Mouse traps

So if I set mouse traps and they aren't catching anything, does that mean I don't have mice? I saw what looked like mouse turds in the attic so I set two traps like a week and a half ago.

Well if you have mouse turds in the the attic then you have mice. If you're not catching them then either you're putting them in the worng place or putting the wrong bait on them. Mice apparently run around the edge of things so try and see where and put em there. Bait? Peanut butter and chocolate would work. But then that would work on me too.

It could also depend on the season. Mouse troubles tend to escalate in colder months (they too want to get out of the weather). However, if the mouse scat is new, in an area that you have seen many times and not just discovered under a box you haven't moved in ages, then its a problem. Mice do run around the edges of things, so try to place the edge of the traps flush to the walls.

Call a friend. Borrow a cat.

Not necessarily. Some mice are pretty sneaky. A lot of mice are pretty sneaky, actually. You might not be using the right bait (or bait at all). For example, contrary to the old belief that is still held so much for some reason, rodents don't particularly care for cheese. Many of them will turn it down. Something like (beat me to it) would work better.

My mice story.
Noticed one day, my bin bag, in the kitchen, had holes in it, me , thinks, strange. There was tea leaves, from a teabag, scattered on the floor. Me thinks, even stranger. Me gets worried. Dismiss it, I must have dropped a teabag, like you don't. Me worried more. Then, next day, saw the back end of a moving thing. Too big to be a spider, ha ha. Definately a body, but no tail, I remember. It scurried that fast, maybe with its tail between its legs, anyway. Freaked out, as I watched it run behind my cooker, I made a cup of tea. Don't we always make a cuppa, in a crisis ? I digress, as ever.
Me, makes tea. However, inhumane it sounds, but I couldn't chase the mouse behind my cooker, so I poured boiling water there. Like it was going to sit there, arms waving, belly up, just for the chase. Oh yeah, it sits there, while I baptise it with scalding water ? Hardly ! So not going to happen.
Paranoid at seeing my univited guest, I researched 'mouse' and ways to trap. Then , the little fkr, was seen, by me, leaping on the kitchen sides, along the w.machine, the lot. Freaked, that was me, freaked out. So not funny. I then adopted a new approach. Every time I entered the kitchen, by now, as little as possible, I yelled something first, before entering. Logic thinking, who's scared of who ? Now 3 weeks had gone on. 3 weeks and I knew it was laughing at me. My neighbour got me a trap. Peanut butter. Blonde here , me , sets it up. Peanut butter, trap placed. All set. Now me thinks, how do I get the freekin' thing out , once trapped ? See, that's me, thinking ahead. Err, I don't want to see it in the trap. Dead/alive/waving/thumbs up/zumba dancing or chillin' by the fridge. The mouse still had the last laugh. It ate the bait, and fkd off ! Somehow, escaped the trap. To this day, I wonder.... Is it dead somewhere, behind cooker/freezer/cupboards ?
How did it escape trap, yet took bait ?
Did it simply cordially, leave the premises when asked ?

Dear Lord, please don't let me one day, find a smelly body.

Thanks all for the advice and the giggles (hilarious story ladyzero!)

I did get the bait right. Peanut butter-no chocolate. If I used chocolate I could get desperate some night and...snap, ouch!

I might need to move them. There is only one wall in the attic (well two I guess) so I'll try moving them

I have a friend with a dog who eats mice. But she is a puppy and she pees when she gets excited so...maybe no. I could try putting my dog in there. She likes to chase things. Or borrow someone's cat.

The other day I was in the attic putting away my swim bag. I started looking around for mice when I saw something move. I screamed bloody murder, then realized it was the handle from my bag that had moved! Totally freaked me out!

If anyone has more to add, I need all the help I can get!

Try shouting 'Go, or pay rent' I shouted everything, in the end. To this day I still wonder. It took the peanut butter, escaped ? Maybe it's dancing in my freezer.
Dear Lord, please, not a frozen, belly up, smelly, zumba dancing , waving thing, saying 'who's scared of who, NOW ?'

ROFL! Cracking me up! How did the mouse get the pb and not get snapped? (italics on "did")

Darn vermin!

My sister had a mouse recently and put out two traps with peanut butter, two with cheese and four of the sticky baits with two peanut butter, two cheese. The mouse ate the cheese off the regular traps without setting them off, ignored the peanut butter and she caught it in the cheese sticky. Eight traps set in one SUV for one mouse!

Well. Glad I made you laugh. I can only ask the f*ker, dare it, shows again. Dear Lord......

Mice have always been a funny part of my life......first job I had out of college was my firmware engineering job......& I spend a lot of late nights working on the project......late nights in a quiet building with no one there except for the mice......never forget the one time I must have dropped a cheeto snack I had been eating earlier that day.....because around 1am, I heard what sounded like this amplified cruunnnnncccchhhhh....crrrrruuuunnnnccchhhhhing noise under my desk.....I looked under there & there was this little mouse sitting there with the piece of cheeto in it's paws......eating it's midnight snack. I saw it & it saw me & it took off for behind the door......then ran down the hallway & into the lunch room.

