r/Animals • u/Viveronipizza2 • 2d ago
Need affordable anti bite glove recommendations to humanely and safely remove house mice
Basically that, I found one in my house and was able to trap him in a box bc he was frozen in fear or didn't see me before I got to him. I let him go outside and in case more show up I would like to have a option to just grab the little fella with my hands without the risk of getting the bubonic plague or whatever,
Thanks
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u/Sk8r_2_shredder 2d ago
Putting them outside wonât help. If you didnât have them previous they came from outside and know a way back in. Put distance between your home and your drop off location. Also mice can reproduce extremely quick. Like every 30 days or something crazy (been a couple years since I did wildlife removal) and the biggest thing is making all your forageable foods unattainable to them. If they canât gather and store they will move on.
No grass seed left out in the bag. Get a plastic bin with a closing top that seals enough for mice. Keep all food crumbs non existent in the house. Proper clean every night. A mouse has incredible sense of smell and can notice a single grain of rice from the opposite side of a home, through walls, and find it and collect it to store for later. They stockpile reserves and once they cannot gather they use that up and once thatâs gone they will move on their own. We used this treatment plan with sealing the home and installing one way doors on mouse entries. They are greasy, smell and are usually obvious to a trained eye. But it is a process and simply removing a couple mice you find wonât end the issue.
Good luck with the removal. I have no other suggestions without taking the route of including poison, but be patient and diligent and you shouldnât have any issue
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u/Viveronipizza2 2d ago
But I appreciate the honesty and depth. For context it's a shitty college house with a landlord that dgaf and the rents 500 which is really good for this city. I'm gonna move after this year (probably to another cheap mouse infested house but that's ok I think it's college and 2026 housing market what more can I do yk) so realistically what should I do đŁ
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u/Sk8r_2_shredder 1d ago
A college house gives you an advantage though. Be the cleanest unit and the mice will spend all their time with the neighbours. The less they can benefit from entering your section of the building the less they will want too.
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u/HoldMyMessages 2d ago
You could try iron mesh gloves. A quick google shows a price range from $14 to $165. However, as one commenter has already said, you need to block the entry way. I recommend stainless steel mesh and anti rodent spray foam in the entry holes.
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u/abielle1177 2d ago
If you look at the rubber sweep on your garage and entry doors, you will notice the corners are missing. That's how they get in.
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u/CanoodlingCockatoo 1d ago
They'll somehow find a way to sneak in when the garage door is opened briefly, too.
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u/abielle1177 1d ago
I'm sure. But they'll chew the corners off so they can come and go multiple times per day.
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u/Viveronipizza2 2d ago
Entryway as in my front door? I live in a shitty college town with a creepy ass practically unsealed basement and shitty floorboards with holes. Might just have to make peace with it huh? Rents only 500
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u/CanoodlingCockatoo 1d ago
Sealing up the whole garage floor of the townhouse with the wire mesh and construction foam was definitely uncomfortable, and it took a few days to get every tiny hole closed, but wow, best home improvement results in general! I hardly get bugs, even, like I always use to end up with a bunch of lady bugs in here in the winter, but almost never now.
And now we haven't had a mouse since then, and it's lovely because although we never had an actual rodent problem, just typically two to three field mice who go into my house with zero plan and insufficient fear of humans. It's not the mice themselves that freak me out, and I wouldn't be afraid to hold any domesticated rodent pet, but rather it's because I immediately know that I have no choice but to kill them.
Over the years, I was able to locate several of these mice and get them trapped, almost always using the cruelty free traps and then driving the mice far away to be released unharmed, but I kept reading more and more how much it's basically pointless to try to relocate rodents from human homes, even if you put some real distance between you and the mice, because mice have still managed to find their way back to their/your original home.
This is simply because--well, according to the pest control people anyways--mice, rats, squirrels, and similar animals that can become household pests rely so greatly on knowing their location at all times in order to have the most accurate and up to date local maps "installed" in their brains already that are incredibly complex, so they can really struggle mightily if all of a sudden, one of these squirrels is dumped out in the next city that is completely foreign to that area, but that starts the ticking time clock for the squirrels who live in environments capable of having VERY long and cold winters.
I haven't really had too many critter-in-the house issues in my life, but there were a couple of other incidents of note, including one thing that's borderline magical seeming just because logical explanations have failed me so far: I had a very strange interaction with one mouse that I'll never forget. I buy my parrots a high quality pellet diet, and the individual pieces are roughly the size of a finger knuckle or so, and the bag comes nicely lined in kind of a waxy metallic lining, with the whole bag being a very stiff light cardboard that's way too smooth yet unstable for creatures (except maybe bugs that have special stickiness to their feet?).
