Creature discomforts

Eeeek! - a mouse in the house. Now what?

Mice are cute. Mice are dirty. Mice are disease-carriers. Mice chew. Mice don’t belong indoors. But mice havefeelings, too.

A snap trap kills the intruder, snap-bang. But what’s this? - a rustling sound in the pantry- a scatter of fourth-inch-long mouse droppings in the kitchen cabinet - all signs of yet another … eeeek!

A live trap captures the beady-eyed visitor with no harm. Take him outside,turn him loose.

But what’s this? - a skittering in the wall - the dog acting crazy over something in the closet. Sure enough, Mr.

Mouse is … baaaaack!

Mice come indoors for the same reasons people do, says pest control professional Christian Wilcox with McCauley Services in Benton: “It’s for comfort.”

As the weather cools, they venture in to find warmth and food. Left alone, they settle to stay in nests of shredded paper and other scrap.

“If their needs are met,” Wilcox says, “why would they leave?”

Hardware stores, even grocery stores, sell mouse traps. But mice are wary.

When do-it-yourself methods don’t clean out the mice in a week or two, it’s time to call a pest control service, Wilcox recommends. If the mice come back, it’s time for help. Chances are, they never left.

Once in, mice are difficult to evict. Ask the farmer’s wife: She cut off their tails with a carving knife. Did you ever see such a sight in your life? But she still had mice.

MOUSE’S TALE

The scientific name for a mouse, mus musculus, is a hint to what the mouse-beset homeowner is up against. Mus for small,musculus for muscle: small but mighty.

How mighty, this mouse? These are among the abilities of mankind’s age-old bad roommate:

Mice gnaw holes, but not like cartoon mice chew arch-shaped doorways in the wall to confound the cartoon cat. Real mice can slip through the merest opening, small as a dime, according to National Wildlife magazine.

Mice not only make a mess - they make mice. Mother mouse gives birth to another litter of four to seven pink baby mice every month or so.

In her year or two of mouse-making, she will produce about 60 more little nippers, according to the Victor rodent control company. One reason to scream at a mouse is the question it brings in (along with fleas): How many others?

Mice are prolific at dropping other signs, too -50 to 75 pellets a day, according to a count from the University of Nebraska. Cleaning up a mouse mess is a job for rubber gloves.

“Disinfect all surfaces that have come into contact with mice or excrement,” according to Orkin Pest Control. Breathe through a respirator, and wear old clothes. Toss the dirty duds afterward.

Mice spread more than 35 diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most notoriously: the 14th-century’s plague, the Black Death.

Mice by themselves can make people sick in some ways, such as salmonella. They do even worse by carrying mites and ticks, spreading the likes of Lyme disease.

THREE MALIGNED MICE

The CDC recommends a three-step plan for getting rid of mice:

(1) Seal up the ways that mice come and go, using steel wool for small holes, concrete and metal sheeting for bigger gaps.

(2) Make it hard for a mouse to grab a bite - for one thing, clean the kitchen. Store breakfast cereal and pet crunchies in mouse-proof containers.

(3) Set traps.

Becky McPeake, wildlife specialist with University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service, details how to accomplish these goals:

“The first step for eliminating problems with mice is a carpentry issue,” the professor says. Plugging holes “includes sealing up electrical and plumbing entries into your home. This is very important. You can trap and remove mice all day long, but if more of them can get in, chances areyou will never win the battle.”

When mice can’t get in, the next problem is they can’t get out. Mouse-trapping season opens.

“Both lethal and nonlethal traps are available,” McPeake says.

Mouse traps come in many designs and variations, but the basics have been the same for years. The mouse has three ways to exit: quick death in a snap trap, slow death in a glue trap, and hope for tomorrow in a catch-and-release trap.

The cheapest funeral is the old-fashioned snap trap that costs about two bucks for a package of four. Five dollars buys the same number of glue traps.

If it pays to have a conscience, so does it cost to buy a live trap - about $20, for example, for the Havahart trap that looks like a lunch box-size version of a wire cage to catch a raccoon.

