I think it might be mice/rats and now I can't go to bed!
I've never had this problem before and I don't know what to do. I just got done battling an invasion of tree roaches (water bugs, whatever. We've had a long dry spell and they decided my house was a nice place to shack up). I put down some boric acids lures and checked my house for major gaps along the exterior wall. I live in an old shotgun duplex and its got its fair share of issues (doors that don't fit, windows that have been painted shut for decades, etc.) I haven't seen any evidence of there being mice/rats INSIDE my house, no chewed food containers or droppings, but I swear I hear scratching noises in one of my exterior walls. I banged on the wall and it stopped for a moment, then started up again. It could just be more ginormous southern cockroaches, but it sounds even bigger than that.
We're dealing with our first cold snap this week, could they be trying to find someplace warm to live? Our house is elevated so I imagine there are lots of rotten places where they could chew their way in. But we also have lots of feral cats in the neighborhood and they tend to spend alot of time under our house, so I figured they'd keep any rodents at bay.
My place is a rental so should I just call the landlord? One great thing about this place is that she really lets myself and my neighbors do what we want. We can paint and pretty much do whatever we want, interior and exterior. I emailed her a few months back during termite season because I was worried about a potential infestation and she very grudgingly sent an exterminator over. He billed me but I just mailed it in with my rent check and let her deal with it. But I think she's got the impression that we should handle any issues we have. However, if they chew through all the wiring, I'm just going to move and I won't be the one replacing it.
Like I said, insects are something I've mastered but I've never dealt with anything furry. I'm too much of an animal lover to put down traps or poison and I've sealed the large holes in the walls and they're not actually IN my apartment yet so I can't even think of a place to put such things.
Eek! I don't know what to do! Its so gross.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Sounds more like some sort of phantasmal apparition to me. I'd suggest a young priest and an old priest: any Catholic psychiatrists nearby?
Hobbes Posted by AvidReader (Member # 6007) on :
I get squirrels climbling around on the walls quite a bit. Their little toes can dig into the wood just fine. I believe they're also experts with stucco.
I would probably have the exterminator come back out and check for signs that anything's in the walls. Hopefully, it's just on the outside of your place and a non-issue.
Also, your landlord doesn't provide pest control? That's a really foreign concept to a Floridian. Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :
We get a few mice "coming in from the cold" every year. You don't have anything to worry about, they won't crawl under the covers with you.
The best answer is to lay out a few traps, the old fashioned kind, with a little peanut butter as bait. Get them before they make a home. We kill two or three each year, and each time my wife makes such a scene about it. Seriously, this is the only answer (unless you want them to be spawning in your walls).
In the mean time, believe me -- they'll stay out of your way.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Herblay: Get them before they make a home. We kill two or three each year, and each time my wife makes such a scene about it. Seriously, this is the only answer (unless you want them to be spawning in your walls).
tip traps and other forms of live capture work just as well, if not better, when you bait them right.
At my friend's trailer, I brought in three tip traps and caught every single mouse in the entire house after snap traps stopped working.
Posted by Raventhief (Member # 9002) on :
If you hear thumping under the floorboards, then definitely worry.
I recommend cats. Mostly because I like cats.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
We had a mouse in our old apartment. He was rather bold, coming out in plain view when watching a movie and such.
We tried tip traps and had no success at all. Not sure what we did wrong there. Baited it with peanut butter, cheese, a few other things with no luck.
Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :
Uh huh, you interested in any ocean-front property in Utah?
I've lived on farms my whole life. We've tried live capture, cats, etc.
Cats are okay in a barn where you don't need an immediate kill, but only one out of three cats (or so) is an effective mouser -- and it's generally the "wild" ones that can actually mouse, so kiss your ideas of a pet cat goodbye. Unless you like the idea of having three or four cats roaming about your house.
Live capture CAN work, but many of the live capture (catch and release, glue) traps are terrible. You'll have to find the right brand. It's true, however, they "can't make a better mouse trap". Traditional kill traps will be AT LEAST twice as effective. I'd never used the tip traps, but there's almost as many bad reviews as there are good ones on Amazon.
My wife's first year living next to a field, she wanted to try live capture. It took several weeks to catch the first mouse. We switched after that, and caught the second two mice in four days. She hasn't requested the live traps again.
