Jo, are you positive they are mice, or are they the little guys my daughter calls rats? To me, they just look like vigorous long-legged field mice, not even close to the big Norway guys, but my daughter hates the things. We have them in the tall vegetation where there has been any water, and they seem to hang out there year after year. The seem to prefer it over the feed shed, which is a surprise.
I've seen the owls or hawks come swooping in to grab them once in a while.

I don't know about you, but I believe I might be inclined to set out traps or something to catch the ones in the garden and dispose of them before they begin snacking on anything in there. I don't know that they'll really do that, but I wouldn't like the idea of them living there. All we seem to have in the garden are frogs. I hope they're eating a whole lot of bugs!

Pat

Are there mole hills in your property. If yes, then you may have voles. They travel through the mole hills and eat vegetation. I live across on the other side of the city than you, and we have many many voles.

We have little field mice too, but set traps for them if they come inside. The voles eat the roots of roses, and those are what I hate. They look like mice.

Sammy

Mice might eat your veggies in the garden, but I don't think they're going to trash the place. The main problem I've had with mice is if they get in the garage/storage buildings and nest in your stuff. I had to toss a pretty expensive artificial Christmas tree once because mice had nested in it and left it full of tiny turds.

I'd rather have snakes than mice. Voles eat bulbs. Rodents chew wires and ruin things. We once had a new car that wouldn't start towed back to the dealer. We complained - outraged that a new car quit. Rats had chewed the coil and we had to pay for the towing.

Helen, We had that problem with squirrels chewing wires.

Jo, I wouldn't be happy about them being there, whether they are field mice, voles, moles, rats, gophers or whatever. Do you know why? Because snakes eat rodents. So, if you have a food supply there for them, the snakes will come!

Helen, During the last big drought here, that same thing happened to so many people's cars that the news stations were running stories about the rats chewing up wiring on cars. I think it was during our drought of 2008-2009.

Dawn

EEK. Yeah okay all you have to do is scare me with snakes moving in, and I am going to take action. Dave is going to set some mousetraps and a humane live trap that we have.

I looked up voles and they do look a lot like mice, so I'm not sure what we have, but I do not want them chewing my plants or wires, and I most definitely do not want snakes coming to the rodent buffet.

A crazy squirrel jumped on a transformer outside our house last year and caused an explosion, a fire, and we were without power for several hours.

Jo

I've never been afraid of snakes and only freak out about the poisonous ones. We see and kill copperheads every year and just once in the 30 years we've owned this property killed a timber rattler, 4&1/2 feet long right next to the house. (A neighbor had bulldozed a rocky hillside near us; I think that's where it came from.)

The others we leave alone, knowing they are beneficial. The garter snake that has lived in the garden the last two years is supposed to keep the mice, voles and other small fuzzy creatures cleared out, but to be honest the only thing I've ever seen him catch was a leopard frog and I made him let it go. I was quite sad this past spring to kill a black speckled King Snake with the riding lawn mower as I know (because I've seen them do it) that they catch, squeeze and eat copperheads. Other snakes we have seen include the slender green snake, the hognose snake, the tiny ringnecked, and the lovely scarlet king.

Oh, I do hate black chicken snakes not only because they kill and eat baby chickens if they can get to them, but because last year one destroyed two batches of baby blubirds.

The black rat snakes (chicken snakes) will not only steal all the eggs and kill the baby birds, I've had them kill full-grown hens as well. It doesn't seem possible, but they do. I hate those things.

As for the kingsnakes, I wish we could buy them and bring them in. They'll not only kill a copperhead, as you say, but will also kill a rattlesnake.

