A mouse in the house?

The number of mice in Britain is rising fast. But how do you get rid of the incontinent intruders?

Autumn is upon us, with its dying sunlight, its wafts of sweet-hot bonfire smoke on the frost-chilled air and, for many, some unwanted house guests with bad table manners and a somewhat laissez faire, not to say incontinent, attitude to toilet training.

It starts with a few seemingly random events, like the slow-burn opening of a horror film: odd, ragged little holes in food containers; wires that seem to have been eaten through; tiny piles of little black things. Then you're watching television one night and you spot, out of the corner of one eye, some halfnoticed half-movement, so fleeting that you're not sure if it's real. But it is real, and eventually it will pluck up courage to stroll out into the middle of the carpet, as if it wants to sit and watch Strictly Come Dancing with you. 

Now there is still a stigma attached to being “infested” (even the word makes you want to shower in hot bleach) with mice, but with complaints to councils topping 367,000 between 2006 and 2007, it's a myth (one of many) that rodents are interested only in dirty homes. On the contrary, it is a middle-class secret that dares not speak its name. Try raising the subject at a dinner party - no sooner have the scrunched-up faces relaxed than the stories will flow. I have been inundated with tales of tails, from the inadvertent toasting of a mouse that stayed too long in the crumb tray to hushed tales of a “supermouse” breed known only to residents of the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hackney.

For some, the experience is pure torment. David McKendrick, who made the mistake of pulling out the wire wool that he found in crevices of his new flat in the Barbican, Central London, remembers being so driven to distraction by late-night scratching under his bedroom floorboards that he was soon tearing them up with a hammer and chisel.

 “But they were really hard mice,” he says. “I've had a mouse jump off the boiler and hit me in the chest. I've come home at night, opened the door, and there's one sitting there, looking at me .”

 “The chances are, if you've got them, your neighbour's got them, so by working together you can get on top of the infestation. The source of the problem - a pile of rubbish somewhere, a hole in someone's wall - could be three or four doors either side.”

But what I did was to buy some traps from a shop.The first I tried were glue boards - small plastic trays covered in a glue that first attracts the mouse, then keeps it stuck. They seemed somehow less cruel than traditional spring traps, but a clue that this might not be the case was the words “humanely dispose of” on the back of the box. Yes, having trapped your mouse, you have to kill it. Hoping that it was true about drowning being the nicest way to go, I would immerse the glue trap, with mouse attached, in a bucket of water. At first I could do this with stoicism; then I read an article about how scientists have discovered that mice sing, and I found myself looking into the eyes of mice as they seemed to plead: “What did I ever do to you, other than nibble your discarded Shreddies crumbs?” (rats, incidentally, can apparently giggle, but that's just creepy).

That's why I turned to traditional spring-loaded traps, baited with peanut butter - no more hands-on drowning, just the distant click of the traps through the night. It was grimly satisfying for a while, but there are really only so many small, furry corpses with which you want to be dealing on a daily basis, and only so many times you want to risk breaking your fingers. Eventually, I bought a kitten. Yes, we wanted an innocent pet to play with, but we also wanted a cold-blooded killing machine to bite the little cheese-munchers' heads off, and the sight of Busby strolling down the stairs with a mouse hanging from his mouth, little legs kicking furiously, was as thrilling as it was faintly revolting. Luckily he never presented us with a freshly slain corpse, preferring to disappear outside and do unspeakable things to his prey before returning indoors looking smug and faintly evil.

After four weeks Busby ran away in search of a better life, where he would no doubt be pampered with Sheba rather than having to live on a diet of dead mice. Before the mice could re-establish themselves, we invested in the Pestclear 200 - not, sadly, a Robocat but a plug-in device that pumped out ultrasonic and electromagnetic waves, both of which deter rodents. To be frank, we doubted that it would work. Electromagnetic waves? Why not magic crystals? To date, however, it does seem to have done the trick. Although the ultrasonic effect can be blocked by walls or furniture, apparently the electric current travels through the house's wiring, disturbing rodents hiding in walls or floors and avoiding the need for a unit in every room.

Anecdotal reports on these units are mixed. Some people claim that theirs have had no effect whatsoever, and even the manufacturer admits that a large, well-established nest may choose simply to put up with the inconvenience and discomfort that the devices cause. Where they work best is probably in cases, such as ours, where the initial infestation had been dealt with; the unit then acts as a deterrent to reinfestation. Having said that, it is wise to invest a little more and purchase a unit with a “variable pitch” setting, as this lessens the chance of your resident rodents getting too comfortable with the constant background noise.

Then again, maybe the mice have just been biding their time. As I relax in the living room, I still sometimes catch myself wondering whether there is something nesting in my armchair, or climbing the curtains just beyond my peripheral vision. Or in my kitchen, feasting on a cornflake.

That's the thing, you see. Getting rodents out of your house is one thing, but it's not so easy to shift them from your head.

Mouse or myth?

Myth 1: You are never more than a metre away from a mouse.

This may be true in parts of the country, if you include rodents in sewers. But Dr Stephen Battersby, a rodent expert, says: “There haven't been enough proper assessments of the mouse and rat populations to know.” Surveys based on complaints to local authorities put the number of rodents in Britain at 60 million.

Myth 2: You can't have mice and rats at the same time.

It is unusual, but as mice live in the lower levels of a building and rats at the top or outside, you could have a problem with both at the same time.

Myth 3: Mice are not dirty.

Mice are more than just a nuisance. They have weak bladders and their droppings may contain worm infections. A study of house mice by the University of Salford found that 60 per cent carried the toxoplasma parasite, which can cause birth defects in pregnant women.

Myth 4: Mice like cheese.

Mice like foods with a high sugar content, such as chocolate and peanut butter, and meats such as bacon.

Myth 5: Tabby cats make the best mouse catchers.

Cats that live on farms are generally far better at catching mice than house cats. The breed makes no difference.

Myth 6: Mice only come into houses in winter.

The common house mouse lives in houses all year round. Fieldmice are more likely to bother you in cold weather.