. Too cute 🙂 Thanks for sharing about these traps, I had never heard of them before, and at first was worried that they would be very expensive…you’ve shed light on a great way to catch mice as we can never get the other methods to work either.
Thanks 🙂
The only trouble we have is in the garage, when someone left the lid off the birdseed. Then the mice and voles (?) were making nests in the VAN!!! GRRRRR…anyway, when we lived in a college apartment we always did the thing where you put a yardstick on the counter. As much as you can get to hang over w/o falling off would be good. Then we put PB on the end. The PB end was strategically placed over a bucket of water! When the mice run out to get the PB, the yardstick tips them into the bucket and they can’t swim. Not exactly humane, but we only needed it for a week or so. One fell in and my hubby dumped it out immediately at the nearby park! *shudder* But we moved after that. I will tell my girlfriend about these though – she lives in the country and doesn’t want to kill them either =) Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for sharing this. I wish I had known about this several weeks ago. We had a mouse that would jump over the sticky glue traps. We finally called a professional after she ran out from under my feet twice in the middle of the night. He put out poison and tons of glue – box traps to the tune on $85. We ended up catching around 9 mice (mama thought our house was a great place to have babies!!!) It was horrible! Those little mice caught in the glue! And my daughter freaked out because they were still alive but so covered in glue there was so saving them. My MIL mentioned that she now has mice but the glue traps were too cruel for her. I’ll be sure to pass this info along to her.
Thanks again!!!