And here's an interesting note that you guys might watch for. I don't know if the local mockingbirds will do this or not, but the big Stellar's Jay from the west has an abiding hatred for a rattlesnake. The birds begin to squawk something fierce and will often gang up where there's a snake; some of them perching on a fence or a wire, and others jumping up and down on the ground, out of reach of the snake. Once I saw them exhibit that behavior, and found out the cause, I began to pay more attention to them when they'd start up a great hue and cry. Nine times out of ten, it was because there was something there that they really didn't like . . . such as a rattlesnake. The Stellar's jay is a cocky, full-of-himself, greedy bird that can be pretty funny, or annoying, depending on how you look at it. They are murder on thistle feeders, for instance, and can rip one open in a heartbeat. But as a snake alert system, I love them. They never seem to mistake a gopher snake or kingsnake for a rattler. They can tell the difference, and they ignore the good ones. They are so noisy that it's impossible to overlook them when a bunch of them gang up.

You know how an angry mocker can go after a cat if it's in their territory? I can only hope they might do much the same thing with the snakes.

Pat

He set two traps yesterday and one disappeared completely (?) and one was flipped. Will set more today including the humane trap, which he forgot to set yesterday.

Jo

To me a humane trap is one that kills them instantly. I caught an armadillo once and then I had to decide which neighbor to give it to. Even in the country, houses are close enough that you can't dump something without it bothering another person.

Excellent point, Helen. If you catch one in a humane trap, what are you going to do with it? My mother lives way out in the sticks. She tried the humane traps, caught a mouse and carefully took it outside to release it. The mouse very nearly beat her back into the house.

Has anyone ever checked the reproduction rate on mice? It's staggering.

Pat

Pat, I hate the black snakes too and have had them kill half-grown and even full-sized chickens and guineas. We shoot every single one we see, but it took me a few years of perpetual loss of eggs and birds to get Tim to shoot them. He wants to live peaceably with every single one of Mother Nature's creatures (as if that were possible) so I had to convince him that when he caught the black snakes and carried them off and released them, they were going to come back. (Sometimes they were back in the henhouse before he was back in the civilized portion of our property!)

We have lots of things here that prey on rattlesnakes, but I've never seen mockingbirds or blue jays do it. Some of them only prey upon the very young ones and other things prey on adults as well.

With the newborn and very young rattlesnakes, crows, roadrunnrs and ravens prey upon them, as do racers, kingsnakes and whipsnakes. Animals that prey upon them include possums, skunks, raccoons, weasels, and coyotes.

Once the snakes are older and larger, owls, hawks, kingsnakes, feral pigs and coyotes prey upon them.

The mention of hawks reminds me of a incident that occurred here several years ago. I returned from a pretty big wildfire in mid-spring one year to find what looked like a dead chicken (they were out free-ranging when I left to go to the fire) with a snake hidden under it. So, I assumed the snake had killed the chicken. I was slightly freaked out because it was under my chaste tree and right up against the dog yard fence and all the dogs were in the dog yard a few inches away from the snake, which clearly was alive and moving.

I called a firefighter who lived just up the road and told him a copperhead had killed a chicken and was hiding under it and it was by the dog yard and I was afraid the snake would turn around and bite a dog. He came right over with a gun. While I was waiting for him to arrive, though, I moved closer to the bird/snake combo trying to shoo the dogs back away from it. When I did that, the snake rattled, so when my friend got here I said 'oops, it is not a copperhead---it is a rattlesnake'. I went into the house to open the back door and let the dogs inside the house so he could shoot the snake without worrying about shooting a dog. Once the dogs were inside, he shot the snake....and now here's the rest of the story.

Before we approached the snake/bird pair, he told me he thought it was a hawk and it was grasping the snake in its talons. Sure enough, he was right. (I could only see its abdomen because of the way it was laying up against the fence, so I had looked at the color and figured it might be one of the buff-colored chickens.) He used my garden rake to pull the snake/bird pair out of the butterfly bed under the chaste tree and disposed of them for me.

Apparently the hawk swooped down to get the rattlesnake, and the rattlesnake bit it and killed it---but the snake was caught in the grasp of the hawk's talons. When it all was over, I just was relieved the dogs weren't bitten by the rattlesnake, so maybe the poor hawk did us a favor by going after the snake.