The question has been twitching even since the first trap nailed the first mouse in granny’s cellar: Is it terribly mean to kill a mouse?

The federal government opted out by excluding mice and rats from the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. Not just James Bond, but everybody has a license to drop the hammer when it comes to mice.

IN A SNAP

“Build a better mousetrap,” Ralph Waldo Emerson is supposed to have said, “and the world will beat a path to your door.”

In the poet’s time, the 1800s, the trap he set under his desk was probably a wire cage-like thing. Better was the spring-loaded snap trap that took its place in the kitchen corner about the turn of the century.

Since then, inventors have come up with no end of other ways to dispose of mice - traps with teeth, traps with trap doors, with electronic motion detectors, laser-guided traps.

Among the newest, Victor’s $20 electronic mousetrap claims to coax Mr. Mouse into the trap’s “Shock and Drop Chamber,” an electric chair for mice.

For all this advancement, the old snap trap still does it.

“You can increase your odds of catching mice in a snap trap by placing two traps side by side,” McPeake advises, “with the trigger closest to the wall. Mice tend to run where the wall meets the floor. Place it in an area where you have seen them, or have seen their feces.

“Put peanut butter on the trigger. If they lick off the peanut butter but don’t trigger the trap, tie or glue a sunflower seed to the trigger.

“Another trick is to glue a square piece of cardboard to the trigger to increase the trigger pan size and improve your odds of the trap tripping at the right time.”

Mr. Mouse jostles the bait, and this lets go the hammer, also known as the striker, the wire jaw, the mouse masher - nobody seems to want to name this thing - the mean piece of business that snaps down on the customer.

With any luck, it’s a clean kill, maybe a crushed skull, a broken neck. Not so lucky, the trapper finds he has merely crippled his prey, nabbed the mouse by a toe.

Next time, the grossed-out mouse-trapper might try an alternative:

A glue trap is a mouse-size version of a sticky trap for bugs. The mouse sets foot on the glue in hopes of reaching the bait in the middle. The trapper throws him away with the glue trap. The mouse starves.

A drop of vegetable oil on the stuck spot will release the mouse - or free a nosy dog’s nose.

HUG A MOUSE

“Mice and rats deserve our compassion and respect” is the word from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).

Mice are “complex,” “very social,” “fastidiously clean,” and they “love their families,” according to the PETA website.

A live or humane trap is the harmless way to catch a mouse. PETA’s $13.49 version looks like a little green house with lots of air holes.

The mouse ventures in for a sample of loganberry paste. He finds the bait in the far back of the trap, carefully placed so “the rodent’s tail won’t get caught in the trap door.” He rests assured that someone will be along to check the trap in no more than an hour, in accordance with PETA guidelines. Soon after, he will be on his way to release within 100 yards of where he started.

OTHER WAYS OUT

Trapping sounds a bit too mountain-manly, does it? The farm, home or hardware store’s pest-control aisle has other ways to give a mouse the boot or the shoo:

Poison. The mouse eats something that doesn’t agree with him, that ruins his insides. He crawls away to die, but not to some far-off mousie graveyard. More likely, the mouse will expire within smelling distance of the tainted bite.

Mice “can die in places that are inaccessible in homes, such as behind a wall,” McPeake advises. “There will be an odor in your home until the body fully decomposes. For this reason, using poisons may not be the best option.”

Ultrasonic mouse repellers that plug in like a night light. These gizmos claim to chase rodents away with high-frequency noise. They sell online for $20 and up. Amazon. com’s customer reviews vary from “highly recommended” to “less than useless.’”

Mouse-disgusting spray. Havahart’s $17 squirt bottle promises to rout squirrels and ’coons, also dogs and cats, so what mouse is going to stick around?

And one day, one way or another - with any luck - success!

GAME A SQUEAKER

Triumph in the mouse game is measured in mouse droppings: No more droppings, maybe the mice are gone.

Nothing rustles and rattles under the sink.

Traps that once caught one mouse after another catch nothing.

Not a creature is stirring.

The mouse war is won, for now - if only by a whisker.