Need Advice on Mice please

[Chef Isaac]

My wife and I just moved into a new place not to long ago and we have an outdoor garage and is not attached to the house. I havent gone out their much but tonight I did to try tp find some of my fishing equipment.

I found a lot of scat on the ground and on a lot of other stuff.

A few questions.....

1) I did not smell mouse urine. Is the scat something that I need to be concered with?

2) I would like the mise to vanish before my wife freaks out. So..... what is the best way to remove mise? Do I need to go get traps? Or is there a home remedy?

And dont say cats.......

[tedw200]

get fox urine crystals at a garden shop and sprinkle it around the perimeter of your property , it solved my problem 18 yrs ago with field mice.

[Chef Isaac]

what are urine crystals?

[BeeCurious]

what are urine crystals?

"Shake-Away" is what I found when chipmunks were digging up flower bulbs in the yard.

http://www.shake-away.com/

[BEES4U]

Try the Tom Cat brand of bait bars.
You can also make some 2" diameter PVC pipe bait stations.
You will need the following;
one plastic "T"
three 12" long pipes
one 2" cap
and rat/mouse bait.
If you have critters now, wait until you have your 1st cold spell + rain
good luck,
Ernie

[NeilV]

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...-mouse-001.jpg

[Countryboy]

A good barn cat is worth its weight in gold. If you don't like cats, a hungry black snake or an owl can put the mice away.

Get a plastic 5 gallon bucket, or half of a plastic 55 gallon drum. Put some corn in the bottom, and lean a board from the top of the bucket/drum to the ground like a ramp. Mice will climb the board to get into the bucket to get the corn, and they can't get back out. If you have many mice, don't be surprised if you catch 20 mice in a night. Dispose of them as you wish.

I'm not crazy about using rat/mice poison. Dead mice stink...

[Barry Digman]

We have a nasty little disease here called hantavirus. It's lethal, and is transmitted by the droppings of deer mice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hantavirus

http://www.health.state.nm.us/erd/He...0FirstCase.pdf


We take this stuff pretty seriously around here. I don't know if Washington has had any, but...

[NasalSponge]

NeilV...you are so naughty!!!

[NeilV]

Countryboy,

I've got a morbidly obese cat that I'll sell to you for $225,000.00. That's a good deal, as he is really, really fat.

He is neutered, so you can't make much on the investment.

Think about it. I will ship.

Neil

P.S. True story: My wife brought this cat home after volunteering for a pet adoption service. We were to be his foster home. We had one family come over to see him, and the cat freak out and peed all over the guy and scratched him and ran off and hid. So they could not take him. Then they called to say that maybe the cat freaking out was a "bad sign," and they would look elsewhere for a pet.

So about 8 years later, we are still his fosterparents. All he does is worry about food and sleep. Although he can catch mice.

I named him Freebird.

[Countryboy]

Somehow I just can't picture a morbidly obese cat being a good barn cat. A good barn cat is half starved and always looking for a meal.

You give a cat enough loving to keep it around, and just enough food to keep it from starving. They'll turn into excellent hunters and earn their keep.

Your cat reminds me of my niece's cat named Puppy. It was 7 or 8 years old when she got it, and she's had it 4 or 5 years. It's a big, lazy worthless cat. He acts like he can barely walk. He can't even keep his fur from getting all matted up. If you catch a mouse in a bucket and show it to him, he is uninterested. If your niece's pet baby bunny gets loose, the cat comes to life and the bunny is history.

[Ravenseye]

The bucket trick works good. Every so often I find the remnants of dead mice in a bucket or two that I left in the barn. I didn't intend to catch the mice but they ended up in there.

[NeilV]

Countryboy,

You drive a hard bargain. Since you will need to slim Freebird down, I will lower the price to $175,000.

Neil

[sqkcrk]

Butter and garlic. Skin them first and gut them too. Then a little butter and crushed garlic. Serve over a bed of catnip greens. To that cat you didn't want.

[NeilV]

Is that a Freebird recipe or a recipe to feed to Freebird.

I've always thought that Freebird would make a good housecat confit.

But my wife wouldn't go for it. Our dog killed one of our chickens, and my wife would not let me pluck the chicken because "we don't eat our pets." She obviously was not raised on a farm. (In her defense, when the chicken at issue was in the brooder, it would sit on her arms and shoulders like a parrot.)

[Countryboy]

You drive a hard bargain. Since you will need to slim Freebird down, I will lower the price to $175,000.

You do accept Zimbabwe dollars, right?

and my wife would not let me pluck the chicken because "we don't eat our pets." She obviously was not raised on a farm.

Did the bird have a name? Pets have names. At most, we might name our livestock 'dinner' or 'supper'.

[Kingfisher Apiaries]

If your niece's pet baby bunny gets loose, the cat comes to life and the bunny is history.

LOL

Barn cats are the greatest!!
Fix all males b/c they love to mark bee equip.

Mike

[WVaBees]

Not sure if it is available to the public but when I used to work in pest control we used these little blue cubes that when the mice ate them it absorbed all the moisture out of their body. Of course as the stuff expanded inside it killed the mouse but it continued to absorb until all that is left is a dried up mummified mouse...no odor either since there is nothing really to decompose.

[power napper]

One nice blacksnake in the outbuilding will take care of the mice.

[kbenz]

One nice blacksnake in the outbuilding will take care of the mice.

actually a snake doesn't eat that often. I have a couple large blacksnakes out back and still have mice/rats