It may be cruel but has your friend endured a mouse plague!
you might like to try Icing sugar and plaster of paris
mixed together , make a dough. Add a few drops of peppermint essence.Then put it where no one will get to it only your little furry"friends". It is a relatively non toxic way of getting them and should a dog or cat eat the dead or dying ones it constipates them for a bit.We tried this one last plague with a bit of success.

Now this remedy leaves no dead bodies that are hidden away where you can't get at them to remove the odour.!!!
Take one wine bottle or similar,
place piece of wire in cork and put a piece of strong smelling cheese on the wire.
Coat the neck of bottle with slippery butter or margarine or oil,
Half fill 60 litre drum with water and then set bottle up with the neck and cheese over the drum of water.
make a ramp for the little dears to run up with only forward to go along the bottle.
Next morning dig a hole and tip in what you have caught.
Plant a tree over the hole in a few month's time.
It worked during our last mouse plague only we use 44 gallon drums and a couple of bottle to each.
Have fun, Marion

Got to go to the shops so might just see if I can get Plaster of Paris somewhere outside my area in a craft shop. I live in a suburban block, so do not have a large drum, unless a 20 litre plastic drum would do. Should do.I presume I could butter round the rim to prevent escapees. Anyway, last night's food got eaten as well.
My friend catches the mice and lets them go again! As I have just disinfected my benches yet again......

I've never had a plague, but have caught heaps of mice and rats outside with an ordinary mouse/rat trap and birdseed mixed with peanut butter used as bait...takes awhile but non-toxic.
My grandfather used a waterbarrel with pumkin seeds attached to a ramp that tipped them in then righted itself ready for the next one.....that apparently worked wonders during a mice plague(so my mum remembered)much like the wine bottle I expect

at last something my cats are good for! since the bushfires we have been overrun with mice.... the cats are adept at catching, but i just cannot stand to see the torment, so big softy that I am I let them get away (they have been catching them in the house - kitchen cupboards, or under the house) - they usually then take them outside into the cat park, so the mice do have a good chance of escape - not really solving the problem though is it Kat :-)

Well, there must be a lot of mice with sore tummies. I had four baits just in the kitchen plus the trap. Tonight a bait goes down as they were there. All eaten or nibbled at. Why I have so many I have no idea, but there are very few cats bar my lazy Hamish and one other. I do not leave food outside, just the dog's food in the laundry. There were mice before I moved in because I could smell them. There have been bushfires but not close to where I am.

They have access all over the house as I have wooden floors and raised at the back. We have tried closing the holes, one cupboard with success, but there are just too many holes including floor air vents in the laundry and they get through the smallest space that I can't even see. I can't keep packets or they eat them. I have been trying every bait on the market for four years! They eat and either thrive on it, or another wave moves in. We had the same problem at the University village in the student flats. Despite all the poisoned wheat, they were breeding behind bookcases, as they were in my house!!! They have eaten the sulphur baits and the icing sugar baits. I get disheartened disinfecting kitchen benches and they just come back. Thanks for all the sympathy. :-(((((

There is just nothing worse than a mouse plague, the smell is what really gets you in the end doesn't it ?
Try the different water traps, they just seem to keep following each other in, just like the Pied Piper and then drown, really is a lot less smelly than having them die and wee everywhere. You have to make it easy for the darn things to get to the top of the water container though.
I was at the markets the other day and some people were selling the rotten things to children, they had them crawling over themselves, YUUUUUUUUUUkkk.
Marion

You know, if given a choice between cheese and sultanas, the mice will go for the sultanas every time! They aren't really all that keen on cheese at all. They are, however, very partial to bacon, and to fruit and nut chocolate, vanilla (which they can't resist) and peanut butter. Mice will die after eating sunflower seeds. Place baits inside a narrow-necked bottle or jar, which should be placed on a ramp, with the neck higher than the base. The mouse will go in to feed, but will not be able to get back out. Easy to dispose of.

Mice detest mint, cloves, catmint, lavender, sage and naphthalene, and will keep away from wherever any of these are scattered.

I forgot about the napthalene, it really works, just have to keep the windows open as the smell gets a bit overpowering. We put it in the bottom of every cupboard and round the edges of every room. Slowed the little b*&%@s down quite a bit.

Sunflower seed (vitamin K) when eaten by rats/mice will act as an antidote to ratsack and most of the commercial brands of rat/mouse poisons. ATB teddy,J

I was sitting reading and the plump little ###@** came up through the hole in the floor, (I can't fix it because the renovators removed the hearth surrounds to lay the carpet), and as I went into the kitchen, another scurried across the shelves. &&&%%%%##@@@*** Blue air! More bait went down. I have some empty wine bottles, so will have to try that tonight. Maybe give up some peanut butter. There are no sunflower seeds to eat, Teddy, but thanks for the tip.

I just cannot believe it! After two weeks of baiting and the baits being eaten, they sre still here!!!! I think there is a sign outside, "Food here" at my place. I caught two in the trap yesterday and another running on the bench. I will get the blue blocks and throw them in the roof. The smell was overpowering last week because I had forgotten to lock up the Wh.......s cat food and they ate two. I'm sticking to tins from now on. Naphthalene in the roof will be done too.

On a slightly different subject, does anyone know of anything to deter rats?
We had rats under the house last year and just recently my dog is going 'sniffing mad' around the back door and stairs.
I'm wondering if there is some kind of preventative barrier I might be able to throw around to stop anything small and furry from sneaking through the door ... perhaps along the lines of Daisyduckworth's helpful list of things mice hate.
Any ideas and suggestions most welcome.

we get a few mice in the garden since my neighbour puts out grain for the birds but my cat catches them and kills them, and no chemicals! :)

Amelie,

As the saying goes "cunning as a s....... rodent"
they will find a way. Actually rats are very intelligent.
I have found the best bait for rats is dates. Of all the spring traps the OZ made "Supreme" on the wooden base is the best. The wire cage traps which trap them alive usually only get the young animals, not the adults.
If the dog is highly interested then you can bet on it he's right so set traps where he says they are but can't hurt the dog.

I put the dead bodies out where the magpies, kookas etc can get them, usually within 30 minutes of my putting them out. NEVER put out baited (Ratsak) bodies for the birds as you will kill them too.

Doug.

I know rats are intelligent. I am hoping to make my house so unattractive to them that they"ll be intelligent enough to keep away!
I hope I won't need the traps then.
I'm afraid I took the cowards way out last year and put down the Ratsak. This year will have to be different as we've got a dog now and she eats everything.