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A few nights ago, as I was doing the daily evening routine of Steeming whilst sitting on my toddler's floor waiting for her to fall asleep... I heard some weird scratching from the walls above me! Hearing noises from inside the walls is never a good thing... Normally, it probably means mice or even worse... RATS! In previous rental places, we've had the occasional mouse, but nothing longer than a few days when we would be able to trap them or get rid of them with ultrasonics. One time, we even managed to catch a live one in a plastic bag which we then threw out of a 2nd floor open window...

Somehow, this is our own house now, and so the fact that there is a mouse in there is really quite troubling! Seeing as my wife is terrified of mice... this is a job that falls to me. My daughters are currently too little to be able to be doing this, but soon...

So, I hunted down the poison and the trap (we only have one at the moment, one that we got in Australia and has been great at catching mice, we need to get more of them the next time I'm back...), which took a while seeing as we haven't seen a single mouse for over five years!

The Initial Plan

The initial plan was to do a bit of a reconnaissance in force.... which basically meant emptying out the rough area of the attic whilst making a huge amount of noise and hopefully trying to flush out any mice to see if there really was anything up here. We didn't find anything, but there were the tell tale droppings. Luckily, there were very little, so we might have been fortunate enough to have caught this problem before it developed too far.

So, for the first night... I moved the one of the ultrasonics up to the attic from the kitchen (the ultrasonics seem to dissuade new mice from moving in, but won't easily dislodge existing nests). I wasn't going to use the poison immediately, as it is pretty disgusting what it does to the mouse... plus, I don't want them dying in strange places. No, the poison would be reserved as a last ditch effort if things got out of hand.

So, the single trap was baited with Crunchy Peanut Butter (which we only have for this sort of thing... we don't normally eat it!) and placed over night for along one of the potential lines of entry. I had read that mice tend to stick close to objects, and not to run into the open, so the best placement for the trap was alongside some construction material that has lived in the attic since we moved in!

The Next Morning

... and as luck would have it, we got a mouse in the morning (I'm not photographing it...). Again, the body disposal was for me... I'm not particularly keen about it, but I guess if I have to...

... the next stage was to empty out these suitcases, which have various bags and sleeping material (pillows, duvets...) in them. I had left them partially open as I'm more terrified of mould than I am of mice! Which, at this point seems like it might have been a bad idea. So, opening them all, emptying them out... at any moment, expecting a mouse to jump out and rip my head off! (Well, Australian mice would do that, whilst poisoning you... European mice are a little tamer!).

Sadly, there was no excitement... other than a couple of droppings....

The Aftermath

Well... it is pretty anti-climatic, but after a couple of nights of trapping and close listening during the nights (remember, I'm on the ground in the room below for a couple of hours each night... if not the whole night!)... we have had no other hits and no sound detections.

Which means, it is time to plug up these holes that the pipes run though. This was likely the entry point for the mouse. We normally plug these holes with steel wool with the caustic pink soap on it. Apparently, the mice find it really irritating to be poked by the steel wool... and the caustic soap powder really irritates their eyes and nose. So, they will find a different place.

As an additional backup, we have now installed an new ultrasonic up in the attic.... I tried that out at human hearing level. OMG! That thing is painfully irritating! If I was a mouse, I would definitely be finding a new home. It is like screaming banshee equivalent of a sound strobe.

Plus, extra traps. We have a new pack of 12... so we are ready for the next onslaught!

However, for the moment at least, it appears that we are clear....

FINGERS CROSSED