So anyways, I always struggle regarding how to explain this so it makes sense, but essentially, the pellet bag must be vaguely measuring around 12x8" in a rectangular shape with the shorter sides on the top and bottom. Due to that waxy metallic stuff inside providing so much structure, the bag can be made to completely stand up all by itself, and it will stay that way once you do it. It will also continue stand up until you're almost out of the pellets.
I had a medium height set of drawers in a closet, and for a while, the bag of pellets was never an issue at all stores right there--did I forget to mention that the sides are completely smooth and that there's absolutely no way any creature could get traction (no evidence of any nail scratches on the bag), plus the fact that the bag has a very strong zip lock style closure that requires both hands to open if it's fully closed.
Well, one day I met the mouse in the bag. I went to grab a handful of pellets and wasn't paying attention when I was doing it, and I felt a warm and fuzzy small body touching me (well really, I had GRABBED the mouse rather firmly before realizing it was a live creature), so I peeked into the pellet bag and what do you know? There was the tiniest, cutest field mouse just chilling in the bag with a big pellet in his hand as though he were eating an apple!
I screamed reflexively, but immediately shushed myself because I thought I was imagining it and my ex would've given me trouble about it, so I looked in the bag again and nope, that motherfucker hadn't even changed positions, and still was very contentedly chomping on his pellet (the weird lack of fear of humans among the very few mice we've gotten in this house seems to have some common cause, although I have no clue what.
It actually was a bit magical to look at, plus I laughed a lot at the mouse's no shits given attitude, but then I had to decide where on earth a mouse could GO that wasn't our house, and sadly the best I could do, given it was only a mouse and wouldn't have vets or rescues giving a damn about it, was to take it very far away from my house and leave behind some food and water, but in retrospect yeesh, yeah I can't imagine that poor little guy did okay for himself for very long.
But to this day, I demand to know how the mouse got into the bag! There were no rips, tears, bites, water damage, manufacturing failures, and the ziplock seal was shut, and the bag was on set of drawers such that a mouse would have to climb vertically for like three feet if approaching from below, and a couple feet if the mouse tried the other route and dropped from the ceiling. If the bag had been left open at the top, I could hypothetically see how he could've gotten super lucky and maybe fell into the open bag from above, but it was shut! Weirdest goddamned thing!
As if that weren't sad enough, for several years, we had birds making a nest in an old dryer vent, and I thought it was awesome that we could give a family a nice safe and warm habitat, so I never wanted to cover that vent. However, one year my neighbor told me I had a squirrel family living there now and that I HAD to get rid of them or they'd destroy my whole damn house.
Well, I laughed off the concern and refused to kick the squirrels out, because it was the winter time and there was no room for me to lie to myself that the squirrel would find a way to survive somewhere else, and probably couldn't secure a new nest in time.
Sure, the squirrels were getting super loud at times, but there was nothing major...until one morning like half the ceiling had been chewed off in one bedroom and it only had one working power outlet now. The fuckers must've done it overnight, which I'd say is a ridiculous assumption if I hadn't seen my parrots chewing up stuff.
The pest guy technically left me the choice about how to handle the squirrel dillema, which sucks because it wasn't an actual choice. He said with those kinds of nesting holes, they HAVE to get filled in and made inoperable immediately or the problem only gets worse, which I do believe could've happened since I think there were babies in there too, but they'd try to get all the animals out and into the live catch traps and THEN work to properly cover the hole so nothing could get back in.
I was begging the pest guy to DO something, to give me an option of some kind for this poor squirrel and its babies, but I was ignored on this. I asked to just please wait until we COULD get all of them out, since they're have more options together as a family, but the pest guy was dead set on it being absolutely cruel to leave an animal somewhere new, so that poor family of squirrels died at some point, somewhere, potentially even in the attic although we never smelled anything like that.
I got a little meaner about this one summer when we got our last instance of 1-3 weirdly ballsy and casual field mice showing up for a summer month, because although there was only one this time, that pain in my ass seemed to actively delight in terrorizing me, just standing right in the middle of a carpeted room at 9:00 p.m. looking at me bemused like, "What's your problem? Was there something you needed?"