Hey, if you're really against killing them, live capture will work . . . eventually.
Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier: We had a mouse in our old apartment. He was rather bold, coming out in plain view when watching a movie and such.
We tried tip traps and had no success at all. Not sure what we did wrong there. Baited it with peanut butter, cheese, a few other things with no luck.
One problem with apartments is that you can only trap a mouse where he goes for food. If he's feeding in another apartment and only "exploring" yours, there isn't much you can do -- unless he just happens to run across your trap.
I guess it was your fault for keeping a clean place. Perhaps you could have left cereal all over the floor?
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
It's my mother. She bolted off through a big hole in the wall, downstairs in the basement. It was her dance studio. I waited a long long time to see if she would come back, just sitting there in this white plastic chair watching: Nothing. Sometimes I'd hear a little cackle or what sounded like talking, or I'd push my ear up to the mirrors and I'd swear it was her behind there doing a time step. Shuffle Hop Step Brush Step Step.
At any rate, she was wearing a calico dress and, of course, those same old shoes. Red calico with tight swirls.
She must be getting hungry by now, although she was never a big eater.
Oh yeah. If she comes in, don't let her give you a bath and never never let her near the vacuum cleaner. You'd think she didn't have muscle one in that scrawy frame, but if she ever gets her fingernails into your neck, you're in for it.
I can imagine her squeezing up in between the walls, she certainly wouldn't mind the cats. If you really want to get rid of her, just use a mirror. IT TURNS OUT A MIRROR WAS NOT ENOUGH.
Regards, Nanette [ NO NO]
[ May 24, 2021, 10:54 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by Tammy (Member # 4119) on :
Posted by LargeTuna (Member # 10512) on :
I think I've seen this episode of Doctor Who. Don't worry, I'm pretty sure nobody died.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Wearing her shabby nightgown, green plastic hair rollers hanging off clumps of unfurling, bleach blonde hair, she'd squeeze that Hoover vacuum nozzle between her scrawy arms. low slung like a machine gun. The hose, reeling out behind her, dragged the canister along over the linoleum floor in little plantiff creaks as she hunted us down.
"Ba-Da-Da-Da-Dammm!"
The empty cardboard drum of my wooden building blocks, quickly dumped out, fit perfectly over my sister's head. So what? So what!
"Dead." (creak-creak-creak-BOING) "Meat."
Everybody dies.
Not really. Worse - they live like this.
[ May 24, 2021, 10:57 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
ooh aah
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
"The Old Bag and the Vacuum Cleaner"
We now know, due to significant advances in electroconvulsive therapy (Dyson, 2007) that she had accquired a powerful and potentially dangerous piece of pedagogical weaponry: bagless, except for the Bag herself.
As we all knew already, the meandering and often dusty corners of the mind will lead one, inevitably, to a door. The door is always ajar and through that little crack we spy, well, of course a mirror (but leaving that aside), the unexpected chair.
That chair is mainly wood and probably 'a little tippy' if one were to sit on it. It's the floor. The floor is not quite right in there.
In the mirror, nothing. Not at this angle. Silvergrey.
Given these co-ordinates, one proceeds.
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
I would just like to add that I absolutely hate mice! I have them in an almost constant cycle (meaning I'll get rid of them, maybe be free a month or two or even four, and then they're back!). I like in an old, wooden frame house built on peer&beam (meaning there's a serious crawlspace under the house). Mice have literally chewed right through my floor! It's so frustrating because there is no way to keep them out!
The worst thing is that you have to seal all kinds of food (i.e., no cereal in just boxes or bread in just bags), and even then I've had mice chew through a plastic container, albeit a rather cheap one.
I personally use glue traps because I just can't stomach touch the things once they're dead. (with the glue trap, all I have to actually touch is the trap.)
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Day 1: I have moved into a new place with some old buddies of mine, at night I think I hear scratching, it's probably nothing.
Day 2: Man this scratching is getting kind of creepy.
Day 3:
The scratching continues, scratch scratch... scratch scratch... The others refuse to believe me, why don't they believe me!?
Day 4:
Scratch scratch... scratch scratch... I now have solid evidence that the others are clearly with "them", they say they don't hear it because it is really just a trick, I know it in my heart, they have to be stopped before the scratching drives me insane.
