Aw crap - mouse crap!

[zandperl]

Cleaning out the bottom of Kappa's cage today, I found mouse poop in the papers. !!! Kappa's cage is set up so that the tray in the bottom is lined with newspaper, then there's a grill on top of that, and another layer of papers on top of the grill. The papers on top of the grill get changed at least twice a week, the papers in the tray get

Comments

[calzephyr77]

Oh darn :\ I wish I knew enough to help. Instead I'll just hope that there's a good solution to this problem.

[bloolark]

Change cage papers daily, make sure you vacuum/sweep/clean up the various crumbs that parrots throw around.

Mice are almost certainly capable of climbing the legs of an EFC, and they're 100% capable of climbing fabric. If you can avoid keeping that touching the floor, that'd probably be better.

I personally would also set up a large number of snap traps after you've done that. If you're not willing to do that (which alas is the best way to deal with it), you might consider talking to a friend with either rats or cats and see about getting some litter of either and putting it around the cage. It's completely anecdata, but once I got rats (er, pet rats, not just a rat infestation), the mice completely avoided that area until I eventually killed them all.

[cyaneus]

As I pulled up your entry, to my great surprise, I spotted a tiny gray mouse on the floor next to the couch, staring at me. Stupidly, I yelled "HEY" at it, and of course it ran away.

So looks like we may be in Mouse Wars together. Snap traps are helpful with small infestations. Anybody know the specific health hazards/diseases mice pose to birds?

[cyaneus]

I've just read that peppermint oil can be an effective mouse deterrent. One site suggested soaking cottonballs in it and leaving them in key areas to keep mice away.

[justnotangie]

I'm currently in a mouse battle myself and I will say this works well. I bought peppermint oil and a little glass spray bottle and I've been spraying the carpet around the cage every night and haven't seen any evidence of mice in that area since.

[zandperl]

As mentioned elsewhere, the problem with this "solution" is that essential oils are not good for birds. Breathing in too much of them can lead to seizures, and I don't know where the borderline is between enough to keep mice away and so much that it hurts my bird.

[slaneyder]

Totally OT, but since our household is home to Loki: Destroyer of Houseflies, Spiders, Cheap Window Blinds and Anything Else that Moves, we don't have any problems with vermin at all.

I wish I were joking about the blinds, by the way. This is the scene I came home to the other night:

[lonelyassassin]

Since you're against snap-traps (and I honestly can't blame you), you could try live traps. We had mice where I work, which is a vet hospital, and since we're staffed with all animal lovers there was no way snap-traps were going to happen. We got a couple of live traps, baited them with peanut butter and the type of dog food they seemed particularly fond of (Hills t/d, for some reason) and released them in the woods a fair way away from the hospital. After catching 13 (yes, 13!) we haven't had another mouse or mouse poop sighting.

[zandperl]

I ended up getting a Havahart trap and baiting with peanut butter. The mouse I caught yesterday around 5pm somehow escaped the trap on my way to release him, but I caught one later yesterday evening that I released this morning, and I just got another a few minutes ago that'll go out after dinner. There's a river around a mile away and I'm taking the mice to the other side of it, figuring that they'll find enough food in the fields over there so they won't see the need to come back over the bridge.