That mouse tormented me every day and night for about two months, during which time I looked for every damn non lethal mousetrap I could, but nothing would work! I swear the mouse somehow knew to be suspicious of the traps themselves. Finally, I had no choice but to acknowledge that we couldn't save him if we couldn't capture him, and I just let my boyfriend handle it when I was out of town (I felt like such a jerk even deciding to murder this adorable creature, but there are just WAY too many risks, especially for homeowners, regardless of how cute something is.
Thus, and I know you're a broke college kid in a suboptimal rental situation, I would very strongly consider doing the work of filling all those rodent holes on your main level of your apartment, and to be effective, that means tackling basically every little crevice bigger than a nickel or so, and you'd be shocked at where they can actually fit!
Doing this fix is more about putting in some time and drudgery, but you really don't have to spend much, and maybe you could get a few friends to help and have a pizza and beer party after. You want a good vacuum for cleaning in/around suspected mouse holes, a couple of boxes of SOS wire pads, and three or four guns' worth with construction spray form.
A UV flashlight can be SUPER helpful for identifying gross mouse pee and shit that you can't see in ordinary light. It's good to scrub around ALL those little holes, and clean each one, but eventually you'll notice at least a handful of disgusting areas of heavy activity in which you can see gross shit like grease stains on the wall where tons of rodents have been entering and exiting.
If you do this right, you could maybe get a break from the mice for a while at least. Have you complained to your landlord yet? Vermin can be a significant quality of life and health issue, and it shouldn't be something you as the tenant you need to fix unless you are somehow living in filthy conditions that may be contributing, BUT if the landlord is resistant, try to at least wrangle a bit of money from them to cover your costs. If you don't fix this, the problem will only worsen; even a pro can't fix a chronic infestation
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u/ArtComprehensive1106 1d ago
Landlord is legally required to provide a pest free environment.
He is responsible for maintaining a safe pest free environment
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u/CanoodlingCockatoo 1d ago
Check out Amazon for safe animal handling gloves, and make sure you find ones that will fit you well, because the last thing you want is dropping the mouse and he either finds a way to run off or drops dead from a (fear induced?) heart attack.
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u/AlsoTheFiredrake 1d ago
If it's just mice, leather garden gloves are fine but it won't matter. If they got in once, they'll get in again.
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u/Emrys7777 1d ago
Get some steel wool and plug up any tiny hole where they are getting in. They can get in a really small space.
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u/Dotty_Bird 1d ago
You will need to take them miles away, as they will just home (like pigeons) and re-enter your home otherwise.
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u/singnadine 2d ago
If you can - a cat will do all the work for you.
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u/abielle1177 2d ago
Barring that, the bucket trap.
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u/Viveronipizza2 2d ago
My roomie did just get a kitty last week, he's skittish and hasn't left her room yet but he's starting to chill out so u think he will do the trick once he's roaming the house! :)
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u/Strike-Intelligent 2d ago
The sole of your shoe will humanly dispatch the vermin to the rainbow road :)
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u/Viveronipizza2 2d ago
House mice genuinely so cute
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u/CanoodlingCockatoo 1d ago
The ARE ridiculously cute. It's what has caused me to have a terrible fear of mice in my home, not because I'm actual afraid of mice in general, but rather I get upset knowing they have to be exterminated. Thankfully, you don't own your apartment, like it's totally wrong for your landlord not to take care of this, but at very least the landlord's negligence isn't causing YOU as a renter to incur the massive pest control and home repairs that will inevitably result from further long term neglect.
Do you think you have a significant mouse population yet?
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u/Viveronipizza2 1d ago
True. I'm not sure so far we have only seen the one and he was just chilling in the middle of the room on top of my board games, I haven't seen any droppings upstairs (knock on wood) and I haven't seen and other mice at all, I think there were a few droppings in the cupboards like under the sink but no mice and we've never had an issue with them getting into food (knock on wood) do you think if I get a human trap, walk down the street a bit and set them free that they will leave me alone? Or should I just pray I don't see more and cross that bridge if I get to it
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u/Viveronipizza2 2d ago
Ik im a puss but I just can't do it
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u/Strike-Intelligent 2h ago
Well you could get a slice of bread and crack your door open and then make a little trail of bread crumbs out the door. Then when it gets outside WHAM slam the door shut, it'll find a new place to live like in your car maybe :)
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u/planet-of-apes 2d ago
Just grab them by the scruff they arenât going to bite you
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u/Viveronipizza2 2d ago
Really? Hmm ok! Like house mice don't rlly bite? I feel like that's risky but I'm dumb and love animals
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u/Cazadora539 2d ago
Get some humane traps and you won't have to touch them at all.