Life here in our very rural and wild area is an adventure every day. I always say we have either a zoo or a circus every day and when you get up in the morning, you never know if you're going to have a zoo day or a circus day. Because we have Wildlife Management Area to our east and southeast, and un-managed wild riverbottom land to out south, southwest and due west, we have more wildlife here than I'd ever dreamed possible and the hotter and drier it gets, the more they move away from the river and onto our place.

On one of the circus days, two of our neighbors came quickly in response to my phone call about a 6' long rat snake in the chicken house. As our son's then-girlfriend and I watched, one neighbor put on gloves and tossed the big rat snake out the chicken coop door and then the other shot it literally in mid-air. That was one black rat snake that wasn't going to eat our chicken eggs or poulty anymore!

Apparently while the birds are out free-ranging in the afternoons, a snake is coming into the henhouse through the open door and getting their eggs, but I can't catch it in there. I know it is coming in there because eggs are disappearing, and we're finding some of the plastic dummy eggs on the edge of the woods, where I assume the snake has regurgitated them after discovering he or she cannot digest them. Silly snake.

We also used to do the trap-and-release thing, but it seems immoral to catch a raccoon or skunk that is a problem for us and just take it out and release it 15 miles away so it can become a problem for someone else. Now we just shoot them and then we put them in a specific area on our property so the buzzards can find them and eat them. At least the buzzards are getting fed that way.

Dawn

All,
I have a little information for you about the snakes, mice, chewed wires, etc.
Yes, Dawn is right, when you have mice, etc, you have snakes. I use some mice and rat poison called Just One Bite. Not that it's any better than others, but it has a hole all the way through it, so you can put a wire through the hole, turn it back and the little buggers cant carry you poison away like they do those pellets, etc. This also allows me to wire a couple of the bars under the hood of my vehicles, and havent had a chewed electrical wire since. I also put some in the sheds, shops and garage.
The best of luck to you all
Bill

When my oldest son was 12 yrs old, he and I killed 8 large black snakes in one summer by various means. Our hen house at that time was too open to be a hen house, with cracks large enough for the snakes to crawl through. He shot a couple of them, missed a couple and then devised a sure fire way to kill them. He would poke at them with a long stick in the nest to get them moving, then grab the tail and sling them out bullwhip style onto the floor where I would crush their heads with a heavy maul. And like Pat I've had them kill full grown hens and ducks. I hate black snakes.

I planned on releasing them here. http://www.fountainridgejenks.com/

It's a 20 acre development right up the road from me. There are no houses there yet...just lots for sale. Is that a bad idea, and would the mouse/vole still find it's way back to civilization?

Jo

Bill,

Thanks for the tip on Just One Bite. I am going to look for some of that stuff.

Do you usually find it at a feed store or a hardware store?

Dawn

Dawn,
Usually at a feed store. I guess what I forgot to tell was; no mice, no snakes.
Bill

Jo, any time you catch and release a critter, you can pretty well plan on it coming back. It's fine to be a humanitarian about it, just as long as you know that's what they're going to do. I think that some of them can beat you back to the property, and dumping them where they'll be a problem for someone else is not a very good plan either. I hate to have to shoot things, but there are times when it's really the only thing to do.

Dawn, I know what you mean abut every day being an adventure. When I went out to check the tomatoes earlier, I found a small turtle that was feasting on a small fruit I had tossed aside. Not a terrapin. An actual turtle. I just left him alone.
One of the more exciting things that happened is that I have a big bank of windows in front of my computer and around to the side, so I get a really good view of most of the pasture. One day during the heavy snow, in the middle of the afternoon, I saw something swoop down and grab a small prey and then fly up to the top of one of the sheds. I figured it was a hawk. Naturally, I got out the big binocs, because I wanted a closer look. Imagine my amazement when he turned his head and looked at me and I realized it was not a hawk at all. It was a huge owl, out hunting in mid-day!