Day 5: I managed to knock them all out, I will get to the bottom of this! This scratching is a sign of evil, it must be stopped or I'll be driven insane!
Day 6: I... I killed them... I killed them all but the scratching won't stop...
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
The power cord is wound by a spring loaded bobbin deep in the bowels of the Electrolux. Pulled to its full extension, one firm tug triggers the insane return of the cord, the pronged plug head transformed to tip of bull whip, diabolically carving the flesh of anyone foolish enough to stand there and stare.
Did you say suction? Many a disoriented mouse, emptied from that vacuum bag, exploded under the thunderous blow of her hammer, purple viscera clinging to back of her hand!
Love, Ashley
[ October 18, 2010, 06:13 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Where the heck do you learn to write like that.
Posted by Herblay (Member # 11834) on :
Gosh, I hate Electrolux. They're suicidal. They'll eat their own cord.
My Dyson knows its place. None of that electrical-cord eating nonsense.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
The vacuum cleaner suffered its suction with a nagging whine that modulated to an excruciating treble howl when the probing nozzle poked into something substantial--like a chubby foot-- sticking forlornly out from a less than adequate hiding place. Once it finds you, she'll just keep jabbing and jabbing and jabbing. Vacuum, Mother, Child: A three-voiced trio screeching the first rising notes of an old demonic harmony: Fiat Electro Lux.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
So what of it? The walls are hollow. This has always been the case. What happens in between them, however, has changed. Here's me, knocking on the glass: . . . Did you hear anything? One can never tell.
I have asked 'politely' that she put away the vacuum cleaner; that she simply 'stop it'. I said "Stop It!" and she stopped in her tracks. There she stands, straightened up from her stealthy crouch, listening. We are at an impasse of sorts: I have no deeper hole to crawl into while with that last lunge she has, evidently, pulled the plug free from its socket way back in the kitchen. You see?
She drops the nozzle, spins on her heel and marches right back into the hole in the wall.It's hard to believe she can squeeze in there. Even sideways, the narrow passage literally scrapes her housecoat from her arm and shoulder, bunching it up against her neck, but she just keeps on ramming herself in. Her head's the next obstacle, and she jams her face into the splintering plaster with a senile fury.
It's going to rain, and I have noticed that many of the cars passing beneath my window have no driver.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
The city is empty. TRUE Beyond these rooftops, most of whose shingles have been twisted into vaguely organic patterns by the constant winds, the distant blue hills. THIS IS UTTER BULLSHIT The binoculars are broken. NOPE. FINE. Otherwise, they might help figure things out. HA! [PASSAGE DELETED DUE TO SHEER EMBARRASSMENT.]
You do not have to look carefully to see what has happened. THIS TURNS OUT TO HAVE BEEN PATHETICALLY WRONG-HEADED.
[ May 24, 2021, 10:50 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
The silence, as usual, more disconcerting than the scratching--after all--we know she's in here--somewhere. I get up each morning hoping to see a trace, a claw mark of some sort, the butt of a cigarette, anything. I've been trying to write. Poems, mainly. Always the same. After all, you've only really got one story in you. There's no water for the bath anymore, no lights after dark, no heat except the fire and what little wood makes an acrid smoke that gives me a headache. The chair is comfortable though and, of course, the words. The words for it all, the words for what remains--the touch of the infinite. Tough bananas.
Who feeds the dog? Who knows.
Same with the seashells. Useless.
Otherwise nothing happens nothing.
[ May 24, 2021, 10:41 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
There's more.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
There's Donny.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Being dead is full of making right. wait a minute... what I really meant was... I can't I can't there's something on the tip of my wait gotta pee back in an aeon...
Did you hear the one about the tapeworm?
All I ever hear
[ May 27, 2021, 09:19 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
stirrings still
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
So, Sam was left-handed, but his custom toilet paper with the Leafs logo was on the right beside the radio, which was tuned in to the game. The sound of the shower, the steam, the static: good times. Mistakes. Home made.
[ June 06, 2021, 01:35 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Never knew I was sinister
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Never was a friend of mine.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Lucy baked in the manner of bomb disposal. All that mattered was when the time ran out. Squeezed limes rolled around on the counter, floor and cutting board. Evaporated milk burned in the almost empty pot on the stove. Edges of empty Graham wafer bags smoldered, too close to the red ring. The stove timer dinged and dinged, but 5 she was looking for sugar in the basement. 4 Plates and cups, piled into a plinth, rose like a strange iceberg from the grey sink water. 3 She had forgotten the sugar. 2 She had not forgotten the sugar. 1 The pie!
