This has been a banner year for rodents in our area. Voles did a number on a lot of lawns (as well as chewing through the twine of roughly 40 bales of hay on the bottom of a friends 7 ton stack), and the mice population is crazy.

Mouse don’t necessarily cause a huge problem in the garden, but they can chew through bags of seeds and other stored supplies. Plus, there’s a concern of hanta virus in some parts of the country, which is transmitted through the feces.

One of our community gardens is at a gentleman’s home on the outskirts of town. You can sit by his pigeon house and watch the mice run and play. There are probably dozens of them in the area since the grain for the birds provides a veritable buffet. He wanted me to find him a cat to take care of the situation, which made me consider the pros and cons of several methods to take care of a mouse problem.

Cats

Pros: A good cat can clean out the rodents in fairly short order.
Cons: Unlike the gentleman who wanted to borrow a cat for pest control, most of the time having a cat is a long term commitment. You need to feed, water, vaccinate and preferably spay or neuter the feline. Also, cats are equal opportunity killers. They’ll take birds just as quickly as they will mice, which is problematic for those of us who like our feathered friends.

Mice Snap Traps

Pros: These traditional traps work well. We’ve had situations where one was set for less than 15 minutes and got a mouse. They kill the mice immediately most of the time, and you can reuse them almost indefinitely.
Cons: Some people are squeamish about removing the dead mouse, and it’s no fun to snap your fingers while setting them.

Mice Sticky Traps

Pros: I suppose the selling point to glue traps is you don’t have to touch the animal, you just throw it away.
Cons: These seem awful to me. The mouse dies because of starvation and thirst, and while I’m not a big fan of rodents, it doesn’t seem right.

Live Trap

Pros: There are a number of live traps from Victor (Tin Cat mouse trap) and Havahart that can safely catch a couple of dozen rodents. You can take them elsewhere to release. These traps will last a lifetime.
Cons: If you have a lot of mice, you’ll do the best if you buy a number of traps. They range from $15-$20 apiece, so theyre not cheap. Also, you need to have some place to take them. Dropping them off in your neighbors backyard isnt a way to enhance relations.

Mouse Poison

Pros: This is a simple, hands-off method. The mice eat the bait and eventually die.
Cons: I won’t use poison around our house because of the boys. I can’t imagine the bait tastes very good, but its brightly colored and might be tempting to little guys who are known to do inexplicable things (like shove a coffee bean up the nose, but thats a different story). Most of the mouse poisons basically cause the mouse to bleed internally, which isn’t very pleasant. And probably one of the greatest drawbacks is when the mouse dies somewhere in the house, but out of reach. They can smell to high heaven!

The photo is copyright Creativenature_nl via istock.