Help! mice killing all of our veggies.

[Terriblelie]

I live in a condo. We plant all of our veggies in pots. This year we planted strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, herbs, and a bunch of different kinds of hot peppers. This is the first year I have had problems with critters. The mice killed the strawberries, and have now killed the green beans. I have tried mouse traps. They are not catching them. I have tried sprinkling crushed red pepper on the dirt. Please if anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear them.

[ajijoe]

hello

there are two things you can do here i suggest using both together

first if your using snap traps set the traps lighter by taking a flat pliers and bending the key slot where the trigger bar slides into then bait the trap with as much peanut butter as the trigger spoon will allow,they love the stuff and cant resist, this will give the mouse more time at the trap making it more likely he will spring it, put the traps along walls and against or under structures they have bad eye sight and will follow structure the use urine trails to navigate also along these routes put the traps there

second go to home depot or your favorite hardware store and pick up a few Black and Decker electronic sonic pest eliminators they emit high frequency sounds these critters hate

i had the same problem because the mice were small ,but i just set the traps a bit lighter and POW!! dead rodents!!

hope this will help your friend joe

[cynthia_h]

I second the recommendation for snap traps. I had (note past tense ) two mice in my kitchen three years ago; approx. March 2007. Purchased three snap traps.

After my cats (a different pair from the current pair ) failed to take care of the situation, I baited the traps with salt-free peanut butter (it's what I eat) and placed them under the kitchen sink along the back of the cabinet, with one along the side of the cabinet "shared" with the set of shelves which bore the...ah...evidence of rodent invasion.

Both mice were gone in three days, if not sooner.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[Gary350]

Get a cat.

[farmerlon]

second go to home depot or your favorite hardware store and pick up a few Black and Decker electronic sonic pest eliminators they emit high frequency sounds these critters hate

My mother started using one of those B&D Sonic units, and it seemed like it was calling critters to a party instead of chasing them away.

[garden5]

[img]http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/cat_yawning_canine_teeth.jpg[/img]

[LindsayArthurRTR]

Looooooove your cat pic

When we first bought this house, before the renovation, it was badly infested with roaches and other critter, mice too. My husbands business partner had some of those plug in bug and rodent repellers. It didn't work. When we removed the drywall right behind that particular outlet, there was a nest with 6 baby mice in it. There were nests EVERYWhere! I would call that ineffective It didn't help with the bugs either

[elementfiftyfour]

I just found out some interesting facts about rats and mice the other day. If they are eating a particular fruit or vegetable from your garden then they will continue to eat that specific fruit/vegetable until it is gone. So, baiting your traps with something else like peanut butter won't do any good. It turns out that one of the mice or rats might find the food source and then go tell all his family and friends about that particular food. Interestingly enough they won't touch anything else.
I can't confirm this specifically but I do believe it since even with 5 traps set in my garden the rats destroyed my one tomato plant and left everything else alone. They even left the other variety of tomatoes alone. Next time I find some eaten tomatoes I'm going to bait the traps with some sacrificial tomatoes and see what happens.

[Kisal]

Interesting. I never noticed that kind of behavior in any of the rats or mice I raised. They would eat from all of the veggies, grains, and other foods I fed them, not just, say, eat all the carrots and then move on to the corn.

But maybe mine were oddballs. BTW, they were not pets.

[cynthia_h]

I know for a fact that the mice in my kitchen were not eating peanut butter; I buy it in glass jars and keep them shut tight.

They were going after the usual detritus found on kitchen shelves at ground level: bread crumbs, potato orts, dog-treat crumbs, broken dried-bean bits, etc.

They went for the peanut butter in the traps *very quickly.* After two or three days (I just can't remember now), I found no more "mouse evidence."

Cynthia

[garden5]

Sounds like you may have gotten some bad info, there EFF. Look at all of those poison pellets that they sell that the mice eat and die. I don't think they've ever eaten those before.

Perhaps it is in only certain conditions that they exhibit the behavior you described.

[Avonnow]

I had the same problem. But I live in Fl and I thought they were mice, I saw them eating feed out of the bird feeder and when it emptied they came to the garden and started with Watermelon, (small ones) and then jalapenos, peppers and peanuts etc. Then someone told me they were fruit rats - they were cute and it was tough with my 5 year old daughter around to get rid of them. All that hard work they set me back in the garden. We got traps first, the old flimsy type they just ran away with traps - never found them. Then we got the jaw type at home depot and used fruit on the traps and put one near the garden and one near the feeder. I kept something else near by so they had a food supply and wouldn't come near the garden. It took us about 10 days to catch them all. But have a plate of something else handy for them to eat - that is easily accessible so they stay away from your plants. As long as I had the bird feeder full they stayed out of the garden. I also threw bread on the ground, We caught five and then the rest must have left in fear. We know we had at least 8 of them. Good luck