I have a mega mouse problem in my house. I don't want to kill them so I have humane live traps, three different types. In a month I have not caught a single mouse. Now my eyes are streaming and I think I might be allergic to mouse wee! I don't know what to do because they are starting to chew up things that matter. One of my dogs sleeps on my bed and he goes berserk when he hears one so I am up in the small hours trying to calm him. This has all happened since we had two old sheds in the garden demolished - I think they must have been living in one or both of them. It's an old (1945) house with lots of crumbly bits so it's hard to determine where they are coming in and out. I think I need a professional but I don't want someone who would poison them. Sorry but they die from internal bleeding and it is agony. Someone a bit more like Wallace and Gromit's Anti-Pesto service is what I would like! Has anyone had this problem and what did you do?

To get rid of them you'll have to kill them. As an animal lover it's horrible to say it, but i think that's the only way.

My brother rigged up a bucket of water with nutella tight rope type arrangement. Make a ramp up to the the top, Mickey will crawl across the string to the Nutella which is on a something spinny like a camera film roll, then fall in and drown.

He ended up with about 50 mice over a month.

More humane than poison and you won't have decomposing body's throughout your house.

They have collapsible skulls so can squeeze through the most unlikely small gaps. I found a tube of expanding foam a very convenient way to plug these in spite of being told one could never stop mice coming in. It's been about 4 years now....

Assuming they're attracted to food try a thorough search round the kitchen skirting board level first of all, including all places where wiring and pipes come up through the floor or the wall. If that doesn't work they must be entering elsewhere!

A word of warning with expandable stuff....go easy because it really does cover a large area after applying. When dry you can tidy it up with a sharp blade.

No sound of a single mouse since I posted the above! I think a neighbour must have seen one and put out poison. I can't think of another way they could have all vanished so fast. People on one side hate animals. They drained their pond when they saw a frog in it! I feel so sad, almost tearful. If only they had gone into our traps. They paid the ultimate price just for trying to shelter from the cold. We were going to take them somewhere where there are buildings where people don't live, but there is plenty of food because there is a lake where the ducks are fed every day with dried food. What a shame. Good job the badger is hibernating otherwise he could have eaten a poisoned mouse.

Think I’d rather not catch one of the diseases spread by mice, myself. Or have the wiring chewed through. A bloody mouse chewed the tips off my cycling gloves and the fabric from a spare race seat I keep in the garage. I have no qualms about tackling them when they are in the house.

The only virus you can get from mice is hantavirus and there has not been a single recorded case in the UK.

I don’t think that’s actually true. It’s very rare in the UK but also very nasty.

Weil’s disease is a bacterial infection you can also (very rarely) catch from mice. Also very nasty.

Damage to the fabric of your house and contents is the main issue with mice.

But if you’re happy to live with the mice rather than kill them, that’s entirely your decision. That’s assuming that you don’t have neighbours who’d rather not share your infestation.

Mice reproduce at a incredible rate, can run up walls, though places you won't believe have holes and I think they are incontinent as well.
I don't enjoy killing any animal but id rather not share the same space as a mice or the other vermin they attract.

until you locate the entry point you will struggle to resolve the situation. Once you have eliminated entrance you are left with mopping up the stragglers, i find cats very effective...

Much as I appreciate the sentiment for not wanting to kill them, having had squirrels in the loft, mice under the kitchen floor and rats under the patio/in the garage all at the same time my leaning would be towards extermination.

We contacted the local council with regards the occupants of the loft (we didn't know what they were at the time) and they sent their local pest expert who didn't charge. One thing that he said regarding traps (humane or otherwise) is that in the case of mice they serve no purpose other than for species identification due to the numbers that can be present. Poison and get rid of them all or live with them. In our case the squirrels weren't actually causing damage (bloody disturbing having them run around above the ceiling at night though) beyond eating the contents of the kid's selection boxes and some clothing that we had hidden away for Christmas but the mice were eating electrical cables under the kitchen floor. Given the possibility of having unsafe/dangerous kitchen appliance electrics, it's bye bye mice every time.

The other thing the council's expert mentioned (echoing comments above) was that a mouse can get through anywhere you can push a biro through (eg even air brick holes) so the probability you can completely stop them coming in is virtually zero. Working out what they are coming in for is also necessary but once they start coming in they they will also look at other stuff. In our case it was a less than mouse proof bin under the kitchen that tempted them in and once they'd done that (and negotiated where the cat wasn't) they came further into the house and went for the larder. Sorting the kitchen bin out alone didn't stop them once they'd found the larder, it took poison to do that.

Probably not what you wanted to hear but that was our experience.

Speaking from experience, the only way you'll get rid of them from your house is poison. When we were troubled by them it took a box of Wilko mouse/rat poison and 4 nights of baiting to get rid of them. No idea where the nest was but they've not been back since (4 years and counting) and we didn't have any nasty smells afterwards.

The only good mouse in a house is a dead one (unless it's a pet ).

They certainly like festive treats - reminded me of what caused our rats in the loft. My wife & kid had made a decorative xmas nut ring all nicely varished and very professional (bit like one of those xmas wreaths for the door). Got packed away with the rest of the xmas decs for next year only to become an early xmas present for rats. They must be able to sniff food out for miles.

We don't have any problems with mice where I live, backing onto some bushland in suburbia, as the resident Carpet Python keeps them all in check.

Oh! I would quite like to have a pet snake. Do they get along with dogs? We do have grass snakes in the garden but not enough to eat all the mice unfortunately. I suspect that my neighbours have poisoned the mice, as we have not heard any scrabbling for a few days (mice are very partial to a game of Scrabble). My neighbours are the sort of people who scream and drain their pond at the first sight of a frog. Not exactly animal lovers. The worst part about having mice was my dog, who sleeps on my bed, going berserk in the wee small hours when he saw or heard one. Springers are driven demented by anything that creeps about, having been bred to spring animals from their cover to be shot at. Unfortunately I don't own a shotgun. Thank you everybody for recounting your experiences. I am quite grateful that somebody else has dealt with it, so it's their karma and not mine!

Annie, if you had shopped online at Argos before 6pm and chosen the Fast Track delivery option, this could have been you sometime after 10pm the very same day, showing the mice who's boss!

Ha ha ha! I would be a terrible shot - lots of holes in the plaster and not one dead mouse.