mouse in the shed

@Warwick lad. Perhaps Rentokil and Victor are using a bit of that well know sales tactics commonly known as FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt). While i agree that rats are seriously not good news I really am not convinced about mice being so dangerous. I live in the countryside and have done for most of my life. Every autumn after the fields are harvested we get a bit of a mouse invasion. We trap mice but I'm afraid we do not go through all the paraphernalia that some trap manufacturer is suggesting.
Both husband and I are OAPs and pretty healthy despite having dealt with plenty of mice in our lifetimes. I worked for many years in the food industry and I defy any manufacturer to have premises which are 100% rodent free. Weil's disease spread by rats is of course a real threat and luckily we have never seen a rat here in 17 years but maybe they are around.I'll take my chances with dealing with mice in a pretty casual manner.
If people are really really worried about rodents then perhaps bypass both Lidl and Aldi, daughter delivers to both their warehouses and has seen some fairly large rodents running around.

 

@silu ...I must agree it was a little OTT I've never gone to that exstreme, I know of a guy that had Weil's, infact a number of years back our local raft race was called off because after testing the river water it was found to have Weil's.

I see a rat only the other week where I use to work, as a trucker for 52 years I've seen things at supermarket RDC's that would make folks give up on most things....best we don't know.

BJ.

 

Yes @Warwick lad, "what the eye doesn't see" and all that! Daughter drives refrigerated artics both in the UK and abroad, it's evidently worse in France than here. My late father was involved the setting up of Holland and Barrett the health food chain. Because of the products they couldn't use certain forms of pest control. A woman brought back to 1 of the shops an unopened box of muesli type cereal she had bought a few days earlier and complained it was empty. Sure enough it was empty and the only sign of anything being amiss was a very small hole in the packaging. Upon inspection it was decided the mouse had gone into the box with the muesli and had happily eaten it's way out. I believe a number of cats were sourced for the factory after that.

 

Yes, i've hauled loads to and from farms,mills,factorys and more.

 

My Grandmother's summer cottage was a winter refugee for plenty of field mice and we co-inhabited quite amicably. The mice rarely showed up when people were there during the warm months, and all foodstuff was stored in glass and metal containers or in inaccessible places. During the winter they had a free run and in the spring we just cleaned the cottage thoroughly and admired their ingenuity in getting into mouse proof places and finding edible things.

Whilst they were keen on candles, they never touched the comic books.

Then, early one spring I was there on my own doing spring stuff, and woke up to a persistent GNAW GNAW GNAW under the "sink" (With no plumbing and no actual sink that was a bit optimistic way to call the surface to do the washing up, but you get the idea. )

A torch lit expedition revealed a tiniest mouse trying to bring the cupboard down by gnawing through solid wood three times it's length. Being rather tired, I grabbed a bucket, placed it so that the mouse could easily get in, and threw in a piece of sausage. Within five minutes the gnawing ceased and I slept.

In the morning I went to try my trap and discovered not one, but 5 mice looking up to me from the bucket, obviously hoping that there was some sausage left.

When you have five faces like this looking expectantly at you, what will you do? Stomp on them? (Google photo, those days cameras didn't travel much)



So I gave them the rest of the sausage and took the bucket and emptied The Five in the furthest corner of our neighbour's plot, near their rubbish heap.

Hopefully they had a long and fulfilling life after that, and told the story of the sausage to their offspring.

And the morale of the story is... Mice are very cute but them and humans should live separate lives? A bucket and a piece of sausage will get you far? Mice dislike Disney comic books?

Something along those lines I guess

 

We live on an old farm next to fields and just accept that mice and rats do live around here. We've got a big chicken farm here, sheep, pigs and cows and there is no way that we'll ever get rid of the rodents. As long as we keep things secure and tidy, they don't destroy anything. They've just as much right to be around as we have

 

I now have petrol engine powered multi tools in the shed. It has hedge trimmer, grass trimmer, chain saw blade attachment. So I keep a large can of petrol, chain oils, 2 stroke engine oils, and mix and fill the fuel tank in the shed.

I also start the engine time to time, and run it idle in the shed with door shut while I am tidying outside of the shed, and then lock the shed for the night.

So inside of the shed and every content is smelling strong petrol and oil. I don't know if this made mice intolerable staying in the shed. I have not noticed any mice droppings at all in the shed.

I also put home made mice traps in the shed for few days, but nothing was caught in there, so I am believing they are gone for good.

My wife says she like mice, because they are cute, and tells me not to harm them. So everything was done in secret.

 

Mice are not a health hazard but they can pick up nasty things but at this time of the year they looking for somewhere nice and warm but if anything that comes on tiggs territory zap he got it infact he cleared mice, rats ,cats away
But mice will try to get anywhere despite you tidy the shed its their habit but keeping it clean will helpto deter frequent visitors