I moved to another project & another building......one day I had some government secret documents in my hands I was walking over to another engineer's office to discuss a part of the project ( I was one of the only women engineers working in a mostly male environment)......I got distracted when all the guys were crowded around this office complaining about this mouse that had run in there behind their book case. I put my documents down (not thinking) & picked up a trash can that was lined with a plastic trash bag......I went over to the book case & told the guy on the other end to chase the mouse....It ran straight for my trash can, & grabbed the bag & caught the mouse. Headed immediately out the door & down the road a ways & dumped the mouse out in the vine covered fencing. I'm sure the mouse was back the next day....but for that day....lol.....I was the hero. I came back in the building & one of the bosses grabbed the bag from me....he went over to his secretarie's desk, took the bag & shook if right over her desk yelling "Mouse".....she screamed.....but luckily there was NO MOUSE.

The mice in the building were more than we could ever handle even with traps.......I had one that loved to frequent my desk drawer until I quit keeping crackers in there.

After I lost my career......psychologist/pdoc suggested I get involved in something I have always loved.....No, not mice....horses.......while out at the ranch, my dog Leo...noticed this mouse close to the pipe railing that they used for the corals.....he saw the mouse & the mouse saw him & ran to get inside one of the pipes.......Leo sniffing around trying to get the mouse finally gave up....but he was definitely wanting to give it a good chase.......forward time by a few hours.....we were back at that same area of the ranch.....there was the little mouse outside.....of the pipe railing....it saw Leo again & Leo saw it....only this time, the mouse ran straight for Leo....& Leo got this panic look in his eye, & took off in the other direction......ah, what a big brave dog I have.

Since then, I have moved 2100 miles away.....to get away from my bad marriage that was feeding the depression & anxiety.....to my own farm out in the country of KY....with LOTS of mice & some even more gigantic rodent looking characters....the opossum (at least they don't get inside of my house like the mice do).

When I first moved here...every night I could hear the mice playing around in my attic (I have a 2 story home + an attic & a basement). With my kind heartedness, I couldn't bear to kill a mouse, so I started off with the humane traps....I caught sever of the smaller mice. A neighbor had started to build a couple of houses that he never finished....so they were good dumping places for the mice I caught...especially the house that was on the other side of the creek. Only problem the humane trap didn't work for the bigger mice because they could keep their rear out the back & stretch out far enough to get the bait. That one large mouse, Leo & I both chased it around my dining room for several hours before I got it to run into the plastic container I normally use for dog food....was surprised at how big that little mouse actually was....he had been eating good in my kitchen for some time by then.

I finally ended up getting so overrun by mice & couldn't catch them fast enough that I decided to get the bait that you set out....they eat & go off, never to be seen again. Last winter I had brought all my plants inside for the winter & this one mouse decided that my potted plants were a place for him to dig into.....sat the mouse bait out there for it & it disappeared.

I could write a novel about all my mice experiences I've had.....& some other miscellaneous experiences Leo has had with other rodent like animals here....like the mole he was chasing that bit his foot...lol.....glad it wasn't a mouse though.

Yep, they are a challenge to catch....for being so small, they are cunning & deviceive ....when it comes to their own survival. How something with such a small brain can out smart those of us with the larger brain......

Always a challenge that I'm sure I will continue to go through every year I live here

I had a rat in my garage once. Put out poison, never saw him again.

A second time I saw a 'rat' in my garage and told my son we had the ugliest rat ever in our garage. A couple days later darling son saw it and laughed at me and said, mom, your ugly rat is an opossum.

I used to eat snacks in bed and I would leave the remaining packages, (crackers, chips, whatever) in my bed. One night I awoke to a mouse running up my naked spine. That was the end of eating in bed.

Yoda, what is "sticky bait?" Sounds like I'm missing something!

Eskielover, you have Huskies of some type right? My dog is part Husky too. I've heard they have a strong prey drive. Bell once chased a couple of deer down the street. She also catches flies pretty well. Maybe she would damage the drywall that is the floor of part of the attic, and ceiling of the garage if she walked on it. She weighs over 75 lbs.

Yoda, oh what horror to have a mouse run up your spine! Makes me shiver to think about it!

Sticky bait is a glue trap that is a very strong adhesive and when the mice put a foot or feet on it then cannot get loose. Tomcat makes a small size for mice and a larger one for rats. I would so not want to have to deal with a live rat stuck to glue.

Depending on the trap, they may not get caught in it. Look around for a mouse body.

My favorite mice catchers are cats. But sometimes, cats cannot be called in to eradicate a mouse.

They like cardboard and anything that has the scent of food. Once the items are touched by their waste, it's contaminated and you may have lost what was there.

Such pests!! Hope you are able to get them out of your home!

Yoda, I don't want to deal with a mouse stuck to glue either, but maybe better than having a mouse in bed with me *shudder*!

Healing4me,
I do wish I had a cat to borrow. Not all cats are good mousers though, I think. What do you mean by things being contaminated? Do you mean that they are peeing besides pooping?

I don't have anything with food up there. There is a lot of loose, pink, fluffy insulation. Would they have any interest in that?