Could We Have MICE in Our ceiling..EWWW!

We has a few mice this year. We tried a few humane traps, but none worked, unfortunately. Finally, the old fashioned snap traps worked for us. And also, DH found a little space we suspected they were getting in, and we plugged it up with steel wool. It must have worked, we haven't seen any mice, droppings, or found any in the traps since.

We had mice problems for years and could not get rid of them, apparently once they're in the scent just keeps bringing them back. I finally found our solution stray in our front yard. We took in a great stray cat and haven't seen a mouse,squirrel,rabbit, or any other pest near our house since! I've never seen him catch one I just think he's scared them off.
I know it's drastic but just a suggestion;-) There's a lot of great cats looking for a good home,check your local shelter for the best mouse protection around!

Squirrels in our attic. My advice to you is NO POISON.... because whatever it is, if it eats it and then dies in the attic......you will go crazy because of the stink! Trap and relocate them, and make sure that you find their ingress and egress and close it up so that they can't keep coming in. We've had squirrels that expired in our attic, and it's no joke I assure you! Stink, Stank, STUNK!!!! And the ones that my husband couldn't find and get rid of........well let's just say it's not pretty.....First there is the stink, and then the flies........wish that I had known about the insurance thing back then..... gosh that would have been a godsend.....and to top it off, twice it has happened and twice we had house guests for the weekends that the big stink set in...and it lasts about two weeks until whatever is lost up there is either completely picked clean or mummified! ewwwwww! Good luck!

First come the mice... then come the snakes that eat the mice.

Better to handle them before the snakes come.

Yes... call a pest expert to find out how bad and WHAT the problem is. (Because quite frankly it could be mice, rats, squirrels, chipmunks, opossums, skunks, birds, or a whole host of insects -bees & wasps being the most common). Unless you want to poke your head up there to find out...

My personal favorite pest deterrent (before you get to the snake phase) is a good Mouser... but I know some people can't have cats. Even our mighty hunters couldn't keep ahead of the problem though when a new development started going up a few blocks over (nothing chases wildlife into houses like a development).

We lived in the woods, and inevitably got mice AND chipmunks in the winter time. I pleaded with the landlord to get a kitty. We adopted the most non-agressive cat on the planet, but guess what? The rodent problem disappeared. Mouse traps totally gross me out, and I don't think they are nearly as effective as the scent they get of a CAT in the house!
If you are not a cat lover, call the exterminator.

We heard scratching in our attic and discovered that we had over 100 bats living up there!!!! What a nightmare! When we tried to have them removed we found out that it was mating season and it was illegal to remove them until mating season was over, so no one would remove them for us. We had to live with them for 4 months. We would watch them fly out into the yard at night. so creepy. The bright side we did not have any bugs in our yard that year!

Eww, yes, it's a rat. We had a problem with rats. We put traps up there and we've caught quite a few big rats. We finally got sick of it and hired a neighbor to seal openings on our roof and around our house. That seemed to do the trick so far. Just have your hubby or pest control to inspect your house for any openings and have them seal it. That should do the trick. I sure felt dirty and scummy when I heard them scurrying around. Good luck.

At our previous home we too heard the scratching and scampering in the ceiling. It turned out to be squirrels. They scratched so much in one particular spot that there was a hole in the ceiling. We called a pest company that sealed the entrance and placed a trap to catch the critter. After all was said and done 4 squirrels were removed and the noises ceased. Call some one to check it out before what ever it is multiplies.

We get them in our attic because they come in through the garage- we live right next to a big field. I can't stand them! Our pest control puts glue traps down, and we have also used poison that we got from Home Depot. It is these little rectangle blocks of blue stuff, you put it out and they eat it. We have never had them in the house, so after trying poison-free and humane traps, we gave up and went with poison. We haven't had any in forever now, but at one point we had at least 3 or 4 I am pretty sure.

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Jeez! All these answers are giving me the heebie-jeebies! Mating bats and snakes! I am so glad to just have my mouse problem now! (we knew ours was mice, we saw them. And unfortunately our 3 cats did no good since they didn't seem to be able to get in the actual house, thank goodness! But a cat is good idea too.)

It could be a lot of things - mice, rats, squirrels, possum, raccoon, bats. If you poison it/them the stench of the body/bodies as it decomposes will be awful. Call a pest expert so they can figure out exactly what you have, how they got in and the best way to be rid of it/them. Regardless of what you discover, don't wait to lock up your food in the pantry/cupboards in plastic storage tubs. Metal cans and glass jars are mouse proof as they are. What ever it is might not be into the food yet, but you don't want to be finding mouse droppings or smelling mouse pee in your cereal or box of Bisquick. If you have any corn starch packing peanuts in your garage, get rid of them - they are a food source. If you have pets, make sure you secure the kibble (and birdseed) and clean up what ever they didn't eat before what ever else you have helps themselves to it. When we had mice a few winters ago, I had a box of Aveeno Colloidal Oatmeal bath soak in my bathroom cabinet that I had forgotten about. Yep - they ate it and I had powdered oatmeal all over the place.

If it is mice or rats, you can purchase the sticky traps. If it is a larger animal you will need a live trap. In any of these situations, you will need to figure out how are they getting in there and plug it up. If you all do not want to do this, you will need to call and exterminator to take care of it..

Could be, but ALSO you need to consider squirrels, racoons, etc. Worth checking into. You should be able to tell if it's a mice vs a racoon, squirrel or whatever by the "intensity" of the scratching. A mouse won't make near as much noise.as a squirrel or racoon. I'd have someone check it out.

decon works wonders as long as you don't have a toddler in the house who will eat it. I have 2 cats for this reason. :) i get mice in my walls all the time.

Oh boy, we just had this issue. It was not mice, it was raccoons! A mother and her 7 babies! I heard scratching AND chewing in the attic. We were lucky in that there was a company that worked with a trapper to get the animals out, then they completely removed all our insulation, disinfected the attic of feces and urine, then blew in new insulation. All covered by insurance, thank God because it cost around $10K!!!! No joke! I hope, for your sake, it's just mice, but check on what to do about their "remains".

T.

Hello, this is M.. I have over 30,000 hours working on this one issue. Sounds like the early stages of rodent nesting. Do you have tree branches within 5ft of your roofline, or worse yet actually touching? Get them cut back ASAP to cut off access. You or someone else needs to ID the issue. Noises can be very deceiving. Go in the attic where you heard the noise and look for droppings. If you see some that look like black grains of rice...that's mice. If the droppings are slightly larger, cashew shapped or contact capsule shaped with rounded edges...that's rats. Once it's ID'd you can buy traps to get rid of them. Visit www.StopthatRat.com for everything you need, more advise, 1-on-1 help with your specific problem. There is a product called Rodent Slick tree wrap that might help also. You can stop this yourself with the right products...NO POISONS!

This happened to me when I was a girl, I too heard the scratching scampering sounds. I woke up in the middle of the night and the ceiling fan had fallen on my legs b/c the mice chewed through the wiring.

My parents called pest control, but I don't know what they did or if the new electronic traps work.