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I've eradicated the mice from the attic but now they are chewing small vacuum pipes in my car causing expensive damage and a need to drive 38 miles to a garage. So I went in the attic to get my traps and coming back down the ladder I fell backwards and smashed a glass door with my back. My belt is gashed but I only got a small glass cut to a finger. I could have stabbed myself and bled to death. That would have put a merciful end to my breakdown and my endless whining on here anyway.
Traps are under the bonnet and now we have to drive back to the town again, another 38 mile return trip. This rural living idea is losing its shine, fast.
What type of mice are they, Danger Mouse❓
So sorry to hear they're still around.
Under the circs might the landlord let you keep pets...cat or jack russell?
...snake..?
**** hell! Glad you escaped relatively unscathed! And keep on whining. Letting it out is better than bottling it up.
Also, @qwery, Danger Mouse wouldn't have let globalti get to the car to put the traps in.
Daft question but could you get a cat?
Well if you have a danger mouse you be looking for a top cat to get catch it.
We have a cat but we don't let her out because there's no way for us to know she's wanting to come in. She is bored and frustrated so I think we're going to have to bite the bullet. This rural living dream is becoming a bloody nightmare.
Bloody hell op?
Have these mice been bitten by a radioactive spider or something?
Do you live abroad?
Glad you are ok-ish.
Just bruised, a bit shocked and very depressed about the way this is turning out.
Cat flap?
Get some rats in apparently you don't get rats and mice together
They like fuel lines too, keep an eye out for a puddle once the engine has started.
Give the cat somewhere dry and warm outside (sort of cat kennel) and it will be fine until you open the door in the morning.
One of the campers I imported from Southern Germany had a 12v ultrasonic device in the engine bay to prevent such attacks.
Worth a try?
Daft question but have you tried those ultrasonic emitters? Not sure if they’re snake oil, but might be worth a go as they can be had pretty cheap. That or go all in and get an Owl
I'll buy some rubber vacuum pipe from Halfrauds tomorrow.
Don't feed the cat.The mice will soon disappear.
This rural living dream is becoming a bloody nightmare.
focus on the end goal fella , Chin up - It will be worth it in the end.
dont focus on your rental - its part of the problem but its very temporary .
Once you get settled in and the locals have long forgotten you arriving in their land - you have settled in as part of the community rather than a weekend FIFO or holiday home rental that are killing scottish villages i'm sure you will enjoy retirement. Just show your willing to contribute to the community during power outages/flooding/downed trees and they will soon accept you.
Where did you move to?
Where did you move to?
Disneyland.
Explains the massive mouse problem.
You're not whining. You genuinely have problems which are affecting you life. It's important you keep talking and getting some problems off your chest.
As mentioned above, this situation you've found yourself in, is not forever. Things will improve, you'll look back one day and it will have all been a bad dream.
I think your land lord needs to get rentakill in (or whatever its called these days).
Where have you moved to globalti?
Are you sure it isn't pine martens eating your car? Here in Austria they are a pain in the f@@@@@ng arse eating my car. They love rubber and electric cables.
I had an ultrasonic mouse deterrent in the attic of my previous house. It worked a treat, every year or so they'd come back (could hear them running about), change the batteries and off they'd go.
Well I trapped a fat mouse yesterday so I'm guessing it's mice. My car is out of action and Mrs RR is stressing about her car now. If both go down we're snookered.
Right now we've just had a huge barney because she's agonising about Christmas presents while I'm agonising about the house being full of mice when we move in, with it having been left unoccupied with the UFH running.
Honestly I wish we had come and stayed here for two weeks in winter in a nice holiday cottage before embarking on this mad, ruinous scheme, just to find out all these things before getting in too deep.
It worked a treat, every year or so they’d come back (could hear them running about), change the batteries and off they’d go.
You would have thought they'd learn not to change the batteries after a couple of years.
well thatll teach me.....
apparently we have given birth to a bat and the ultrasonic repeller was turned off as it "may have been disturbing babys sleep"
so guess what we have had a visit from..... attic and under the kitchen sink which suggests they are in the cavity
traps deployed to get rid
then ultra sonic will be reinstated.
