Conquering the Canny House Mouse
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
If only mice didn't leave doodles and piddles all over the place. If only they didn't chew through walls and carry germs. If only they could find things to eat that wouldn't ruin whole packages of good food. If only they weren't so noisy at night! And if only it weren't so hard to get rid of them!!!
Thankfully, I haven't had as many invade the house this winter as I have in some winters past. One now and then, not entire families. But they are still destructive and therefore it is needful to eliminate them. Sorry - not evict - they'll just come back! And some mice are really smart. They know how to get food off the trap and not trip it. And even more sad, my zapper traps wore out and the local stores don't carry them anymore... So back to the snapper traps.
What to do... Bait w/ peanut butter? Bait with cheese? No. Take a hint from our local Spark Wisdom. Bait with Sugar! Specifically, icing from store-bought cupcakes. Yes, DS brought some home after a birthday party. The cakes were really small - 3 to a 'serving', and the cake wasn't tooo bad, so - eat '1' for a serving, ditch the icing. Well, not really ditch it. Use it for bait. Just like us, mice LOVE sugar. And baiting with sugar, I figured one of two things would happen. Either the mouse was going to get on a sugar high and get STUPID (and trapped!) or it was going to get so fat that it would eventually snap that trap!
Result - too much sugar made the mouse greedy AND stupid.
(If it will do it to a mouse, what will it do to you?!!!)