Chixe

Buy a kittycat. Done.

I'd go buy a humane trap, catch it and take it outside.

Tupperware on top, cardboard on bottom, relocate.

Trap it and let my cat swat it to death. He LOVES mice.

Taken outside, they come back in again. It's warm.

I knew someone who found a rat in his bathroom. He stood in the bath with a broom pole but the rat turned on him, bared its teeth and spat in defence. My friend didn't like that too much. Took him months to recover...

Kill em... there's no "take him outside and talk to him" option.

Last time I saw a mouse in a place in which I lived I did the broom and bucket, and threw it outside .

I actually left it under a bucket with heavy books on it until someone else came around to do the actually throwing outside part.

There was a mouse in our old apartment years ago. I was at work but my wife was home. She was in the baby's room and saw it. It was a small one but still. She grab our son and ran to our room and closed the door. She called me and said that she told me everything that happened. Our cat chased it about the upstairs and caught it by the bedroom door. Some thuds later, she heard some crunching. She went over to the door and opened it slowly. She was greeted to our cat with no mouse in sight except for its tail hanging out of its mouth... until he slurped it in like spaghetti.

I love animals but I have a rule: stay out of my house unless I bring you in, otherwise its war. *smile*

I have cats so this wouldn't happen to me but if it did, I can imagine looking back on the situation and it being very comical due to my reaction.

This is a tough one, because I want to say I'd trap it and let it go outside but I'm thinking I'd be too panicked to be that rational and would beat it with a broom like you.

Good thing I have two cats inside the house. I'm suspecting they'd just kind of bat it around and play with it, though, rather than "take care of things." :)

Having cats to "take care of things" only works if you don't let the cats outside. If kitty goes outside, he tends to bring things back IN with them to play with. One of my cats once brought me a bird, still alive, and then let it go in the living room. It wasn't even wounded. So the bird flaps around the living room panicked, and I flap around the living room panicked, until I run to the neighbor and she manages to grab the bird with oven mits and stuff it into a paper bag to take it back outside.

My cats no longer get to brave the great outdoors, thank you very much. That's not the only reason, but it's a biggie.

We just recently adopted a new cat, because our previous cat got outside and never came back. Our previous cat was apparently not much of a hunter; the new cat has caught 3 mice in the past week. We didn't even know we had mice. :)

If we didn't have the kitty, and I walked into my bathroom to discover a mouse, what would first happen would be this: he'd disappear in a split second. For those who have never actually come across a mouse in your home, they move extremely fast. Unless you walked in with a broom at the ready, it'd be highly unlikely that you'd have any chance at all in nailing the little rodent.

However, following that, I'd find some way to get them out of the house without killing them. They don't really bother me - I don't scream and jump on a chair when I see one - it's just that they're dirty and can be dangerous, in regards to disease.

@Josh:

For those who have never actually come across a mouse in your home, they move extremely fast.

I wouldn't know...I'd be running in the opposite direction. :)

From people I know that went through the experience there was never just one mouse in the house.

@dreamweaver - exactly! I don't let my cats outside. They'd bring me all types of presents I wouldn't appreciate lol. I don't know what I would have done if one of my cats brought a live bird into the house. I just recently had a bat in my house and almost had a heart attack.

Last Time I caught a mouse it was in a mouse trap. I just tossed him and the trap outside in the trash. He got stiff and then went out with the garbage 2 days later.

I'd move to another place.

That's a bit extreme, Scrivs. :)

My apartment was built in 1901 and currently on Amsterdam's demolishing list as the cracks are gaining ground over the once solid construction. Needless to say, I have tons of pets.

I feed my pets poisonous blue candy which supposedly kills them and dries them out from the inside. Haven't heard or seen one for a while. It's quiet.

Small mice are cute...until you realize they've been nibbling your food.

