There are a few cons to living in the country, and we are finding them out the hard way. By experience. We set up a bird feeder about a month ago, and have been enjoying watching the various woodpeckers, blue jays and chickadees that come to feed. Well, the other morning, I woke up to find the feeder totally empty and my woodpecker bar (which I had just bought two days before) stripped to the string holding it up on the inside. I thought maybe a sassy squirrel had gotten into it, so I just refilled the feeder. Only to find it half empty when I got home from work that night, and deer tracks all over my yard. Darnit! They didn't touch it the next night, but tonight we went visiting at the neighbors down the road, and came home to deer tracks EVERYWHERE- even right by our front door, I think there were a few scraps of bird food that had spilled when I hauled the bag out to refill the feeder earlier- and an empty feeder again. Anyone have any suggestions as to how I might be able to keep them from eating my bird food every night? This could get too expensive, having to refill the feeder daily.
As for the mice...... ick! I'd much rather deal with the deer rather than the mice. At least they are outside and don't give me the heebie jeebies. I heard some squeaking in my closet last night when we were going to sleep, and Aaron said "Oh we'll just set traps tomorrow." Then right after he said that we heard some major scratching and some really noisy squeaks. We jumped out of bed ( it was one thirty a.m.) and cleaned the house and set traps that night. As of now, we haven't caught any. I did however discover that the mice had chewed a small hole in the corner of my bird food bag, and seed had spilled all over my porch floor. I put that bag in a Rubbermaid tote and shut the lid. Now we just have to invest in a couple of garbage cans and hope they don't try to chew holes in our garbage bags that we keep in the corner of the porch til garbage day. Also, any suggestions as how to catch the mice? We've got peanut butter on the traps right now, and someone suggested mashing sticky candy so they get stuck when they go to eat it and get trapped that way. I'm open to any suggestions! And on that note, I'm going to go to bed and hope I don't hear any noises that aren't supposed to be in my closet.....
5 comments:
you can buy sticky traps, they work well. also buy d-con. we buy that and it works. just make sure to put it where the kids can't get to it and eat it!!
We do D-Con as well, works great!
My only worry with D-Con is that they will die in the walls and start smelling!
I heard that you won't smell a dead mouse if you use d-con because they just kind of dry out. don't know forsure though...i've never smelled one or actually found a dead one afterwards. they must go hide in our crawlspace or something..
That's right, D-Con dries them out, and they typically go in search for water, so they often go outside, and we've never found/smelled a dead one!
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