As far as those black snakes, we tried the artificial eggs, and I tried jamming the holes full of bird netting, and we shot a bunch of them. I was horrified to learn that they can kill a full-grown hen. My neighbor who raises chickens as a business is the one who told me what the problem was, after I had him come and look at a dead bird.
What seemed to finally cut the population way down was when I put out that Snake Stopper powder. I've only done it once, and probably need to renew it pretty soon, but we haven't found a snake in the chickenhouse since then. Not that they can't come in and steal eggs and leave again. I just haven't seen any of them this summer. I scattered the powder when I figured snake season was about to begin, as soon as it really warmed up, and it seems to be working..

Pat

Found the missing trap. Gross picture follows. Don't continue if you are squeamish.
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Does anyone want to play name that rodent?
{{gwi:1116706}}

Jo, I'm not 100% certain of what it's called, but we've got a lot of them also. Those are the ones that like to live in the tall vegetation or nest in a pile of leaves. My daughter calls them rats, but I think they are probably field mice. They are cousin to a rat, but smaller. The hawks and owls prey on them, naturally.
When I think of a rat, I tend to think of the awful big Norway variety, and these are not as big as the ones that some kids keep as pets. Their size helps identify them as field mice. Larger than a mouse, but smaller than a rat, with the same coloration and long tails. While I'm not positive, their back legs appear to be longer than that of a house mouse, and they can really jump if they are startled. They tend to be intelligent, and their claws are extremely sharp.

What has surprised me is that they rarely seem to get into our feed shed, as house mice would certainly do. Once in a while I find a chewed feed sack, but not often. They tend to live in fields, hence the name. They are generally nocturnal and are only seen during the day if a hiding place is disturbed. They are also extremely prolific, and can breed every 30 days, beginning at the young age of 30 days!
Apparently this one liked the bait on the trap. I wish you success in catching more of them, because where there's one, there will be a lot more.

Pat

We used peanut butter on the trap.

You are right about there being more, I saw another one today.

They like to hang out in the layer of leaf mulch under my dying evergreen trees or in my dying strawberry beds or wedged in a crack between my deck box and my house. I have a lot of mulch everywhere in my garden....the paths are mulched with straw. Mouse/vole paradise.

Jo

I would call that a rat but to really tell you need a reference book and a close look at specific features. I have very cute rats here that look like brown guinea pigs except for the ugly rat tail. They are wood rats and they will move the rat poison. That is why I never put out poison. I have put poison in the crawl space of my house because I just can't have them in my house, but I don't put it anywhere else. I had a big pile of leaves, sticks, pens, plastic items, silver ware etc. along with sun flower seeds, dog, cat food and blue rat poison. The wood rat gathers things and piles them together. If a dog finds it and eats the dog food it will also get the poison. A friend has a wonderful big yard for dogs with a chain link fence all around. He put out rat poison outside the fence in a pile of rocks they intended to someday be a water feature. Their chocolate lab had a hemorrhagic stroke and went blind from warfarin. They think a mean person did it; I think a rat moved the poison to where the dog could find it.

A couple of weeks ago we found a large, dead snake at the corner of the garden. It had evidently become tangled in the deer netting and couldn't work it's way loose, and it had just baked to death in the searing, hot sun. Larry determined that it wasn't a poisonous snake but we couldn't tell exactly for sure what kind it was. I felt bad because I don't mind the non-poisonous snakes and I'd much rather have them around than mice, rats, and voles!

Suzie

Yes, my daughter calls them rats and I call them field mice. Either way, if you have one or two, you are pretty well guaranteed to have a whole lot. They do like to live in piles of leaves and things like that.

Snakes can easily become entangled in netting of just about any kind. We've caught several of the black rat snakes in netting, and one got stuck trying to get into my strawberry bed that was netted. So far I haven't seen any of what I'd call 'good snakes' on our property. I wish we had some to deter the mice and gophers, but all I've found have been the chicken-killers and a couple of little copperheads.

Pat

Someone once told me that mice have furry tails, while rats have shiny, almost scaly tails. I don't know if that's true.