About a couple of months ago I noticed a mouse running around my flat.I live in a small one bedroom flat. It is small in floor size, but easily accomodate a ten foot giant in the living and bed rooms. I thought a mouse is OK as long as it does not live inside with me. But then it became two mice in the flat. I decided the flat is too small for three of us.
By this time my back pain has grown into a undesirable state. I could not do the least amount of cleaning, like the cupboards etc. Little at a time I noticed that there is a distict smell in the kitchen area. I decided to investigate.
So why do I dig this out now? It is because I read an article about mice and I will tell you about later after I finish about what happened to me and the mices.
When I had a look in the cupboards it was a bloody mess likes which you find in old houses neglected for years and not cleaned. The cupboards were very old may be 1980's style. The doors will not shut properly and there is a gap at the top of the door, which I do not know the purpose was. So out with my cleaning stuff. There was a bag of rice in a plastic bag and it was nibbled out in a corner. Yummy mummy for the mice. There as a nest made but no little mices in it. Cleared cleaned the whole lot and did a bit of research on the net. Though they be a menace, I do not like killing them. So I found a electronic gadget which sends out a sound which is not apparently, according to the website, appreciated by the mice, and they run away, it said. And found another humane mouse trap. Delightful, I Amazoned for delivery. In a week or so I got them both delivered and set to work.
I put the electronic gadget in the living room and the trap in the cupboard, where the rice was before, with some rice and peanut butter inside it. By this time there were two of them running around in the sitting room and enjoying themselves. So I waited without moving just sitting down and watching tv. Yep the wee buggeres came out and started munching the rice I placed near the gadget. They kept on playing and mucking about and the electronic sound did not do anything to them. They even went near it and sniffed. So if you have mice? these electronic gadgets do not work. But we used to make little gadgets to scare cats in my backyard a long time ago. They worked ok, but it is very fiddly to get the exact frequency which makes them go away.
Next day I had a look inside the cupboard and found that the trap has fallen on the side and the rice and peanut butter all gone. So I put the trap in the living room and watched. Same ingredients inside it. After a while mice came out and startedd to muck around the living room?...doh or sitting room which is the same huh? One of them sniffed the trap then went away a distance and ran into it sideways and it toppled on a side. The trap is one which has part of the floor bit raised. The end, where the bait, is raised from the floor when you put it on the floor. The end with the entrance is flat on the ground, so that the mouse can easily go in.. If a mouse goes inside the raised part, it drops down due to the weight of the mouse and the cannot get out. That is the theory anyhow. But here my mouse toppled it sideways. Then one by one they both went inside and ate the food. Neat huh. Pity I did not have a camera in hand to take photos.
They must have learnt about it somewhere. By this time I noticed three of them at the same time. My friend Andy, and with a bit of help and ideas from me, designed a mouse trap.
You need
1 A tube of some sort, we used a paint roller,
2 Three plastic bags
3 Gaffa tape, or any strong stickey tape
4 Bait, best of which is bird seeds
Put a plastic bag at one end of the tube and secure the open end of the bag wrapped around the tube with gaffa tape. The cut the closed end of the plastic bag leaving about 3 inches hanging out of the tube. Then put another bag on top of that, secure the open end like before. This time cut the bag off leaving about 6 inches of the bag intact. Now hold the end of the tube without the plastic bags and hold the plastic bags at the other end, then twist and crunch the plastic bags. The reason is we have to create a trap making it hard for the mouse to crawl out. Now put the last bag on top of others, secure it and do not cut this bag.
I put some bird seed into the bag and placed the tube on top of the work top with the bag end well away from the edge. Fastened it properly with sticky tape. Put a trail of bird seed ...huh? not too much mind, on the work top. That night I slept on the sofa in the sitting room, which is joined with the kitchen. And hour or so later I woke up to this rustling sound. Aha there were two of them in the bag. I cut the bag from the top and put the bag and mice in a metal box which we prepared before with a small cup of water inside it. Put a new bag over the tube secured it on the work top and went back to bed. This went on for the next night etc and I caught 5 mice in all which I dispensed with in a little forest area we have close by.
Now the reason for back track. Did you know that male mouse snigs to attract females and it is unique to that individual mouse. I did not either.
Male house mice produce melodious songs to attract mates, not unlike many birds, according to new research.You can find the rest of the article of the World Science Net here
The ditties are too high-pitched for human hearing, but scientists at Vienna's University of Veterinary Medicine analyzed them and found they convey information about identity and kinship. The findings are published in the journal Physiology & Behavior and in the Journal of Ethology.
I am a selfish person. If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!claimes the World Science net. I who by instict knows that amoebae to humans are the same, loved this article.
About a couple of months ago I noticed a mouse running around my flat.I live in a small one bedroom flat. It is small in floor size, but easily accomodate a ten foot giant in the living and bed rooms. I thought a mouse is OK as long as it does not live inside with me. But then it became two mice in the flat. I decided the flat is too small for three of us.
By this time my back pain has grown into a undesirable state. I could not do the least amount of cleaning, like the cupboards etc. Little at a time I noticed that there is a distict smell in the kitchen area. I decided to investigate.
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