I hates Meeces!

[Go4fun]

I decided to finish an older model I had set aside. Also I have mice in my apartment... Again!
Anyway I get out the original kit box with the partially built model in it, open it up and find out I now have at best something I can salvage a few parts off of. Seems the little boogers ate through the corner of the box then shedded instructions, decals and styrene to make a nice nest.
Did anyone else know mice would shred styrene?

[PR19_Kit]

Would yolu like to borrow a cat? 

Mice will chew through ANYTHING, from paper to concrete, given enough time.

[rickshaw]

Would yolu like to borrow a cat? 

Mice will chew through ANYTHING, from paper to concrete, given enough time.

They have to.  Like many rodents, their teeth keep growing.  So, they gnaw things to keep them under control.

Cats are good for small numbers of mice but hopeless as are dogs when you have a plague.  They get bored 'cause the Mice are too plentiful and too easy to catch.   I've lived through several mice plagues and they'll eat anything they can.  Nothing more disconcerting than seeing the surface of a road when you're driving along at night heaving in the headlights, as the mice run from one side to the other and back, looking for food!   

[wagnersm]

Sorry to hear about the mice, and the damage that they did to your model.  Good luck getting them under control.

I had mice in my apartment once.  That cat was worthless, he couldn't be bothered.  The Rottweiler, on the other hand, hunted the mice.  He did not do very well, but he was determined to catch the little buggers.

[zenrat]

Little buggers.
A Python in the wall cavities is apparantly a good way to deal with them.
I once got a cheap kit because termites had eaten into the box, instructions and decals but they left the plastic alone.
I know it was termites as the seller kindly left a load of dead ones in the remains of the box.  Which was nice.

For karmic (and squeamish - it's always me who has to finish off paraplegic mice dragging traps behind them) reasons we won't use traditional traps or poison*.  Instead I have a collection of humane traps into which I lure them with peanut butter (all its good for IMO).  I then take them for a drive/cycle ride/walk down to the foreshore where I release them.  Yes they could make their way back (it's only one km) but they seem not to as between there and us are all the million dollar "bay view" holiday homes where no-one lives for 50 weeks of the year.

*We did use poison for a while but two in succession staggered across the lounge room rug and did the whole dramatic death scene thing (think Peter Sellers in The Party) in front of use and then to cap it all one died under my computer desk and I didn't find it until it had turned liquid and stuck to the floor (I could smell it but could I find it).

[Captain Canada]

I have wondered that once or twice myself...whether mice were eating ( or just shredding for nests ) my plastic ! Little buggers indeed !

[kerick]

They have to be getting food from somewhere. That's the problem in apartments. Your place may be squeaky clean but if a neighbor is a slob.....
In farm country they will get food from the fields or outbuildings and live in the house where its warm.
In another thread there was a description of a device that used a capacitor to deliver a lethal charge. The mouse stood on a metal plate and when it reached up to grab the bait it got zapped. Better than poison.

[PR19_Kit]

Our new cat (whose name is Trevor for goodness sake!  ) chases ANYthing that moves, and is lightning fast too.

Any mouse in these parts wouldn't stand an earthly, they'd be swallowed whole I'm sure. Trev seems to spend almost his entire life searching around looking for things to chase, and if he can't find anything he invents something in his head and chases it anyway!

[albeback]

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Kizzy  a k a  the Model Muncher.

She's a house cat (just as well as I live on the 10th floor!!). Doesn't get much opportunity to chase meeces but any creepy crawlie will do!! Problem is, when she gets bored, she will invent things to chase & this sometimes involves knocking models off shelves . Seems to think it is very amusing to flick a paw under a wing and... Whoops - there it goes!

Allan

[Mr.Creak]

Dunno about meeces (though the answers here seem sensible), but I once had a hamster that managed, after the top was left off its cage, to eat its way through all bar one of my entire boxed set of Atlantic (showing may age here) 20mm soft plastic Ancient Egyptian troops.
It climbed up into the (plastic box - one of those large (5 kg?) margarine tubs), completely ignored the cotton wool they'd been packed in and voila - no more troops.
I found out when I cleaned its cage and found a base with a pair of feet - cut off at the ankles, nothing else left, no trace whatsoever of any other figures. Recognising the colour of the plastic made me go check the "barracks" and lo and behold, one complete figure left out of about 20 or so.
Dunno how many trips the little b*gger made, but its cage and the box were at opposite ends of the living room - and the hamster had ignored everything else in its path...

[Go4fun]

This is my Anti-Meece Sonar Seeking Weapon.

Yes Mac McDoggel is old. Yes he has cataracts. But like most creatures losing one sense he has others (Super Hearing and Super Sniffing) to make up for it.
He was laying to the left rear (Port Aft if you insist) of my chair, Sonar Dishes (Ears) working and I was hearing something off to the right rear, (Starboard Aft Quadrant). Mac flys over, grabs something and shakes his head in a blur. He then dropped a dead meece and walks behind me back to his 'Post' and flops down like "No big deal". When I picked up the corpse his head was rolling around to unnatural angles tellind me his neck was broken but there wasn't a speck of blood on it.
I checked Mac to for wounds or blood and he was fine.
That's when I put on the heavy work gloves and found out what the little boogers had been up to.

[McColm]

I'm sorry to hear about your mice problems. There are sticky pads that you put down, once trapped they can't move. We had a problem at the BBC World Service. The BBC Fire and First Aid in-house security officers used to carry a hammer and a black bin bag. One officer was caught throwing mice into the compactor. The RSPCA was called out. Most of the mice got eaten by the rats!

[kerick]

The glue traps are not always successful. While in Iraq in 2003 we encountered the dumbest mouse in Iraq. Both glue traps and snap traps were placed around the edge of our tent. A mouse was found dead in a snap trap, yet covered in glue. There was a trail leading from the snap trap straight from a glue trap. The little idiot had wandered into a glue trap, managed to crawl out and walked straight over to the snap trap! Thinned out the mouse gene pool on that one!

[kitnut617]

Generally the three cats we have do a pretty good job keeping the rodent population down, but they're kept outside most of the time and not in the house.  We had quite a problem with mice a winter ago and I put down some ""humane"" traps (the wife doesn't like grisly types of traps), these are boxes where they can get in but not out.  For bait you only need to put down a dollop of peanut butter --  caught quite a few but we could still hear them around.  Next we bought this rodent bait, it's a type of poison which they bite off a chunk, then cart it back to wherever the nest is, after it kills the mouse it dries them out from the inside-outwards and doesn't leave a smell as they decompose, perfect for when the nest is in a wall or under a floor.  We've not seen a mouse in the house for over a year now and I keep the trap set up with the bait just in case.

[Nick]

Any suggestions for rat poison?

Mum insists on a bird feeder in the garden which drops seed and nuts all over. Now the local rat population have been sighted having lunch on the lawn.