Can you not park the cars outside
We run those ultrasonic plug in things in our pub, and they do seem to work. Got 3 x cats at home, therefore no mice. other than the dead ones they bring in from outside (and birds, moles, voles, squirrels (yes, really) and once a ****in' long female grass snake...) - so depends on whether you're happy about what else they catch...
Mice in car bonnet?
Assuming that you’re parking your car outside and in the same place, then emptying the contents of your cats litter tray under the car should discourage the mice.
Afaik, the smell of cats pi$$ sends mice and rats scampering.
Looks like mine weren't nesting in the house at least. They were coming in under the lead for my extension I'm.almost certain which explains them in the attic (where we never ever had them before ) then they were in the normal.kitchen cupboard under the sink.
No noise and no traps set off.....but I went mad with the wire wool.and expanding foam.
Treat the cause then the symptoms.
I had those ultrasound emitters and never had a mice issue
I bought a new ultrasonic yesterday as I assumed mine was broken until I found out it had been turned off.....new one claims to repell flies by magnetic something or other using house wiring not sure that will play well with my LAN over power but let's see if either are an issue with it in
What car have you got? VAG (and some others) use soy in the plastics of the wiring looms and it attracts the critters. Maybe spray something round your engine bay that they don't like the smell of
Assuming the new house is being built ok WHICH MOST ARE then it will not be full of mice when you move in. And you will be motivated to ensure gaps are sealed and food tidied away!
Look the cracking up is a very very common reaction to infestation, I reacted the same way in the face of mice (+, once, the worry that we might have brought bedbugs home from holiday, turned out not but they are unspeakable buggers and only after several years am I confident that we didn't). The way you feel is normal. Your worries about the new house are normal, I still tend to have a poke around the mattress etc in new hotel rooms five years later and (re mice) now shudder whenever I see a lovely exterior climbing plant! Still. Years later.
For me what helped was trying to get the fight reaction going - perhaps don't rely on the landlord but get a local pest control in (again), surround the car with traps, go round the house with wire wool (and expanding foam if LL will allow), and if you smell corpses, remember that's the smell of victory.
Make paper effigies of mice and burn them if you have to. Push on through and once you have been in your new house for a month or two and here are no *noises* etc you will start to feel human again.
Best post for a while. Yes I've blocked their entry holes, trapped one in the attic, pest people have put down poison, we've had the smells, the flies, and for the moment no more scuttling and gnawing in the attic.
For the car, I've caught one mouse under the bonnet. The two pieces of hose they chewed are about 6mm diameter with 3-4 mm internal bore. A local garage has offered me braided diesel spill-off pipe so we'll go and see him tomorrow.
I also got bitten by bedbugs in a hotel in Abidjan. They move from bed to bed on people's suitcases, which is why hotels are supposed to provide case stands so you don't put your case on the bed.
The nature of anxiety means you catastrophise everything so now I'm having nightmares that the chimney in this poxy bungalow catches fire and burns the bloody place down. Also that the new house will be riddled with mice as there are still plenty of holes in the structure and they will be busy chewing through all the new plastic piping. The house leaks everywhere and everything has to be torn out and rebuilt.
So that's today's special subjects for stress sorted out. Every day brings a new one.
Feel for you mate.
Every things always worse in the dark as well.....
Where are you based?
In the wilds of Scotland. Locals say it's the worst year ever for mice. Lots of cars including mine have been damaged and I've heard about plastic pipe being chewed in houses with devastating results.
This afternoon Mrs Gti admitted for the first time that if we had known all this we would have stayed in our nice secure snug mouse-free house in Lancashire and binned the retirement home idea.
Deepening of mental breakdown. GP suggests increasing the dosage of the meds.
In the wilds of Scotland. Locals say it’s the worst year ever for mice
Where because in the wilds of Scotland here.....it has been an ordinary year for mice.