Then out comes the mousetraps and a kiddish glee on my face when I hear it snap shut.

ehh i would let him live...I'm too nice ahha

We had a mice problem at the start of this year - when I say problem it was more of a motorway for their babies to commute to freedom through the house. Judging by the amount (I counted up to 3 doing the run in one sitting and we saw more) it was a mouse commune they had somewhere in the wall - bare in mind though we live in the country and uninvited pets tend to go with the location.

During this we discovered our older female dog Barley hunts and tortures mice like a cat. We also discovered that our puppy Dillon is a big fraidy dog and tried to hide from the mice. Until that point I'd not even seen a dog torture a mouse like a cat and was quite surprised. Oddly enough since that we seem to be mice free.

I live in an area where critters of all types try to find a warm place to survive the winter. That means all animals with four feet that are less then 3 inches tall find barns, cellars, attics, under the stove and anywhere it is cozy. If I see them, I scream. After I catch them as people described above, I beg someone else to dump them in the farmer's field. I put De-Con under the stove, frige, fireplace, garage and sink. My brillant dog probably plays with them during the day.

The mice try to move in every fall. The dog doesn't seem to mind, but I do. Baited traps work wonderfully. I am usually a live and let live kind of person, but field mice are dirty and not litter-trained, and therefore they have to go.

Scream loudly.

Housemate sorts.

Job done.

This happened to me last week, he came up from the basement I suppose, through a tiny hole in the cabinet in the bathroom and ended up in my kitchen (yep, my bathroom is right off the kitchen, hooray). I spent two hours chasing him about with a broom.

He won. Haven't seen him since.

I tried screaming loudly but that didn't work. Actually it came our rather without tryinig. But being a man it was more like a Yikes! Wooooah! Xxxxx and a bit more.

We live in a nice old house that's 1850's built and like all old houses they're full of cracks. It's impossible to plug them all. But we've had some success with our traps, poison and broomsticks. Not seen one for two days so that's promising. They get wise you know... They recognise traps and stay away despite it having yummy chocolate or peanut butter on it. They don't eat the blue poison from the little plastic trays as they recognise them too. But if you mix the posion with the food so it's blended and put the food/poison on a piece of paper towel on the floor, then they go for that.

Thanks for all your ideas, solutions, comments and wisdom.... :-)

Being on the third floor, I'm blissfully mouse free (though my brothers fourth floor NY apartment wasn't mouse free, so go figure). We do have rats in the rubbish areas though. *shudder* With them, it's see one and back away carefully. The rats in Southampton are like Shredder in TMNT - I swear the damn things are organised and plan.

It's probably the prevalence of rats that means we don't have any mice though!

I grew up in the country though, so mice were fairly common till we got a cat who I think was just a very small tiger. She didn't want cat food for breakfast - she'd much prefer freshly caught mouse from the garden shed!

When I was 15 and my brother was 12 or so, my mom found a mouse in our kitchen.

Now, my mom is a PhD Physicist. She's a formidable, intelligent woman.

Yet she still shot up onto a chair faster than mentos in a Diet Coke bottle.

So, anyway, her significant other dumped the mouse into a garbage can. I was given the job of dumping the poor little guy outside in the freezing New Jersey winter. I couldn't bring myself to do it. This mouse was hardly fearsome. It was a little ball of lint with legs. Kind of cute.

So I hid it in the basement and fed it everything from bits of carrot to breakfast cereal. When spring came, I released the very fat, sleek field mouse back into the wild. I'm betting he had one heck of a story to tell his family.

Thanks Guys. :-)

I'd probably scream, run around in a circle and then eventually buy a humane trap and then release the mouse outside.

:-)

Catch mouse.
Show mouse entryway to annoying neighbors house.
Sit smugly in my mouse-free house while knowing I've mad the world a little brighter. *evil grin*

Do you trap it in a towel or under a bucket and throw it out into the garden?

Check. I happen to like rodents, despite that whole "black plague" thing.

Last time that happened I built a ratapult. It's a trap that doesn't kill them, it just lofts them into the neighbor's yard.

Catch it in some way and let it go in the garden :)

Randomkay, I love the ratapult idea.....at least in theory, although I don't think I'll do it! Thanks though!