My No-Cruelty Mouse Control Solution Involves Smashing Them to Death With Gigantic Fucking Cinderblocks.
Benjamin | Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 5:36AM 
Do you have mice?
Our apartment is fucking infested with mice. It's seasonal. Kind of.
It freaks the shit out of my wife, and though I'm more content to sit with my laptop while the mice run around me and mind their own business, I have to admit that it is extremely disturbing to watch them run into my daughter's room while she's sleeping.
We have tried:
- poison
- traps
- walking around like spelunkers and filling up every goddamn hole in our ancient brownstone with brillo and some kind of cement paste
- a sound machine
Ha - funny story about the useless fucking sound machine - there are these settings on it, and one of them says "inaudilble" - the instructions say something like:
The inaudible setting should be sufficient for standard household operation. While sound emitted at this setting should not be audible to most humans, it is possible that those with extremely attuned hearing may still be able to sense the unit's frequency while it is operating at this level.
And then you turn it on - and I swear to god this is true - it's like this loud fucking emergency broadcast system tone that makes you want to move out of your apartment. IT's POSSIBLE that those with extremely attuned hearing might hear it?!? They make it sound like some shit only dogs and superman can hear, and then it's so goddamn loud my grandma can hear it from the living room and she's dead.
Fucking sales copy.
And forget about the other setting - I think it's called "LOUD" - it just sounds like Chernobyl. It must be like a party-gag setting or for use in a barn.
Anyway, we've tried all of these solutions and none of them work. We leave glue traps out, because they sometimes catch mice in them, but then here's our problem: getting rid of the mice once they are stuck in the traps.
I don't like watching them suffer, because in the end they are little living creatures even if they're mice. It feels wrong. You can't peel them off of the glue traps because once caught in that shit, their feet are fucked for life. A friend of mine just puts them into the garbage on 7th avenue, but this is about the most fucked up thing i can think of - they just sit there stuck to the glue trap and starve in the dark??? Horrible.
Typical fuckin hippie - he thinks he's being kind because he doesn't have to SEE them suffer or kill them himself. This beef is organic so the cow had no antibiotics in it when they held it upside down and slit it's throat with an hatchet the size of an airplane wing.
Anyway, I gotta take responsibility for them then and there - the way I see it, as soon as they're stuck in one of those things, they're frightened and in a horrible non-medicated panic attack situation. So, I lift the traps into a black plastic bag, (bare hands! tough guy! dad was wrong!) take it downstairs and outside, set it on the sidewalk, and I drop a truly gigantic 40-pound cinderblock onto the bag that causes them to disintigrate. They die instantly. It's the most humane thing I can think to do once their lives are fucked by being caught in toxic glue-cement.
Still sucks, but I wish they would listen to the hundreds of warnings I've posted for them in their holes and in their comments sections so that it didn't always have to come to this.
What do you do?
mice, ongoing beefs 
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Reader Comments (11)
Totally sucks...been there...
The objective is to get rid of the mice that maybe in your home and deter others from creeping in, the best way of doing that is by actually having a trap that kills them on the spot. The most effective way for me was to leave the dead mouse in the trap for a day or so, it sends a clear message to their natural survival instinct that mice die here.
A good, less gruesome trap is (you should re-use the trap):
http://www.acehardware.com/pwr/product-reviews/Ace-Tree/Lawn-Garden/Pest-Control/Rodent-Control/Mouse-Rat-Traps-Baits/RECKITT-BENCKISER/p/1279062-D-Con-reg-Ultra-Set-reg-Covered-Mouse-Trap-1920000027.html
Like the comment above, I left the first mouse for a day to let all his friends know...this is NOT the place.
I saw nothing for about 2 years. THIS year, I noticed a bold one. I called an exterminator. He put down traps EVERYWHERE...Mickey is a smart SOB and he remained just as bold.
Finally I got a cat...problem solved.
