Posts Tagged ‘Jake vs. Mouse’
I have two cats and a mouse as pets, but I don’t want the mouse. I have always said that the mouse that tried to live in our apartment would be the least intelligent animal ever but it turns out he’s probably one of the smartest–right up there with Flipper, Lassie and that horse that could do arithmetic simply because he has been living where our cats, nor we, can get to him.
We started to see what looked like droppings around our kitchen sink when the weather turned cold. Then, I got a hurried call from my fianceé one night saying she saw a mouse and the next night I saw him run out of the kitchen sink and into the stove. We called maintenance but they could not find a nest. He always runs to our old gas stove, so we think that’s where he’s hiding amazingly. I set up some glue traps, but so far we have not caught him.
Then I read the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s rodent resource page and have developed a new plan. CDC says mice and rats can squeeze through very small gaps–mice only need a space the size of a nickel. If you have mice or rats, your concern should be disease. These creatures have been known to spread 35 diseases including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, rat-bite fever and leptospirosis through their bites, droppings and urine. We clean these up with strong cleaning chemicals, which the CDC suggests.
CDC says if you find rodents in your home there are three things you should do. Seal up any gaps in your home, trap all rodents and clean up any sources of food, water and potential shelter. Interestingly enough, I found that CDC does not recommend the glue traps that I’ve been using because when rodents get trapped in these they become afraid and urinate–which, as I said, can be harmful to you. Instead they recommend the snap traps, so that’s what I’m off to the hardware store to buy.
Update: The CDC directions worked. An hour after I set the trap, I caught the mouse.
How do you deal with mice in your house?