| Author | Message | ||
     Ratbuell |
Warning: if you're a PETA member who believes we need to protect all animals because they're too dumb to protect themselves...go to the next thread. This ones about dead critters. I have a large garage. 2 levels of 40x60 with a 30x30 workshop behind. I have drivers. Collectible cars. Projects. Motorcycles. Parts storage. As one guy, I don't use every one on a regular basis. So I always worry about mice and critter damage - wires being chewed, interiors being inhabited, having to get rid of the mouse pee smell... I've run normal traps with average results. Every now and then I'll get one. Meh. I wash cars and bikes with a water/simple green mix. Not super concentrated, just enough to cut the grime and let it foam to a head when I put the hose to it. I don't dump it every time, if it's still viable and not jet black...I'll use it next time. Keep it in a 5 gal bucket. Every time I go to use it, I have one...two...sometimes three or four rodent floaters. EVERY. TIME. So I started putting a lid on the bucket. Works great...till I forget. Fresh bucket last week...2 floaters today. I'm gonna start doing it on purpose. I keep old coffee cans for things like bolt bins, paint buckets, whatever. I'm going to keep covering my wash bucket...but put some coffee cans with the simple green mix in them, in various places around the garage and workshop. Bastards. | ||
| Ourdee |
Problem with the 5 gallon size is it is big enough to catch an infant. | ||
| Ratbuell |
No infants here to worry about. | ||
| Sifo |
I was going to make Ourdee's suggestion. Scroll down, and there it is!  | ||
| Ourdee |
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| Ourdee |
Could start a new hobby. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Awesome. | ||
| Slaughter |
Cousins put sunflower seeds floating on top of water in the pails in the barns. Good trap and cheap. | ||
| Aesquire |
Keep in mind the Zika virus is now in every state and an open bucket of mosquito larva is unwise to set up deliberately. So make sure any standing water is coated with oil to suffocate the larva. Mum oil used in skeeter repellent foggers works as does Mobil One or used crankcase oil. The difference is the environmental impact when used in creeks etc. In a bucket use whatever you feel comfortable with dumping on your yard. It only takes a few drops to safeguard a bucket. Worth the bother. I use "natural plant oils" that biodegrade in my creek when the spring flow slows to a trickle. Just a few cap fulls spreads over hundreds of square feet and kills millions of future disease vectors. | ||
| Aesquire |
Soooo. I'm not just approving your wanton slaughter, I'm encouraging you to expand it to McDonald's sign levels  | ||
| Ratbuell |
Good tip on the oils, thanks. In this garage...there's plenty of UMO! | ||
| Hootowl |
The video recommends adding dish soap, which may obviate the couple of drops of oil. Mosquito dunks? Harmless to fish, and other wildlife, except mosquitoes. Or, as the video describes, don't put water in the bucket. | ||
| Hootowl |
You know, if you have a use for live mice... | ||
| Court |
They're a pain . . . I realize the futility of taking them on in the barn . . . . and realize that a couple "public executions" are not going to teach any of the others. My big concern now is that there are hundreds of Buell posters, many quite rare, in the barn and the mice love to chew on them. I set a ring of traps encircling the 12" tall stack while they were sitting on the workbench. Now I've hung them on blueprint racks . . fully aware that the mice can walk the rack . . . but I'm thinking about putting traps on the rails . . .so that the only route to the poster has a trap in the middle of it. I tried a .22LR with snake shot but if put 11 holes in the poster . . . no good. | ||
| Hootowl |
Have one of your metalworking friends bend you up an appropriately sized shallow sheet metal box with a lid? | ||
| Court |
I tried putting them in sheetmetal boxes . . . . little varmints ENJOYED it . . . at this point the game is Court - 9 Mice - 0 But . . .they are a determined lot.  | ||
| Hootowl |
No, I mean put the posters in little sheetmetal boxes.  | ||
| Airbozo |
I'm going to try the rolling log mouse trap in a bucket under my house. If it catches any toddlers, it is a far better end for them than trying to live under the house any way jk... kinda... The regular traps are not working. Seems a group of them hold the wire while the other one grabs the cheese. Or they let the new guy trip it and they eat the cheese and the new guy... | ||
| Court |
You know . . . it's easiest to fall back on what you know. I'm not sure if there are any surplus Claymore M18's around. . . but I may have to do some digging through my old gear. (Message edited by court on April 10, 2017) | ||
| H0gwash |
I live next to a large city park so there are hundreds of squirrels always about burying nuts in the wrong places. I use two 5 gallon buckets nested into one another. The top one has large holes drilled in the bottom so I can easily dump into trash bag into the garbage. I have a lid so that our puppy stays away from all that stuff. We have a 4" diameter pipe 6 foot long coming out of the drowning chamber which leans against the fence which is a known squirrel highway. We smear the top with peanut butter and use a stick to put a blob of peanut butter about 12 inches down the pipe. We were real quiet about this until my sister, who briefly volunteered for Earth First, asked us about it. It turns out she and her husband wanted to know a more efficient way to kill her squirrels because they were eating up her garden veggies. | ||
| Hootowl |
You know, I hear a lot of people talking about how much they detest squirrels and want to kill them. I haven't had any problems with them (knock on wood). They do eat the fruit on my plumb tree before they ripen (idiots, they should wait until they get good) but I guess I really don't care. I mean, I feed the things all winter, so I guess I shouldn't care if they eat the pears. (Gotcha! My pear tree is plumb!) | ||
| Ourdee |
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| Airbozo |
I asked for a scope for the pellet gun for my birthday to combat the squirrels that eat our plums. Suckers sit right on my fence (can almost reach out and choke them) and gorge themselves by eating one or two bites from a plum, then grab another. I saw the launcher and wondered what my neighbor would think if it started raining squirrels in their back yard. Might have to find out... | ||
| Fast1075 |
I have three Leechee trees in the yard. When the fruit is just about ripe, hordes of squirrels descend on them. They can clean all the fruit off in a single day! I isolate one branch with window screen wrapper so I can have some of the fruit. |
