Workshop Mouse

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egnald

egnald

Member
Joined
Jun 9, 2017
Messages
4,204
Location
Columbus, Nebraska, USA
Hello all,

I've been chasing after a big fat mouse in my workshop for more than 2 weeks now. It either avoids traps or has been successful in digging out the peanut butter without setting the trap off. It's a big field mouse and not one of those little gray house mice. (Our backyard is a cornfield).

It's not that I'm afraid of them or anything, dirty little creatures though, It is the startle factor when I am at the lathe and the little bugger goes streaking across my shop floor.

I have one of those battery operated shock traps, but I've never really liked it. Guess I'm going to have to take the batteries out of a couple of remote controls and power that sucker up. :) - Dave
 
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Dave - we had a couple of mice like that a few years back. I finally caught them by playing with the trigger for the trap and changing how I had it set up. I bent the locking bail back to be so sensitive that I I didn't set it off by GINGERLY placing it on the floor it wasn't set loose enough. I also learned that the trap should always flip towards a wall, not away from it which I didn't know at the time.

Sticky traps may also help too but then you have the issue of a possible live critter that you have to do something with.

Do you know how it got in? We have a large field behind us and copper mesh/wool has been our friend in a couple spots to keep mice out. The spot where the edging of the frame for the garage door meets the ground and door especially. There is a type of rodent control spray foam that you can use too. My orkin guy used that around the area where our electrical main comes in the house.
 
I find the traps with a broad yellow paddle with multiple different size holes to be quite effective . Have caught chipmunks , sparrows and a red squirrel with them also , not intentionally . Be generous with the peanut butter .

The other solution some might recommend is a cat . I would not though , as they demand attention with their tail in your face when you are making a delicate cut , and are capable of introducing a hair into the first layer of CA finish , which will go unseen until ready for assembly .
 
I hate those creatures, have the same problem; my workshop has been invaded by one and now its war. Didnt ask for this but i ll do what i must.
 
bugradx2 said:
Dave - we had a couple of mice like that a few years back. I finally caught them by playing with the trigger for the trap and changing how I had it set up. I bent the locking bail back to be so sensitive that I I didn't set it off by GINGERLY placing it on the floor it wasn't set loose enough. I also learned that the trap should always flip towards a wall, not away from it which I didn't know at the time.
Click to expand...

Had a similar situation - had a small mouse that the cats ignored.

In gradual steps (with each subsequent step ending with the mouse safetly with a belly full of peanut butter) what finally worked was :
Two mouse traps, back to back with the triggers inwards.
A small nut (as in bolt not tree) glued to the tongue of each trap
Peanut butter jammed into the void of each nut.
Levers set to bent to be sensitive enough that a piece of dry spaghetti triggered it.
Placing both traps in a mall constrained cardboard tunnel so that this houdini mother @#$@er would have to crawl over the snap to get to the peanut butter.
 
Our house backs into woods on three sides, so we get lots of mice, chipmunks, racoons, deer, skunks,, etc. Even got a moose a few years ago, but he didn't get into the shop.

My standard practice is to scatter mouse bait around the house in the fall. As the weather gets cooler, mice look for ways to get into the house so they can have a heated place to nest for the winter. The mice eat the bait, and also take it back to their next to feed other mice. But since the bait is a poison, it kills them. If they have gotten into the house, we sometimes get a whiff of dead mouse, but most of the time they expire outdoors.

I know that indiscriminate use of poisons is not ideal, especially if there are pets around. But my neighbor has dogs, and he does the same thing I do.

I also periodically check for openings that they can get into, and if I find something, I stuff them with loosely crumpled coarse steel wool, and then squirt in some of that expanding foam insulation. That seals the opening, with the steel wool creating a barrier that mice can't gnaw through.

When our house was built, the builder put in a 'french drain' leading to a sump in one corner of the basement, but without a sump pump, in case it turned out that we had to put in an active drain. Fortunately, we have never had a need to use it. But he also put in a plastic pipe from the basement out to the back of the lot to serve as a sump drain if we ever had to install a pump. He 'sealed off' that pipe by stuffing a wad of scrap kraft-paper vapor barrier into the pipe - which did nothing to deter mice, so the pipe became the freeway that mice used to get into the house. I ended up using a pipe cap to permanently seal the pipe.
 
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Darios said:
Had a similar situation - had a small mouse that the cats ignored.

