Ninja Mouse

April 9, 2010 1:22 PM

I've got a mouse that is far too clever to fall for the usual traps. I need some tricks!

 So, I've tried the standard snap traps with peanut butter, crusty bread, oats and maple syrup, and nutella. No luck. He just avoids them.

I've also tried glue traps which he also just avoids. I've moved on to poison. But all that did was make his droppings green. Now he's discovered that he can chew the pellets up and only eat the tasty bits and leAve the poison behind. So I'm out of ideas.

The closest I've come to catching him is that I rigged up a camera with a motion sensor and managed to snap a few pics of him. So yes it is a mouse (not a rat or something weird) and he seems to like to hang out in dark corners from midnight to 5am and munch on things. 

Oh and if you have some thoughts on how to get him with an arduino, I'm totally into that.  

posted by kamelhoecker to home & garden (25 answers total)

Microwave a bag of popcorn, open it up, set a regular mousetrap a little ways inside the bag. We had a mouse here at work, and it was three freakin' weeks of checking peanutbutter and cheese-baited traps, cleaning up mouse pee and poo on desks and keyboards, before we came up with the popcorn plan. It was actually the second day of the popcorn trap -- the first day it was obvious he had been in the bag and managed to avoid tripping the trap, but on the second day he wasn't so lucky.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:35 PM on April 9, 2010

Maybe read some of the advice in this post?

I put something up there about peanut butter and laundry detergent that worked for me with a major rat problem I used to have. There's some other good advice as well.
posted by teabag at 1:35 PM on April 9, 2010

I've had luck with simply using more glue traps. They have to be very strategically placed - it took me a few tries before I managed to catch any mice.

And yes, glue traps are horrible, but so are mouse poops in your cutlery drawer and like you, my mice were good at eating the peanut butter right off the snap traps.
posted by GuyZero at 1:38 PM on April 9, 2010

I've used bucket mouse traps for the crafty ones in the past.

Basically just set the bucket against something so the mouse can crawl up to the bucket edge. I use a pint stirrer stick and gob peanut butter on it, then balance it on the bucket edge. As soon as Mr. Mousy walks a few inches out onto the stick, the whole thing tips and falls into the bucket.

Youtube has dozens of variations.
posted by sanka at 1:39 PM on April 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Get a cat.

No, really. Borrow a cat.

Cats have evolved over millions of years to kill mice. There is nothing they love more. They are willing to lie in wait for hours.

Borrow a cat. It will get your mouse.
posted by musofire at 1:44 PM on April 9, 2010 [4 favorites]

I'm seconding GuyZero on strategic placement of the traps. You have to lay them in the path of the mouse. They don't deviate from their trails enough. Edges and corner are your friends. Keep the traps out for a couple of days after you catch one, your mouse probably has siblings. Also get the tray kind with the liquid goop not the cheap paper kind. And throw them out when they get old, because the mice can just pull themselves off old glue or not goopy glue.

Also get a kitten. He will destroy a lot of bigger objects in your home, but no mouse poops in your food. If you can't get a cat of your own borrow someone else's for a day make sure he doesn't eat the mice if you've been laying poison out. But the cat smell may drive them away.
posted by edbles at 1:44 PM on April 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Borrow someone's mouse-hunting cat? Cats are also very clever (sometimes) animals, so you'd be matching brainpower with brainpower.
posted by elder18 at 1:45 PM on April 9, 2010

Glue traps never fail to make me feel like a terrible, terrible human being.

But, the popcorn trick definitely works. And the traditional mousetrap is still the best of them all.
posted by General Malaise at 1:45 PM on April 9, 2010

Try to block their point of entry. Look near where you see the most activity. There is probably a hole of some sort. Also, there is never just one mouse.
posted by cuban link flooded jesus at 1:52 PM on April 9, 2010

Borrow a cat. It will get your mouse.

What do you use then to get rid of the cat?

Seconding the popcorn-bag-trap. I used sthg called "kettle-style" which is insanely sweet (to me) popcorn, and it must have been pure grain nirvana to my little mouse adversary. I hated to do it--I loves meeses to pieces & our pet rats were awesomeness defined. Especially Biggie Rat. But this mouse was a free agent and intent on eating his/her way through the back of every box in our pantry.
posted by beelzbubba at 1:53 PM on April 9, 2010

Where have you tried the glue traps? I use to work in a pub where occasionally, during post-closing-time sessions, we had sticky trap placement contests. Most mice in the morning wins. The best places where corners, mice like hug the walls as they run about.

One of the weird things about the sticky traps is a mouse stuck on one will make these noises that seem to attract other mice. So during a trap contest, if you could catch a mouse before everyone left for the night, then there was a good chance that you'd have another one or two in the morning. It sounds pretty cruel, but maybe what you need to do is catch a different mouse first, and use that mouse as bait for your ninja mouse.

