A cat. LOL....the essential oil thing is totally false. For some reason($$$?) essential oil companies advertise that these things cure everything, including cancer. The placebo effect is strong enough for some of the remedies, but that is pretty much it....placebo.

A cat. :O) Eliminate all food and nesting material sources, and plug any points of entry, if possible. Some say the sonic noise-makers work at keeping them away.... not sure.

Placing something in the basement is reactive not proactive. Better to keep them from getting in in the first place. Go around the outside of your house with can(s) of spray foam insulation and plug every opening or crack, foam under the last course of siding if you have it and check around all your windows for calk or flashing that might need repair. The foam is not pretty and will look sloppy at first but once dry you can trim flush with a knife - it's not hard. Steel wool is not the answer as mice will push it aside. When the weather gets cool they can feel even the tiniest bit of warm air flowing out of your house and that's their goal - to get warm - so plug your house.

The only "no kill" option is to prevent them from getting in. After they get in, I suggest the spring traps. Usually very quick and effective. Can throw them out after one use or empty and use again.

Peppermint oil or moth balls or even something that emits a sound or vibration might have some mild repellant properties, but not when they can enter and then avoid the smelly/irritating area.

Yes, spring traps if you must use a trap. The glue ones are so cruel.

We often had mice in the old house in California, down in my workroom behind the garage. I had so many sprung traps with the bait neatly eaten that I resorted to the glue traps. Sorry for all who are sensitive about this, but I never caught a mouse in a properly-set spring trap. Caught lots with the glue traps.

You must have had extremely cagey mice Sushi!

If you have an old house, it's pretty hard to keep them from getting in in the first place. Our pest control guy said that once you have had mice, they release their pheromones and though you can control through traps, etc., they will continue to come back. That's why we have a service contract. :)

We just started a pest control quarterly service contract and will let the pros take care of the mice. After years of trying all the methods mentioned above we have given up trying to do this on our own. The clincher for us was when DH checked the traps and they were missing! The mice had dragged them off to a corner of the garage and died there.

I tried using peppermint oil in my laundry room. Sadly, we still got mouse visits . . . and my sweet DH complained that it was like walking into Santa’s laundry room at the North Pole!

I’m confused as to what constitutes an organic way to deter mice. A kitty, the most effective, may likely kill the intruders. The oils (peppermint, cedar, Douglas fir) keep them out for a while but like any other resource, once they are familiar with it, they pose no threat, ditto w/ultrasound devices.

Don’t you need a hungry kitty for that to get rid of mice? Is there any way to seal off their access?

The babies are so pliable, they can enter thru a slit, doesn’t even have to be a hole. We caulk regularly, holes or not b/c we can’t always see entry holes.

We use commercial poison stations outside buildings and that is most effective at keeping them out of dwelling. But one needs an armory of weapons: cleaning with ammonia so entering mice can’t smell pee trail left by previous visitors, cat, scents, sealants, Ultrasounds. The more humane, the least effective, sad to say.

Sigh.....I was afraid of this. The problem is that in our basement we have storage shelves. I will have to remove the items and see if there is any access behind there.

The funny thing is, the mice stayed on one side of the room. They got into my dog's biscuit box. Directly across, I have boxes of cookies and crackers and they did not venture there.

I don't want a cat at this point in time.

Dogs can be good mousers and ratters, too. What about letting your dog spend some time sniffing around down there?

Hmmm, was just perusing the pest control items @ Pinetree Garden Seeds online yesterday. They're having a sale on non-seed supplies and have mouse repellent and a trap on sale.

eld, it can take many hours (days) for a mouse to die after being stuck to a glue trap. It's up to you to put a captured mouse out of its misery immediately. Are you prepared to do that?

Glue traps are the least humane of any method you could possibly choose....cruel would be the appropriate word to describe them.

When it starts getting cold, nothing more pleasant than building a warm cozy nest inside your dryer vent. What’s preferable, a suffering rodent stuck to a glue sheet or drying your face with a rodent smelling towel ? Don’t know about y’all, but I know towards which alternative I’m leaning....

dont think for 1 minute you have one Mickey causing havoc.

