We've recently seen a mouse running about our house. We set humane mouse traps, but to no avail. Sometime last week, it sounded as if it had gotten between the walls. I could hear scurrying/scratching somewhere between my kitchen and the laundry room. Now there is a really foul odour eminating from the laundry room. I pulled the washing machine away from the wall to see if there was a leak of some sort. It did not appear as if there were any leaks/puddles. Plus, it doesn't smell like mould/mildew. I've placed bowls of white vinegar in the room and opened the window. But, it still smells pretty bad to me. Does anyone have any suggestions?
- dlm. in central MA 'who has NEVER had a mouse in the house before and is not pleased!'
It probably died in the wall. Sorry. The smell will go away in a few days. The creepy thought of it takes a while longer. You just reminded me that I heard the same noise in a ceiling last night. Darn....I was going to remind DH to have the traps in the furnace room baited and set before he left for work. The weather just turned quite cool and we seem to get them then. I've given up trying to figure out where they come in....as long as we always catch them in the furnace room, I don't mind. We live next to a wooded area. There just isn't any point in getting crazy about them....as long as they stay in the furnace room!!! My attitude could change if I ever see one or evidence of one elsewhere!!!
I live near a stream and swampy area, too. Moles and mice are a fact of life, but once they die in the wall...you'll have to wait it out. the smell will go away in a week or so. keep a candle lit while you're home, potpourri works too.
I dont use humane traps...i like good old Decon, sorry. catch and release only lets them come back.
Mice can only see six inches in front of themselves and they can only smell very fresh odours. As soon as someone/something else crosses a mouse's path, he gets confused because he's lost his original way (ever wiped your finger over an ant trail?)
If you catch a mouse in a humane trap, you can let it go with confidence no more than twenty yards from your house. The thing is, away from its colony the mouse will probably not survive anyway. They die very quickly from cold, heat and loneliness.
We had a plague of mice a few years ago and I caught (wait for it...) eighty three(!) mice in my humane traps over the summer. When family and friends kept laughing and implying we were catching the same mouse every night and letting it go again each morning, I just had to take action. I blobbed each victim with bright pink nail polish in the middle of his back before releasing him. We never caught a single 'pink' mouse!
You might wonder why I'm so keen on humane mouse treatment?
I breed them. And there are currently sixteen of the little darlings living quite hygienically in my kitchen! Yeah, really!
There's Igor Stravinsky and Diego Rivera living in splendid isolation in the Stud's Hangout. Then, there's Jordan and Marie and Catherine and Herberta (two of these were mothers of our latest litter, but I'm blowed if I know which two. Mice are great Mums and all four girls lactated and cared for the kids). The kittens are Ottorino Respighi, Artemis, Hippolyta, Odette, Odile, Estelle, Constance, Emilia and Lucy.
Lucy, aka 'Little Skinny' had the misfortune to get tangled up in her newspaper nest when she was only three days old. She missed being fed for half a day and I found her, cold, pale and empty! I breathed on her (for the warmth: I don't have delusions of grandeur, honest) and when she perked up a bit, I put her alone in the nest with one of her Mums. She came good, but has remained dwarfish while all her siblings have grown wildly up. She's about a third the size of a normal mouse and so cute. She has a long, shaggy white coat with a grey patch right on the end of her bottom.
Sorry about that. I'd forgotten how verbose I get in posts! I'm sure you'll forgive me when I say I've been offline for *months* and only just been able to dredge together the bits to get myself back online! Hooray!
I haven't posted to rctq in quite a while, but I finished my second quilt (Large Mariner's Compass with sun-face embroidered on it). I'm currently working on a hunormous king-sized quilt with alternate Dresden Plates and plain cream blocks. The prints are all strawberry-flavoured and the quilt will be for my Mum if I ever get it finished. For some reason which remains unclear to me, my DH decided to renovate DD's bedroom just as school holidays began. DD is currently fuming because school hols are all but over and her bedroom is still not fit to conduct a sleepover in. For me, the gentle veil of plaster dust over my sewing machine, my mice and myself is enough to make me want to screem!
I have tons of mice in the walls, we hear them scratching all the time, despite having a cat. We have used all kinds of traps, humane, and not so humane, and those thingies you plug into the outlet to supposedly drive them crazy enough to leave, all to no avail. I won't use poison because of my cat and dogs.
If a mouse has died inside the walls, there isn't much you can do about the smell, but it won't last more than a couple of weeks. Eventually the poor creature will dry up and stop smelling. It's happened to us quite a few times.