We also had some gas chamber traps, which looked just like this one, and those worked very well. I'm not sure if they're available for purchase--our gas chambers where maintained by an exterminator--but it might be worth a look.
posted by Hoenikker at 1:56 PM on April 9, 2010

Glue traps never fail to make me feel like a terrible, terrible human being.

I used to throw the mouse+trap into a bucket and stick it under the tailpipe of my car to put the mice out of their misery reasonably humanely. But again, if it's that or poop on my forks, the mice gotta die.
posted by GuyZero at 1:56 PM on April 9, 2010

Another trick is to put steel wool anywhere where there are holes in the wall or baseboard. Move your appliances out and stuff any visible holes with wool. If there holes behind or at the back of cupboards, stuff 'em. If there are gaps in the baseboard bigger than a nickel, stuff 'em. Mice hate steel wool.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:01 PM on April 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Have you tried this poison? It's the only thing that worked on my (apparently brilliant) mice.
posted by oinopaponton at 2:02 PM on April 9, 2010

(I should mention that it took a week to 10 days after we set out the poison for the mice to be gone for good)
posted by oinopaponton at 2:03 PM on April 9, 2010

In my experience, nothing beats a nice greasy piece of pepperoni secured to the snap trap.
posted by bricksNmortar at 2:06 PM on April 9, 2010

When I bought my current house the former occupants left many wise mice behind. Our cats got several but the wisest of the bunch managed to avoid that fate and because we've got cats and little ones we didn't want to use poison or snap traps. Despite my scepticism I paid about $15 for a battery operated electrocution chamber and was mouse free in less than a week. It was truly amazing.
posted by Mitheral at 2:53 PM on April 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

In section 5 of Camp Life In The Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making, by William Hamilton Gibson, there are 9 different types of mouse/rat traps described that you can make.
posted by goml at 2:59 PM on April 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

I've had great success using the following technique:
1. Buy several Victor traps with the wooden base. Sand off the logo*.
2. Put a few scoops of peanut butter in a bowl. Microwave it for about 30 seconds or until the peanut butter starts to melt. Mix in a few spoonfuls of sesame seeds.
3. Smear the entire trap with the peanut-butter-and-sesame-seeds bait. Do not arm the trap.
4. Place the trap along walls, behind the refrigerator, and in corners. Position the traps at a 90-degree angle to the mouse's path so the mouse has to step over the trap.
5. Wait about 1 week to ten days. Restock the bait as needed so the mice become accustomed to their new food sources.
6. Arm the traps.

*Rats and mice are extraordinarily intelligent creatures and they are naturally suspicious of anything new in their environment. Some of them can have learned to read.
posted by mattdidthat at 4:16 PM on April 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

D-Con (linked above) placed on regular mouse trails is very effective for keeping mice/voles out of my garage (they don't try to get into my house, since the cats live there). It does, however, cause the mice to die a possibly horrible death by dehydration, which you might be bothered by (I'm not) and you need to be careful to keep it out of places where pets ever go.

Almost always, they make it outside before they die, in search of water. This is great! I am squeamish about dealing with bodies and appreciate that they just...vaporize.*

*One didn't, once. I ended up playing find-the-smelly-thing, and it turned out it had crawled inside one of my rollerblades to die. This was ooky, and I still think about it every time I put them on. But just once and I've been using the poison for about 5 years
posted by charmedimsure at 4:17 PM on April 9, 2010

There's no magic answer. It's the standard: plug the holes, put all your food in places they can't get it, they'll go away if there's nothing to eat. I've bought every type of trap, tried almost every piece of advice posted to MetaFilter. But if you don't stay vigilant, they return. (sigh)

On a side note: every one of these mouse threads involves "get a cat." I would pay good money for a cat rental service at this point. Where is RentalCats.com?
posted by Gucky at 5:32 PM on April 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Where is RentalCats.com?

Post it as a gig on Craigslist?
posted by CathyG at 9:02 PM on April 9, 2010

I've tried the bucket thing before. Turns out, mice can jump really far. Trust me on that one.

I've heard that most people over-bait the traps. If you put a giant glob of peanut butter on there, the mouse can easily eat his fill without triggering the traps. Do give the snap traps another try, but with just the teeniest tiniest dab of peanut butter.
posted by ErikaB at 10:10 PM on April 9, 2010

I put out some snap traps, which the mice avoided, and a spin trap which caught one. I think they didn't know what a spin trap was (the second mouse has avoided it). I bought a two pack of the at Lowe's for about $5.
posted by yohko at 6:12 AM on April 10, 2010

I was waiting for something interesting to report, but it seems that the mouse has found a more welcoming environment. (the glue traps everywhere might have helped convince him!) I still hear him in the walls occasionally, but no more droppings so I can live with that.

Next time I will try the electronic shocker traps. The book gomi linked to was a fun read - lots of neat ideas like a knife holding up a bowl but i'm not entirely confident of their practicality.

As for the bucket idea - yeah, that would have to be a huge bucket (more of a barrel really) to work. And then I'm not sure how the mouse would get up high enough to fall in.
posted by kamelhoecker at 3:28 PM on June 12, 2010