The CA mice sushipup mentioned were probably roof or tree rats. They are a bit bigger than mice, but smaller than Norway rats. They are very agile, fast and can squeeze through impossibly small openings. We have bait traps around our yard and a large dog that will hunt them outside.

I think I am going to be diligent and watch closely. I will use my catch and release trap that I have.

I agree about the sticky traps.

Awww a sweet little rat family. So cute!

I'd definitely let the dog hang out in the mousey room more if it isn't already. Sometimes just the smell of a predator can reduce mouse interest. My dog enthusiastically hunts rodents and he is not a terrier or other ratter breed.

Do avoid mixing baits with canine and feline control. Not all pets avoid eating the mouse's stomach contents, and the poisoned ones are easiest to catch.

The problem with catch and release traps is that they will come right back in now that they know how and where. And travel. Not sure how far, but farther than you think. I know because I have caught the same groundhog who was taken miles away from my garden. Bigger than mouse, but not smarter so do the math when releasing. Also, other mice will follow smell of first mouse, so use the ammonia or whatever can mask that smell. It's a battle when you live out in the country. I caught 11 mice in one night once. Got a good mouser cat but she got taken by an owl, as I mentioned in my previous post. Folks don't understand why although I strive to protect nature and be kind to all creatures, can be so forceful in my pursuit of killing varmints! They are plentiful, and we've eliminated the habitats of the animals that don't abide with humans, and killed off most predators, so we are left to battle it out with our parasites. I'm being invaded by crickets now! I love crickets outside, but I've got to find out how they are getting in or a whole lot of them are going to bite the dust in my house!

Ipink, I get crickets too. Although fewer each year. I catch them myself and release.

Writers, I will try and get my dog to walk around the laundry room.

If we catch a mouse with a glue trap, we kill it immediately which isn't often. Leaving a mouse on the trap for days isn't a good idea. Sorry, but I feel no guilt for not being humane where mice are concerned, especially in the country.

One time my DIL and I were sitting on the front porch when she was suddenly bit by a "house" mouse. Apparently the cat caught it & let it go as cats are prone to do.

Eld we were taking them outside, but I kept finding more, so wondering if it was the same cricket getting back in . . .

Edited to add that since I reluctantly killed the one cricket, we've had no more invasions. Coincidence? Perhaps . . .

I grew up in a house built prior to the revolutionary war in upstate NY. In the winter we got mice. In our tween teen years my sis and I would stay up late watching old movies, there were nights when we would hear the skitter of mice feet start and then the almost simultaneous snap of 3 or 4 traps. Poor dad would be immediately awakened to empty them.

He swore by a combo of raw bacon and peanut butter as bait.

I use spring traps, but I've also used a live trap for mice...only if I can be home and tend to it multiple times a day as it's cruel to leave them trapped in one. I drive them to the town dump over a mile away. Futile, I know. They get into our attic and I have no idea how they get in, and the way the rafters come down, there's no way I can get to the edges to seal them all. Plus the attic is uninsulated so we don't want it sealed up but it needs to vent. We did try to seal up vermin entrances we could see, but the openings can be so small that they fit through, it's also futile.

We had bought a 100 year old house that had been abandoned for years. It had a stone foundation with lots of mortar gone. We had 2 cats. They would catch mice in the basement and bring them upstairs live to play with. It took years of fixing mortar, plugging holes, using spray foam stuff, stuffing steel wool and traps to get rid of them. We would lie in bed at night and hear them running along the attic joists. Preventing them from getting in your house is really the only way to get rid of them.

I’m the biggest animal lover of all time and it saddens me to kill cute little mice but I draw the line on rodents in my house. I finally enlisted pest control and they placed the poison bait boxes and no more mice in the house. I’ve since moved and now I just do my own. Catch and release is an exercise in futility in my opinion.