Keeping a Wild Mouse as a Pet

We had a question from a very sweet and concerned home owner who is worried about a mouse she captured in her garage, and whether it would be safe to keep in a cage as a pet.  Tiffany wrote:

 

Hello! I live in Canada and we’re currently experiencing full on winter. We’ve found a mouse in our garage, and after many attempts caught him. I made a shoebox home for him with seeds, old teddy bear stuffing and some pieces of fleece. We put him and the shoebox in our shed – it’s cold outside, i’m wondering if he can survive within this shoebox – the lid is closed, there’s a small opening in one corner for him to walk out… Please help, I do not want to be singing his death warrant… Thanks!

 

The intention is very well and good here, but mostly the mouse will indeed suffer from not being able to be in its natural habitat.  Mice are very endurance driven creatures, and can withstand many changes and adapt to their surroundings with creative solutions.  They cannot survive however, if they do not have warmth, dry conditions, food, lots of water, and a way to remove themselves from sound and light.  You may have intentions to provide a warm and comfortable environment, but natural mice need a way to find this solution on their own.

With the constant cold of the winter garage, and the lack of easy water access, this mouse will most likely perish.  I am so sorry Tiffany!   So, release your friend to a remote location, with a little boost of a dark, warm and dry day before you do.  Your mouse is most likely ready to give birth, and will need to find a home soon.  With a little TLC, and some understanding that a wild mouse is not a good pet, but more a pest, you can improve your home’s safety by removing this little disease factory.

Mice in the wild provide predators with valuable protein and are a natural seed spreading tool for our environment.  They also are full of different virus and bacteria that cause humans to become sick, and create a less than clean habitat.  They are very easy urine creators, will pee and poo everywhere, marking their territory to survive and find their way about.  They can ‘t see so well, so a bright environment causes stress and will create an environment of possible illness for your mouse.  Loud noises are also stressful for mice, and a usual occurance, such as a garage door could be a problem.

If you are really looking to find a mouse as a pet, read up on what a rodent requires, and locate a proper breeder.  Pet mice are great pets, who can offer a few years of companionship, with no disease to worry about.

 

The best rule of Mouse Control

Mice are very specific in the things they need.  They do not always have a good idea what kind of food is inside, but they can always smell something!  They have such excellent sniffers, that they might not know what they are smelling, but it is a promise of a good place to live.

So, working on the news from their noses, they are deciding where to go live next.  If you advertise, by leaving out any form of food, they will be glad to move right in!  It is just like the sign shown here, if you leave the light on.

So, the best advice I can give you, is keep the mouse sign dark.  Keep pet’s food in plastic snap top lid containers.  Keep cereal, flour, and other dry stored food, in some kind of snap top lid container.  The mouse can chew through a plastic bag, no problem, but a hard 1/4″ inch thick hard plastic container, with a rubber gasket lid, will be a hurdle.  No food, no mice.

You can Tell From the Poop

Disgusting as it seems, you can tell what kind of mouse or rodent you have by the left poop.  A larger, more brown and round poop is a squirrel.  A tiny seed fecal dropping, the size of a thistle  seed, is a small house mouse.  A bit larger, black, and full of textured grass, and other natural materials, is a Norway Rat.  If the dropping is perfectly oblong, with no twisted ends, it is an insect dropping.  They do not have the tootsie roll appearance that a rodent leaves.

And, horror of horrors, if the fecal dropping is a 1/4″ long, black and crinkly like a mouse poop, but full of sparkly bits, you have just seen a bat dropping!  Bats eat flies and other insects, so the sparkles are the remnants of insects wings.

But, that is a story for another day!

Mice and Insulation

Mice enjoy a warm place to live.  They can not live in the cold winter weather, and will die quickly in a temperature below 65 degrees, if they do not have adequate shelter.  They will, in cold weather, find your walls of your home a good place to raise their young, and live until the weather warms up.

The Lawnmower Story

Each year, in the spring, we have to take time to fix the gas powered motor, and replace the wires, and clean the motor out from all the mouse fur and nesting material that the little buggers cover the motor with.  They are busy in the winter, and the lawnmower makes a nice little house for them.  They most likely are very, very cold, and do not have a lot of warmth in this situation, but it shows the dedication they have to survive.  The scene is pretty much the same each spring, and we have learned to take some of the wires out, and save them until the following year.

If you are hearing more noise in this winter time, chances are you are getting some more visitors, and some real interest in your warm home.  The best you can do is bait, and not set your traps, and then set after a period of time.  The bait for free option works very well.  And, if a day comes, get outside and caulk any holes around your home.  If you have areas that are larger than 1/4″, you need to fill in that hole.

They will use your walls insulation for their new nest, if you leave those cracks open.  Then, you have the nasty task of removing either the siding or the  drywall, to remove the filthy insulation that has become a urine sponge.  Nice huh?

Your Mouse Prevention Starts with Silicon

Sometimes it is not clear to you as a human.  You just do not have the vantage point that the little rodent has!  A mouse is a very small, and adaptive creature.  The rodents in the world, would not be as prolific as they are, without our help.  They really do rely on us for shelter, warmth, and food.  Without us, mice would be a small population on the earth, not the mass of vermin that they are today.

