Man vs. Mouse: how to get rid of mice at the cottage

When you’re away, the mice will play. And eat, and chew, and procreate. Getting rid of mice in cottage country is a challenge.

By Diane Forrest

On the one hand, there’s you, the cottager - clumsy, vulnerable to disease, unable to survive the harsh climate without water, shelter, heat, and three meals a day. And then there are those wood-chomping, disease-bearing, faeces-scattering little demons that invade your cottage every year, squeezing through holes smaller than a dime, burrowing into the insulation, copulating in your favourite quilt, able to survive on a few grams of food a day and even less water.

Mice are tough. They’ve turned up inside refrigerated meat carcasses and in the packs of Arctic explorers. Rommel found a family in one of his tanks in the North African desert. So they don’t move into your cottage because they have to. In the winter, there is enough food and warmth under the snow for a wise, well-provisioned rodent to get by. But wintering outdoors does threaten the future of both the individual and the species. Outdoor mice rarely survive more than a year and may produce only four litters of five or six babies - compared with a potential 14 litters of 11 annually for mice who can dine on your granola and Ritz cracker crumbs in between amorous interludes.

Deer mouse	White-footed mouse

The deer mouse, which is big-eared and ranges from grey to brown with a distinguishing white belly, is the species most likely to invade your cottage. There’s far less chance of you playing host to the nearly identical white-footed mouse (look for a two-tone tail, dark on top and white underneath), though, in more southerly parts of cottage country, you may get a visit from the greyish-brown house mouse, smaller and pointy faced like a rat. While all mice are normally quite territorial, marking their home turf with urine and scrapping to protect it, inside the paradise of your cottage they put aside their hostility to concentrate on their constant search for food and new nesting sites.

Humans can never entirely despise anything small and cute. So mice were worshipped by ancient peoples and, in more recent centuries (including this one), “fancy mice” have been collected and bred for their unusual yellow, black, spotted or pure-white coats. Adorable little rodents show up in popular culture from Aesop and Beatrix Potter to Disney’s ubiquitous Mickey. In earlier times, eating mice was considered a cure for ailments as diverse as measles, smallpox, whooping cough, earache, halitosis, and bed-wetting. Now, in laboratories, descendants of the fancy mice lay down their lives to help us find cures for an even broader range of medical problems.

Cuteness combined with awesome physical gifts make the cottage mouse a formidable opponent. Still, with a little application of brain power - about the only advantage we have - it is possible to keep the pitter-patter of little feet from turning into a thundering herd.

Additional resources:

Follow the links at top-right of page for more ways to keep mice out of the cottage.

Penny's Blog: Cottage Life's editor writes about mouse-capades from a cottager's point of view. Search under the "Mice" category for her stories and reader comments.

Cottage Life Forum  - read tips and battle stories, and view photos of some great cottage-made traps. Plus, share your own mouse tales.

Excerpted from "Battling Big Ears" feature article by Diane Forrest in the April/May 1998 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

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