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Her father said she cooked in the manner of bomb disposal, which made her mad and then madder for being mad. She got the main thing done. Halved squeezed limes rolled on the counter-top, the cutting board and underfoot. The sink was clogged and piled full of dishes, the evaporated milk had boiled down to a thick paste in the frying pan, the Graham wafer box was smoldering, too close to the red coil of the back burner she never turned off, to keep the tea at a boil, the boy just stared, the girl knocks over her milk to see what happens, and then she remembers the sugar ran out, where was the sugar? in the basement, the timer beeps out the countdown and the smoke detector starts to burble, the pie! the pie! she flies up with a bag of sugar, slaps the stupid box off the stove top and adjusts her head scarf, which makes her face rounder, like when she was a little girl. See. No fire. His eyes are so big— Is there a pie? There is a pie. The pyrex pie plate burns her fingers through the dish towel. The plate flattens a hissing lime. The crust isn't perfect. She stalks away from the open oven, the world will continue to warm, time to plant the tomatoes before the kids wreck them all. The whipped cream is sweet enough. These men were all a bunch of sissies anyway.
[ June 20, 2021, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
They're so close I can smell them. From now on, pure fiction.
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
Factum Est
This afternoon, when I was running (under the blazing sun), a robin hopped out of a hedge and stared just a little too long. Just now a black ant stopped on the ‘divine’ in my pencil-scored ‘Apocalypse’. I heard its mandibles open and close, open and close, never too late, never too late, never , too late to get a dog.
foow-foow
Posted by deerpark27 (Member # 2787) on :
This afternoon, when I was running (under the blazing sun), a robin hopped out of a hedge and stared just a little too long. Just now a black ant stopped on the ‘divine’ in my pencil-scored ‘Apocalypse’. I watched its mandibles disconnect
[ July 03, 2021, 10:59 PM: Message edited by: deerpark27 ]
Posted by paulsagar (Member # 14722) on :
I would probably have the exterminator come back out and check for signs that anything's in the walls. Hopefully, it's just on the outside of your place and a non-issue.
Posted by saunder smarshal (Member # 14728) on :
great
Posted by hawser (Member # 13415) on :
quote:Originally posted by Shanna: I think it might be mice/rats and now I can't go to bed!
I've never had this problem before and I don't know what to do. I just got done battling an invasion of tree roaches (water bugs, whatever. We've had a long dry spell and they decided my house was a nice place to shack up). I put down some boric acids lures and checked my house for major gaps along the exterior wall. I live in an old shotgun duplex and its got its fair share of issues (doors that don't fit, windows that have been painted shut for decades, etc.) I haven't seen any evidence of there being mice/rats INSIDE my house, no chewed food containers or droppings, but I swear I hear scratching noises in one of my exterior walls. I banged on the wall and it stopped for a moment, then started up again. It could just be more ginormous southern cockroaches, but it sounds even bigger than that.
We're dealing with our first cold snap this week, could they be trying to find someplace warm to live? Our house is elevated so I imagine there are lots of rotten places where they could chew their way in. But we also have lots of feral cats in the neighborhood and they tend to spend alot of time under our house, so I figured they'd keep any rodents at bay.
My place is a rental so should I just call the landlord? One great thing about this place is that she really lets myself and my neighbors do what we want. We can paint and pretty much do whatever we want, interior and exterior. I emailed her a few months back during termite season because I was worried about a potential infestation and she very grudgingly sent an exterminator over. He billed me but I just mailed it in with my rent check and let her deal with it. But I think she's got the impression that we should handle any issues we have. However, if they chew through all the wiring, I'm just going to move and I won't be the one replacing it.
Like I said, insects are something I've mastered but I've never dealt with anything furry. I'm too much of an animal lover to put down traps or poison and I've sealed the large holes in the walls and they're not actually IN my apartment yet so I can't even think of a place to put such things.
Eek! I don't know what to do! Its so gross.
Must be a cat? Not sure tho but my cat is doing it right now.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)