They haven't attacked the cars yet.
I’m having nightmares that the chimney in this poxy bungalow catches fire and burns the bloody place down
Get a grip....Surely it is normally the tumbledrier that catches fire...
Is the car garage or drive btw (apols if I missed this).
Either way at least it is an improvement on the loft.
How long would it take to dig #notserioushere a moat round the car? I know mice can tread water (used to work in a converted manor house and SOMEONE - not me - would leave glasses of water, and biscuits, on their desk overnight grrr) but do they swim much?
I would have thought that the general hubbub of building activity and lack of bags of potatoes etc would put mice off. But what do I know. You could go on a forum for mad bastards who build their own homes / have them built and lay your vermin-related worries in front of them - either they'll say nah mate, or they will have some sort of practical advice.
I have been there and *eventually* the buggers do all die or move out.
I've been looking at rolling log mouse traps on YouTube. Will make a couple.
I also got bitten by bedbugs in a hotel in Abidjan. They move from bed to bed on people’s suitcases, which is why hotels are supposed to provide case stands so you don’t put your case on the bed.
We picked up bed bugs in Portugual. When we got home we dumped everything at the bottom of the garden, stripped off and went in for a shower. We then went and bought a small chest freezer and froze everything a -29°C for three days.
This afternoon Mrs Gti admitted for the first time that if we had known all this we would have stayed in our nice secure snug mouse-free house in Lancashire and binned the retirement home idea.
There's hope. I haven't dared post on your threads for fear of doing more harm than good, and also because I couldn't think of anything to suggest while Mrs GTi was still committed to the project. When Madame and I have big choices to make we go through all the possibilites, narrow it down to two then make for and against lists for each. Sometimes there's an overwhelming weight of evidence for one or the other, sometimes just one line makes the choice obvious, sometimes it's close and we start prioritising. So far, 30 or so years, there's been no argument because it's been clear to both of us at the end of the exercise. Try it.
How far off is the build?
Turns out I was wrong. My furry friend was not dead just inactive after gorging on my food.....
He is an ex mouse now.
Bloody hell guess who heard noises last night.
I am sure people here will understand when I say
AAAAARGH
HOWEVER I am somewhat battle hardened now. Also the OH (much better at this than me) emerged from the first loft check with 2 murine corpses so the last lot of poison up there has done *some* work and hopefully whatever we heard is about to follow suit.
Poison blocks deployed in loft and garage at 1am, following which I slept on the sofa (never hear anything downstairs) with the dog (not, sadly, a terrier, but with the magic ability to make any bad situation seem a bit less crap).
**balls**
thats his mate dead now so fingers crossed thats them all. Cant find any other holes (other than the 5 or 6 made during building work (knocked the back of the house out) so fairly certain they aint coming in anymore. Will give it till the weekend before boxing the cupboard back in fully.
might be the worst in 8 years(2 is the most ive ever trapped) right enough although a combination of easy entry points / No ultrasonic and me using traps alone rather than traps and poison....
No idea where mine got in, unless they snuck into the garage that evening the garage door got stuck half open (until we noticed it) - the attractive climbing plants were killed years ago.
Perhaps we need to get a roofer to redo the leading? (80s house) (will that help prevent ingress to the loft?)
OH (made of sterner stuff) claims to hear no further noises so I may return to my own bed tonight (no further corpses have been found in the loft but frankly the scrabbler may just have expired under some insulation or whatever. Or buggered off. Either does me fine).
Don't get a cat, ours just brings live mice in from outside and deposits them at your feet as some kind of challenge to you in a 'bet you can't catch that' kind of way.
We've got quite adept at catching live mice with a biscuit tin since getting the cat.
Every now and again the cat will bring in a dead one and leave it under our sons bed, this started when he was a few months old, we'd find the odd sacrificial mouse under his cot as some kind of offering. We think it was to try and Get him to stop pulling the cats tail. He's 9 now, and the last dead mouse was found a couple of weeks ago.