Ugh...I haaaaaaaaaaaate comment moderation.
i get them too ever now and again, though since i got my dog, they've been fewer and fewer. glue traps worked really well at first. then they got smart. i find that if all the food is in tupperware, we're set.
oh, and as for what to do after the glue trap... well, i put them in a ziplock bag and suffocate them by sucking the air out. maybe not humane, but jesus technically died by suffocation, so that sounds fine with me. haahaa.
Bravo to you. Years ago I had a roommate and a mouse problem. The roommate put out glue traps and we ended up with a mouse stuck to one, screaming. SCREAMING. It was horrifying. The roommate took the thing outside with the trash but didn't kill it. No, better to let it die screaming in the trash, its foot stuck to poisonous glue.
And although getting a cat would solve your mouse problem, it would also swap in the problems of carpet- and sofa-shredding, hairball spewage, and the necessity of keeping a box of shit in your house. (I have two cats myself.)
We too had the infestation from hell this year. I was totally freaked out and my poor husband had to watch me weep hysterically after I was exhausted from all the cleaning and scrubbing. I was muttering, "I can't keep it clean. I can't get it clean enough. Bwaaahahahaaa." Pretty pathetic.
Glue traps and poison are the only things that work. Though, to be honest, they seem to LIKE the poison. Came back a couple of nights in a row for it. I have to imagine that they were having little rave parties in the wall, complete with glow sticks and disco balls.
If you get them on the glue trap, just drown them in the toilet or in a bucket. It's quick and silent.
best trap though was a twist on a live trap: empty paper towel tube with a bit of peanut butter on one end and a piece of string on the other. balance the tube on the edge of the counter so that when the mouse climbs into it and out to the peanut butter, it tips into a trash can with a glue strip at the bottom. The string keeps the tube from falling in there as well so you can reuse it. I caught two mice in about two hours that way.
I might've caught the ring leader with that. He screamed for a long time and I've never had another mouse in the apartment since.... though, that night, I did have dreams I was stabbing a puppy.
I don't live in PS (I'm a few stops south in Midwood) and I've had a minor mouse problem for a few months. This sucker has eaten through about 4 blocks of poisoned bait and, avoided numerous traps over the last few weeks, but he's been MIA the last few days. Here's hoping that he's in that big garbage dump in the sky.
This may be due to years of Tom and Jerry cartoons, but i have to ask: how do cats prevent mice from coming back? Just their presence? Do they hunt the mice? Help, a brother gots to know. GOTS.
Caulk, steal wool, borax -- and a Rat Zapper. Electrocutes them instantly, no mess, instant cleanup -- just change the batteries after a few zaps...
I had the same problem with glue traps, and I opted for the lobster approach. I place the trap in the sink, boil a pot of water, and then quickly pour the water on the mouse in the sink. They die seemingly instantly, and it's almost self cleaning.
Eric, you suck. Boiling water???? Go put your head in a kettle.
Oh, and I think glue traps should be banned. They do nothing but make the mouse suffer even more, I can't even believe people throw them out in the rubbish alive like that. That's just fucked up. Makes me really angry.
Snap traps are always the way to go. Or a cage trap, and you can just frown them. Far better than letting them rip their limbs off and starve to death. Glue traps shouldn't even be sold...
I too had a bad infestation problem that got worse in the winter when they came in from the cold. Glue traps, day after day, were catching one by one and it completely freaked me out...i'd call someone to come throw out the trap while the damn thing was still squeeling.
Eventually, after plugging every little hole I could with steel wool, I found out that I had a HUGE gap between the floor and the wall, behind my stove! I called the super, a few dollars later, he sealed up the hole and viola...no more mice! Check behind your stove, fridge, and dishwasher...you'll be very happy you did!
actually you can get mice out of glue traps using some olive oil and then release them back into the wilds so they can come back into your apartment. my apartment had mice for the first few days i moved in, but my cat took care of the issue within a week. she caught one and let it go and i guess it told its mice friends because i never had any again after that.