That being said, if you want to remove them from your habitat, your home, you will need to either hire an exterminator, or do-it-yourself.  I prefer the diy pest control solution, as the process is a long and windy road, and you will have less frustration by buying the right tools, using them in the most effective manner, and then, sticking at it.

One step, is to keep them from coming in.  If you have mice, they are going to follow the trail of pee from their buddies, to your home.  Stop them there.  If you have an hour, I can save you some further growth of your mouse population with caulk.  Silicon caulk.

Go outside, and get down at the 1-3 foot level, and investigate your home.  Wherever there are cracks bigger than 1/4″, you need to caulk.  Then, go buy more caulk, because chances are you did not buy enough.   When I started this project, I found some great holes, over 3 inches in width, and underneath the siding.  Whoa….

Then, you can repair, paint, and re-caulk as you need to.  The process inside, then will just be to capture your mice that you have living so comfy cozy in your walls.  Keep your spirit up, because they are very smart, and may test your patience.

Things You Didn’t Know about Mice

You might see them high up in your barn or shed, and think, why are they way up there?  And if you had a camera, that would monitor them when you are away,  you would see them go up and down, all looking for food, water, then go back up all together.

Those crazy mice!  What are they doing?

Chances are, they are only responding to their immediate requirements and needs.  They need the following things to live really well!

1. Warmth

2. Food and Water

3. Certain levels of Humidity

4. Low light and Sound

If you were to see out a strobe light in your barn, set up a dehumidifier, a loud music system, turn on all the lights, turn the temperature down to 40 degrees, and then take away all food and water, you will have a mouse free barn.  Period, no questions asked.

But, that would not be a pleasant place for animals we need to raise, ourselves or our pets.  You see the problem.  Mice have a very particular set of requirements.  They need humidity at 55 degrees, temperature of 70-75 degrees, food and water that can weight as much as they weight, usually around 10 ounces, and, not a lit or noisy place.

That is a great tall order for an animal that seems to live on the generosity of others, don’t you think? They are very particular, almost regal in their demands.  So, let them find a better place to live.  Take away the food and water if you can, and add in some ultrasonic wave boxes, and you should keep out the biggest princesses.

Anticoagulant Poisons for Mice

Mice and Rat pest control bait boxes have been baited with poisons on almost every corner of any large city.  You will see these black or green low boxes on the outside of offices, and buildings.  Inside, there are usually a green poison bait, that is an anticoagulant feeder poison, and it is pinned to the box.

The reason the baits are pinned, is it allows a lot of bait to be left in the boxes, and then a way to keep it at the box.  Mice and Rats love to steal food baits, and keep them all to themselves.  The fact that they will have to chew through the hard box bait, to remove it from the pin, ensures a good dose of poisoning.

I for one, believe this is a ridiculous practice, and a cruel one.  The mouse ends up bleeding to death, and turning into a messy mooshy mouse.  The poision system does not remove mice, it ensures that 2% of mice in a colony die a horrible death.

If a pest control expert is really serious about removing mice, he will trap and bait.  This is a long and labor intensive process, as it takes a few months of dedicated baiting, and visits to the traps.  But, there are humane options that actually can hold over 10 mice in a night, and they use electricity to zap the mice.  A much more quick and easy death for your little mouse guest.

Where there are flies….

Your walls could be teeming with dead mice.  If you see a stray big black fly, especially in winter, chances are you have a dead mouse in your attic or walls, and the radar of a fly, will create other flies.  The baby maggots will quickly destroy the mouse carcass, and you will then have a few weeks of flies, until they die.

This can be disturbing, and very unhealthy.  Not only do mice have disease in their bites, but they are carriers of fleas, lice and sometimes mites who produce mange.  If you have a large fly population that appears in one room, chances are there are a few dead mice in your walls.  It should be an occasion to remove the dry wall, and get those dead mouse bodies out of the walls, to ensure you have a healthy home for your family.

Are your Mice a Problem

You might see some signs of waste, some chewing behaviors, some eaten foods, missing pet food, scurrying noises, and some running at night, and only night.  If you do see a mouse during the day, you have a real problem.  They usually only come out at night, and only during daylight, if they are having trouble getting food.  The daytime mice you see, are not the aggressive mice in the group, but the ones that have to wait for the big guys to eat first.

Take action or move out

Seriously, you can really harm your family if you live with mice.  They pee and poop everywhere, will steal hair from pets and children in bed, and often cause many disease related problems and bites.  They are more curious than mean, but if you have a mouse in bed with you, and you accidentally roll over on a mouse, they will bite until they have the ability to free themselves.

There is no better way to remove mice, than to establish a plan.  Go to our sister site at

http://www. meetyourmouse.com to learn more!

What is an Apocalyptic Event?

Plague of mice happens occasionally, and usually it is the farmers that suffer the most during these crazy events.  Whether it is plague or not, it usually is large numbers that create a river of pestilence and filth.  See what the farmers of Streaky Bay, Australia endure during one of these uncontrolled reproductive events.