It’s a very busy morning. I have a post germinating that may get up later today. I’m a bit sleepy, and one reason is that the mice in the attic kept me awake again last night.
Here’s the problem: we have little nocturnal creatures living in our attic, scurrying around and chewing things. We worry that they may be doing damage up there, and they drive us nuts with their noises at night. (We wear ear-plugs to bed). On the other hand, we’d rather be kept awake than pay an exterminator to kill them; we would endure great expense and discomfort rather than harm a single whisker on a single rodent.
We could use sonar to drive them away, but our chinchillas would also be affected. We don’t want to do anything that could kill our night-time guests above, and we won’t cause discomfort to our chinchillas. If anyone has any entirely non-lethal, non sound-based suggestions for gently encouraging the rats and mice in the attic to seek other accomodations, that would be great.
What kind of infections could the “undocumented rodent” produce in the chinchillas?
You can get live traps on the Internet — we got my niece a cat-sized one so she could get the feral cats in her area spayed/neutered.
If you come in contact with the rodent or droppings, thorough soap and water for you, wash the clothes, and 1 part bleach to 10 part water for everything else. I find a little bleach won’t harm me, either, and have been known to wash my hands with a 1:10 solution after handling wild birds.
There’s quite a bit of mouse advice here: http://ozarque.livejournal.com/374996.html
Most of it involves either humane trapping or cats.
Ugh, we had exactly the same problem in the last house we lived in, which abutted a wooded area. We also had dogs, and the way we were able to track the mice’s movements is that we’d find pieces of dog food squirreled away in the most improbable locations. That was disconcerting, particularly when we’d find them in our silverware drawer. So we started keeping dog food in plastic containers. And then the mice simply started chewing through them.
The sonar device did exactly nothing to deter them, so we got a trap, baited it with peanut butter, and relocated the mice. But that didn’t seem to make a dent either, probably because of their sheer numbers. The only thing that helped was the arrival of spring and summer. Come fall, they were back. To be honest, I might resort to lethal methods these days. I’m not a clean freak by any stretch, but mice on my silverware isn’t something I want to contemplate for very long.
It can be a maddening problem for an animal lover. I hope you come up with a solution you’re comfortable with.
Good luck. My solution is, er, lethal, and is entitled “keep domesticated predators in the house”. Mice brave enough to come into our house don’t live long once they meet the adorable fluffball with razor-sharp claws that dwells within.
A few apartments back, we had a single mouse running around the kitchen. We caught her or him in a live trap and released her into the bushes in a park, a couple hundred yards from the nearest residence. We felt the bushes kept her or him safe from predators (domestic and out for a romp or otherwise) while she got her (resp.) bearings, and the distance from human domiciles made it unlikely that she’d take up residence with humans again.
But that was only one mouse. I have no good, completely ethical advice for you if you’ve got a full-blown invasion to deal with.
If you don’t want to use an animal to kill other animals (and let’s be honest, it’s also hard to find an ordinary housecat nowadays that you can be sure is a good mouser), you can still use one to shoo them off. A better, albeit grosser, solution might be to get some used cat litter and place it in your attic. It will stink, but it may deter the critters.
My husband is an animal LOVING vegetarian; I mean he REALLY LOVES ANIMALS!!! ALL ANIMALS!! So when we got mice, (and then RATS), we tried traps, we tried powdered Bobcat Urine, we tried sonar, we tried EVERYTHING. (We have 2 in-house dogs too!)
After about 9 months, we had chewed-through dogfood containers (thick plastic), chewed up books (glue in bindings) chewed up postage stamps, and rodent poop in every concievable place including the silverware drawer and inside the stove. We had nests in the furniture. Our whole house smelled “mousy” (Rat urine has an inimitable smell). If you went into the kitchen at night and turned on the light, you would see tens of them scurry for the darkness. THe handing basket that holds fruit would have entirely eaten apples in it in the morning. THey came on our bed and ATE OUR HAIR as we SLEPT. We began to worry about the WIRING (mice and rats lurve to chew on wiring and cause your house to go up in flames while you are at work, possibly causing your helpless pets to burn to death!!)
Eventually, we went to the hardware store, and got some D-CON, and put it in the attic.
Overnight, the nightmare was over. ANd it WAS a total nightmare.
Perhaps if you live in a more modern house it will never get that bad for you….our house is a run-down old farmhouse, and clearly had innumerable indetectable entrances (sealing the rodent entrances was our FIRST move, and had zero effect). Once you wake up with a big rat eating your hair, in bed with you…..or possibly giving your pet a disease…..being inhumane is sometimes the only alternative. Rats and mice multiply very very quickly.
THe only thing we DIDN’T try was getting a cat. Maybe, before D-CON, you could try that, and it might work. Our dogs didn’t even BARK at the rats and mice, not even when they were clustered around the dogfood bowl!
Hugo, you’re an animal lover, not a Jainist. Get humane traps, or borrow cats. These are not mice living somewhere in a field and causing you no harm.
Pure peppermint essential oil, sprinkled liberally about the attic. Mice can’t stand it. They’ll go somewhere less pepperminty. I don’t know how your chinchillas will feel about it though, if they go very near the attic.
Hugo-
1. Live trap them.
2. Neuter or spay them.
You may have to look hard for a vet to do this, but it would be worth it as it would be true to your conscience.
I am no vegan/PETA type, but I think that glue traps should be outlawed.