Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
right board?? mice!!! (long, with cliff notes)
HI all, I'm fairly new to The Nest, so not sure if this is the right board or not, but I need help!
I'm sorry if I offend any "no kill" people out there, normally I would agree w/ you, but I don't tolerate mice in my house, and have no problem killing them.
Long version:
My apartment went from being awesome to terrible! I live on the top floor of a garden-style apartment (2 floors, 8 units in my building), in a small (650 sq ft.) apartment. I have lived there 6 months, have not had a single bug/insect/pest problem at all. Then, Tuesday (just 3 days ago) night, we saw a mouse! We went out and bought 4 snap traps and 4 twist traps. There were 4 more sightings Tuesday night as we were putting the traps up. I scrubbed the kitchen, and vacuumed. Didn't catch anything. Saw one Wed morning, so we complained to our apartment, they came in and put new screens in our radiators, and put a bunch of traps around the outside of the building. Saw one more Wed night, again, vacuumed again and scrubbed down the kitchen. Thursay morning, didn't see anything, still nothing in the traps, was thinking maybe the new screens were working. Last night, I hear something in the kitchen, and lo and behold, there is one on the counter, then a second one on the counter, and then one from under the refridgerator! In total, there were 7 or 8 sightings last night (no more than 3 at a time). They are all babies, and they are all coming from/going back into the stove. We went out and bought 8 glue traps, set them up all around the kitchen (which, BTW is only 7'X8'). Woke up this morning, the 3 glue traps in "high-traffic" areas had been pushed out of the way, but didn't catch anything! Then as DH was getting ready, I saw one more go running out of the kitchen, but I didn't see where he ran to! I put some bait in the middle of the glue traps, then had to come off to work. Seriously, though, 16 traps in a 650 sq foot apartment, with multiple babies (and at least one adult that I've seen), and we can't catch crap! We are pretty clean people (I do a thorough scrubbing once/week but wipe stuff down more often, and have been doing thorough scrubbings every day since Tuesday), so I can't figure out what they want!
I plan on calling again, and having them move the stove out and see if there is some sort of nest there. We complained last week about scratching sounds coming from the ceiling, so now I'm afraid that those sounds were the mice being born, and the nest is somewhere in the ceiling with just an opening behind the stove.
Cliff Notes:
After 6 months of living at my apartment, it went from awesome to total mouse infestation overnight!
The problem/question:
DH and I are leaving for our honeymoon (1.5 months after the wedding) tonight, and will be gone for 2 weeks! What do I do? We're thinking about going out and buying some large plastic bins and just putting our entire kitchen in those, but I don't know if that will help. My skin is crawling just thinking of mice running around my apartment unchecked for two weeks!!!
Re: right board?? mice!!! (long, with cliff notes)
I've never posted on here, but I recently moved out of a house with similar problems and know how awful it can be. I definitely recommend putting as much of your kitchen (especially food) in plastic bins. Clean your cabinets with bleach before and after you go, too. I've heard it suggested to turn off the water so they don't have any access, but I don't know if that's an option in an apartment.
The traps will eventually start to work. However, when they would get really bad at my house it seemed like that wasn't enough. I'm not a big fan of poison (sick mice walking around seems cruel and gross), but many of the poisons are designed to make them leave and then die. If you have pets you don't want to use it, though. Also, what are you putting as bait on the traps? I had the best luck with peanut butter on snap traps. I set them inside paper bags just because I couldn't stand the thought of picking up a trap with a dead mouse on it. Some brands of snap traps work better than others. The twist ones didn't always work for me...sounds like if yours are babies they may be too small for those. And glue traps just gross me out.
Good luck! I know it can make you feel so violated and like a poor housekeeper, but it just happens in certain places.
We don't have pets (too small of an apartment), we've considered using poison, but I want it to be a last resort.
I hate glue traps too, but we're kind of desparate. The snap traps all have (or had, some of them got clean....) peanut butter, the twist traps are two peanut butter, two cheese (a very potent cheese). The glue traps, I put some cereal in the middle this morning.
I'll get some plastic bins, start putting everything in there, and probably bleach out the entire kitchen/cabnets/everything tonight.
I talked to our management again, they are going to take out the refridgerator and stove and check behind them today, then send over an exterminator.
If this isn't better soon (like, a few weeks), I think we're gonna start looking for somewhere new to live...
We had a mouse in our kitchen and it freaked me out to no end. I can not imagine going on vacation knowing you have a whole family of them running around.
I bought this http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&productId=100557786&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&ci_sku=100557786&ci_src=14110944&cm_mmc=shopping-_-googlebase-_-D28X-_-100557786&locStoreNum=2614&marketID=39
and baited it with peanut butter and the mouse was caught within a few hours.
Good luck!
Weare dealing with that prolem right now. We bought a bunch of these trap and they seem to work pretty well.
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ1xhi/R-202229592/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053
DH bought those poision packs that the mice are supposed to nibble though and eat, but they won't touch them.