the sound of small feet in the attic

We have just discovered rats in our shed and someone has suggested that the smell of vicks vapour rub will drive them away. I'll let you know in a couple of days if its been succesful.

We live in the country and get little visitors we use humane traps and let them go ...

We had an unwelcome visitor at Christmas- a gnawing at approx 9.30pm in the roof each evening. Turns out it was a rat (we near a harbour). Check the droppings, you can identify if it’s a rat or mouse by colour and size. We worked out it was climbing up a drainpipe to get there so as well as a trap put wire wool around the drainpipe where it meets the wall and also in any holes we could see in the attic. Apparently wire wool to them is like walking on glass ... we never heard another squeak, nothing in the trap so maybe it put them off. The rat was later caught by a neighbours cat!

Get a cat- they will soon smell it & leave!

supposed to say Council property

I had rats in my loft last year.Pest control were very good,he did what he had to,put some bait down.It's a council property,they can charge now for pest control,but I didn't have to pay,as my neighbours had ,and still have,a lot of rubbish on their garden.They admitted that they had seen rats there,but just laughed about it.My problem is that pest control man said he needed to check their loft too,and also the back of their propery,as there may be an entry point there.But they refused to let him do anything,the housing officer was refused entry too.They have learning difficulties and disabilities,so they can't be upset,but it didn't matter that I was terrified.They are animal lovers too,so am I,but there are times when you have to be cruel,dealing with rats in the loft is one of them

Peanut butter in a humane mousetrap works every time. Pe
aunt butter tip from iron monger whose a farmers son.

We used to have rats in our roof, then a carpet snake moved in and ate the rats, she was a much more pleasant lodger.
Now in our new house we have a possum, not as quiet as a snake but doesnt do any harm. Not sure if I would welcome lots of mice though, they can do alot of damage. Pity you dont have carpet snakes in the UK

We live about a quarter of a mile from a Safari Park, so were very happy to discover that the 'footsteps in the loft-space' only turned out to be a Grey Squirrel. We managed to evict him/her, but were just grateful that that was ALL it turned out to be, as the last creature to escape from there turned out to be a very frightened Baboon !

Are you sure it is mice and not squirrels? Humane traps for both. Have your roof checked as there are obviously gaps alloying the vermin access to your loft.

I use cotton pads soaked in peppermint oil in my shed and a plug in for the garage. Both seem to be working.

I understand when people say they can't bring themselves to kill mice.

I also understand when people say the mouse doesn't know it's doing anything wrong. This is exactly right (except when it's Jerry from the cartoon) but one can't reason with it either and get it not to chew your house up.

I presume the people who talk about a house mouse's right to live (give me field mice anytime for preference) do not eat meat or fish. Although, I read a really interesting article by someone who had lived as a vegan for years, but changed back to being omnivorous. One of the things she stressed is that all food causes death of other creatures. Yes, ALL, because when you plough or otherwise disturb soil to grow non-animal crops you kill thousands and thousands of animals, the tiny ones that live in the soil. The argument that they have as much of a right to live as you do then kind of falls apart.

As lucky says, nature is not fair. Life survives on the premise of Eat or be Eaten. Putting your humanely killed (splat trapped) house mice out for birds of prey or corvids to eat is repsecting nature as well as saving your electrical wiring etc.

Before you use poison get Pest Control to make sure it is mice or rats and not birds, or possibly squirrels. You may also need access points identified and blocked up.

Please don’t use poison. If you put it inside, the rodents may still die outside and then be eaten by another animal. It’s a slow, painful death. There are humane traps, please use them.

It could be other things like birds and squirrels as Spring arrived. We have both birds and a squirrel pecking and gnawing away at the newly installed soffits and fascia to get under the tiles in one section of roofline on our bungalow with further evidence of twigs and moss all over the area below. My husband deterred them early on by placing lots of brushes in the gutter and has ordered a 4 metre long "gutter hedgehog" to replace the brushes which make the neighbours think we are home to a witches coven!

I used plug in deterrents after capturing and releasing a couple of mice in woods away from home (they didn’t find their way back). We weren’t troubled again.

I've used a v shaped humane trap. Put peanut butter at one end. Mouse walks into tunnel, up slope to peanut butter, tunnel tilts so mouse walks on the flat. New upward part ~ trapdoor closes. So mouse can seesaw but can't get out. We trapped many mice that way and relocated them. I have heard of cat pee working too.... Mice smell tje enemy and stay away. Ask someone for a bit of old cat litter...

There are blocks you can buy from Amazon that work well.
Also if you use traps,mice love snickers bars,we caught loads within a few days.
They have all gone thank goodness.
Also they don`t like the smell of human hair whitch i now push into air -vents.

We used humane mouse traps borrowed from our DD. We caught 2 mice which DH refused to believe where there!

I had exactly the same last September tried all the recommendations nothing worked. In the end I had to get pest control in, the guy said he had to use poison because they were running up and down cavities in the walls and by now there were to many to use humane traps, he did use poison, I didn’t want to resort to that, but because I’d tried other stuff that was recommended that didn’t work they had multiplied by time I called them out. It was £100 for 3 visits lay poison then 2 follow up visits to make sure it had worked. Good luck.

Some plug ins have to be in the actual room that is affected and only cover a certain area of your house that often (as I found) doesn't cover the loft. Spend more and make sure that it covers your whole house area.
I have had to resort to the old style spring traps in the past, a lot of the so called humane traps are great but you have to make sure you release the vermin a long way away or they can find their way back!
You need to do something or they get under the floorboards, with sometimes drastic results - we had a problem with our upstairs lighting setting off the trip switch- a mouse had got under the floorboards on the landing and chewed through the wiring!
If all else fails, call in a pest control company and leave it up to them

I am 89, Henetha, and I still plan ahead although I do remind myself it is not worth my while doing certain projects such as growing an oak tree for a privacy screen.

Best wishes to your cockatiel and your future cat whether she materialises or not.

Rats or have you got a freaky horror film doll in the attic?

Well, I'm 83, and cockatiels have a long life span... so

I can tell you are a person who likes to plan ahead, Henetha. Good for you!