In gradual steps (with each subsequent step ending with the mouse safetly with a belly full of peanut butter) what finally worked was :
Two mouse traps, back to back with the triggers inwards.
A small nut (as in bolt not tree) glued to the tongue of each trap
Peanut butter jammed into the void of each nut.
Levers set to bent to be sensitive enough that a piece of dry spaghetti triggered it.
Placing both traps in a mall constrained cardboard tunnel so that this houdini mother @#$@er would have to crawl over the snap to get to the peanut butter.
Click to expand...
I will have to try the back-to-back trick. I am pretty sure the critter is big enough that he is able to just reach his nose into the peanut butter without putting his little feet on the trigger. We will outsmart him sooner or later! - Dave
 
CA a peanut half to a trap, never had one beat it. Get about 16 A year.

Found a nest in my torpedo heater after I started it one fall, turned it into a crematorium.

Last year I had a box of farmer matches in an open toolbox drawer they made a nest in that. I must have trapped mom because they were dead. Of all the places they could pick to nest...
 
My step dqd uses a 5 gallon bucket with water in the bottom. Little ramp up to a paddle with peanut butter. It's on a hinge, so when they go to eat, it flips down to drop them in the water, then it will fall back to reset itself. They drown after a bit.

It's probably one of the less humane traps, but it is effective. He gets a mouse every month or two with it. More during winter.
 
SteveJ said:
I had a friend who found a mouse in his crawl space. He decided to try and shoot it with a 22. After a couple of shots ricocheting around he got a cat.
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My son shot at a harmless rat snake with his 22 & hit the water line to our garden. He learned how to repair PVC that day.
 
We're in the country, mice are a way of life. I've been using Jawz traps for the last 4-5 years--they are awesome. Never had one get picked clean without a kill, and much easier to set than wooden Vectors. Trap placement is really important too--mice like to run along walls, and keep a regular path. I've got two traps set in the detached garage that catch at least a half dozen/year and they are never baited--just placed next to the tiny gap at the bottom door seal.
 
We always smeared the peanut butter on a small piece of a cotton ball and worked the cotton into the bait holder. Or tie it on with a piece of thread.
 
Bohemian Catsody
 

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Lots of good suggestions..... and a few I'll pass on!
My shop is in a two-car garage behind the house, and I have mice as well. This week I put out four of the traps that Humongous talks about.... result: I caught two mice, the other two traps are missing! Now I need to clean the shop to find them. I'm sure there's a dead mouse in them. From now on I'll probably secure them with a piece of monofilament.
 
I had work shop mice a number of years ago. They managed to avoid all the traps that I set so I got creative. Grabbed some shed snake skin from our pet snakes and scattered it around the shop. Took just a few days and all the mice disappeared. You might want to try finding a pet shop (or maybe check with the zoo) for some.
 
My shop sits in the woods behind the house and behind the shop is another wooded area.... I've not had mice, but did have some critters a few years back that used my open lathe head stock as an acorn storage bin as well as my little Ryobi 9" band saw... there they had to go in

through the dust port... don't know how they crawled up the cast iron legs of the lathe....
nuts in saw 001.JPG


nuts 002.JPG

I didn't invite him, but welcomed him non-the-less... a black snake moved in under the shop and no more critters.

Also, I keep little chunks of a poison scattered about the shop, under work benches, behind the wood rack, etc.... it makes them seek water, so keeps them away.

also had this guy take up residence inside the shop, but didn't let him stay.
DSCF4487.JPG
 
Ok, the big fat mouse is still going strong, but this morning I had caught two smaller mice - in the same trap at the same time - never had that happen before. I guess I am working with a whole mouse community! - Dave
 
I chased a snake out of my shop earlier this week. A bout 2ft rat snake. Used a 9 iron to coax him out. Saw it later moving into the neighbors yard.
 
howsitwork said:
I used chocolate to bait the trap. Worked out well. Nutella works too
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You just brought back a fond memory to me. Years ago when I was still working I used to keep a dish of Hershey Kisses on my desk. One Monday morning when I went to work there were little tiny bits of aluminum foil in a path from the candy dish across in front of my keyboard and then on the floor along the wall leading behind my bookcase. I caught that one using chocolate too. They really like sweet and calorie dense foods!
 
We had mice in a house once getting into the stove insulation. After several tries with solitary traps we hit on setting a foursquare pattern of traps with the bait end facing the middle using peanut butter. After that we trapped at least one mouse every night till they were gone.
 
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