I run our local food pantry and have to keep mice out of our area, it's in an old chuch building. So far, the "plug in" thing is working there. I once used a"Gluey Louie" trap, but almost vomited when the only thing on the sticky-tape trap was a foot. I felt like 2 cents. I kept looking for a little 3-footed mouse with a peg leg.
If anyone has a way to repel the darn little things from the house that doesn't use poison or nasty inhumane methods, give a holler.
Hooray! I just heard a "snap!" in the furnace room and the little devil is lying on the floor in the trap! Success! Now you all have to swear you don't know anything about this since when DH gets home I'll just ask him if he's checked the traps lately. Pinky Swear???
- dlm. 'who wishes her sense of smell would take a hike' posed the following query...
Thanks everyone! It looks as if I'm just going to have to wait for the smell to dissipate. ( Does this mean I won't have to do any laundry until then? ).
So glad to see you again! I love Mariner's Compass quilts. Haven't attempted one yet though, because I can't abide poins that aren't quite so pointy. Until I master PP, it just isn't going to happen. Good luck with your Dresden Plate quilt for your Mum. In any event...happy dancing for you!
- dlm. in central MA ( 'who remembers that John, also from NSW, "introduced" you to the group' )
Hey dlm, thanks! The secret with my MC was *foundation piecing*. It's nearly impossible to go wrong if you do it that way. At least, that's what I found and it was a big MC for a second-ever quilt. Only one point went wrong and that's the one I was doing in the middle of a chocolate hiatus. Stupid, I know, but what can y'do? 'Never quilt when there is no chocolate'. You'd think I'd learn... ;-D
Trish, maybe the mice in NSW are different than the ones here in New York, but i still use the DeCon. my garage is in my basement, my QI dog doesnt go down there, if she does, i'm with her, and i just dont like mice. Sorry. i dont like spiders either. they get squashed. amy
I live out in the country and have mouse smell (very strong at times) around my house. I have used many things to conquer the smell. Oxyclean with water works great. I just use it to wipe down the offending wall(s) and no more smell!
I love mice too but do not like them in the house - my daughters have 5 cats between them and the woman next door has a snake which needs to be fed occasionally.
Would you please post a picture of your Little Sk>> I live near a stream and swampy area, too. Moles and mice are a fact
Heee! The reason I raise mice is pretty much the same reason I have very long hair: I wasn't allowed to as a child. Now, isn't that a perfectly good and adult reason? ;-D
I have to say that my mice are the best and most fun pets I've ever kept (and I've had a few, believe me!) I belong to the Australian Rat and Mouse Fanciers' Club, although I don't do showing, and have lots of friends who also 'do' rats and ferrets as well. I'm not as fond of rats as I am of mice, but I'd dearly love a little ferret. Sadly, my husband (who is just managing to keep a hat on his horror at the sixteen mice) has threatened to leave if ever a ferret darkens our door, so...
If you go to webshots.com and type in the album name 'Betrisher', there are some pics of my two finished quilts there. The first was an applique one with hearts and butterflies for my daughter. It's all in shades of dark blue and cream. My son wanted something with suns and moons because that's his things. As it happened, my friend had just completed a huge MC wallhanging. I was looking at it on her wall when the idea struck me to make a medallion quilt with a huge big golden MC in the middle, embroidered to look like a sun. So, we sat down and designed Matt's quilt. It has the 20" MC sun in the middle (Matt did the embroidery - he's pretty good at that) and has a border of alternating nine patches and little MC's (stars) and silver moons. The stars have 'awake' faces and the moons have 'sleepy' faces, all embroidered by Matt. This quilt was *such* fun, from the pencil sketch to completion and Matty is overjoyed with it. Oh, and the colours are dark blue celestial prints with silvery moon appliques and a flame-colored border fabric.
My next quilt, the Strawberry one, has been fun too. I took about three years to collect a huge variety of strawberry prints in various colours. Then, I sat down with me trusty pencil and drew up the design (that took what felt like another three years) and then my friend, PDC, and I spent a few sessions cutting out Dresden plates and putting colours together.
The blocks are twelve inches. Each DP will be appliqued (blanket stitch) onto a cream square and alternated with a plain cream block on which the outline of a DP will be hand-quilted (I do all my quilting by hand). So far, the quilt will be eight blocks by eight blocks with 2" bottle green sashing and borders. But that may change. It's so big, I'm thinking I might quilt as I go. The lady down the quilt shop is trying to persuade me that I *can* machine quilt the whole thing. I'm skeptical about that, though. I'm scared of machine quilting! (Yeah, I have the Holy Walking Foot, but do you think I can make the blessed thing go?)
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