Ants and mice...UGH!

[gilmargl]

You can get humane traps for the mice and rehome them to the woods. I did that once when we had a mouse in the house. I won't poison or kill them, but the humane trap just shuts once they get in and they can't get out. Very easy to let them out somewhere away from your home. We drove to a wooded area.

Make sure you take the mice you catch to a safe distance away. A friend kept catching mice and releasing them. It wasn't until she marked the trapped mouse with nail varnish, that she realised she had been trapping the same mouse for days. It had learned where to find a reliable source of tasty food and had kept returning for its dinner!

 

[Jem]

Make sure you take the mice you catch to a safe distance away. A friend kept catching mice and releasing them. It wasn't until she marked the trapped mouse with nail varnish, that she realised she had been trapping the same mouse for days. It had learned where to find a reliable source of tasty food and had kept returning for its dinner!

Oh the "mice issue" seems to be good. It's just when I was investigating in the early part of this whole fiasco, the amount of poop I found was embarrassingly gross. It wall all trapped within insulation in the crawlspace...but we haven't seen any new evidence of them lately.

 

[Jem]

And one other thing...When the exterminator was here for the second time, I showed him the neighbors garage. His immediate response..."Oh...that's not good!"
So when this is all fixed I will be contacting the city about it. He's not a neighbor that can be "talked to civilly"...he's pretty ignorant, so unfortunately the city needs to be involved for something like this.

 

[Talien]

I'm just trying to figure out what can be used to block their entry to my home, that actually lasts and they wont chew thru.

If you find the entry points plug them with steel wool and cover it in expanding foam insulation, the stuff you get in a can. They can't chew through steel wool and the foam keeps them from just pushing it out of the way.

 

[susanm9006]

Sounds like you have made good progress. It’s a project but not an overwhelmingly large one.

 

[misty8723]

Make sure you take the mice you catch to a safe distance away. A friend kept catching mice and releasing them. It wasn't until she marked the trapped mouse with nail varnish, that she realised she had been trapping the same mouse for days. It had learned where to find a reliable source of tasty food and had kept returning for its dinner!

Yes to that. The mouse we trapped we took to a local woods. However, we had a squirrel problem in our attic. We hired a guy to come and he put a trap in the attic. Well, we caught a squirrel, but it was Christmas and no way to get anyone to come take it out, so hubby got the trap and let the squirrel out in the trees behind out house. Then we put the trap back. Over the next week or so we trapped and released - I think it was - 13 squirrels. We were definitely suspicious, but the squirrel guy had claimed he patched up the hole where they were getting in, so I thought it might have been that a squirrel had babies up there. Okay, they didn't look like babies, but... It gets funnier. I was so freaked out about a squirrel(s) being trapped up there and dying I actually put a water bowl down!

Once the holidays were over we called another service, and that guy pretty much laughed at us. I think we were taking the same 2 squirrels out over and over, because the first idiot had not found/fixed the hole they were actually using. (I do know it was at least 2 because I started looking at them more closely).

It was an interesting time, for sure, and we learned a few things. Never put a trap actually in the attic, put it outside. But don't use one they can't get out of if the weather is cold because they'll die before anyone can come get them out (no, that didn't happen, but I discussed it vigorously with the squirrel guy when I though I saw one in the trap dead (I may have been a little hysterical, lol). Fortunately, it wasn't, it was just shadow or something. The guy came and put one that they can go out but not back in. Then he fixed everything up good, we had the holly bushes they were climbing cut down, and so far knock on wood they haven't been back.

 

[susanm9006]

I just up a humane trap for one of my chipmunks that insists on running into the garage, getting stuck there when the door closes and then chewing his way out through the rubber at the bottom of the garage door. I figure I will catch him and let him go in the yard at least a few times before taking him for a ride.

 

[Jem]

Well...I'm freaking out right now!
All was good after the second extermination treatment...but this afternoon, I killed an ant in my living room!!!!! This is the first and only ant I've seen in the house since everything we did last year. I want to cry.
We let everything dry out by keeping the nest area open (last summer)...and according to the guy who put it all back together, it was dry inside, and the "wet smell" in the house was completely gone.
We fixed where we thought the water was coming in...it's temporary, but still holding up.
I went back to the original area where I found all the frass, and I don't think I see any new stuff...but who knows what's in the wall.

I'll be calling first thing on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) to get the exterminator to at least spray the exterior of my home.

We have a new neighbor now (yay!....I think) and I decided to wait and see what they would do about the collapsing garage before I call the city. They (over a month ago now) took parts of it down to rebuild it. Unfortunately, the whole thing should have been demolished, so I may have to call the city regardless. I still haven't had the chance to meet her, but have heard her talking to people.....she sounds kinda "feisty" so I don't want to make our first meeting a bad one where I'm complaining....IDK what to do about that.

 

[susanm9006]

Are you sure it was the same kind of ant?

 

[MoochNNoodles]

What kind of ant? We get a few inside occasionally but i think they just come in on our shoes once in a while. I would definitely call the exterminator though so you can be on top of it just in case. We have a quarterly contract with a company here that will come out any time in between if we start having an issue. They’ve even given good advice when there was an issue outside their capabilities. It makes it easier to trust them.

 

[Jem]

Are you sure it was the same kind of ant?

What kind of ant?

Most definitely a carpenter ant...
Based on my research, it was a forager, looking for food sources as it was just randomly walking about the living room.
I did take my flashlight yesterday to see about finding anymore in the house where the old nest would travel...and nothing.
I'll be outside today inspecting the old nest site area to see if it came back.
It could just be a forager from an outside nest....possibly from the neighbors garage.
I guess I didn't seal up all the little nooks I thought they were entering from...

I'm just so discouraged...

Has anyone ever tried the ant bait granules before? You spread it like you would a fertilizer and I guess it takes care of nests if they bring the little bits back....
Does anyone here know of any gel ant baits that are protein based? Little ant traps don't tend to work on carpenter ants, they are primarily sugar based.

 

[Winchester]

After we gutted our kitchen, we had a bad ant problem. I was canning pickles one morning, opened the pantry, went to get the sugar container, and the glass sugar container was black with ants. I picked it up and took it outside and let them go. Then I got rid of the sugar and boiled the container. Turns out they had built a colony in the ceiling of the basement at the top of the concrete below the French door in the kitchen. Rick went down and started ripping up insulation and found it. He sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. Found a couple more colonies all at the top of the cinder blocks. Home Defense worked wonders as did the Zevo. Once or twice a month during the summer, he will spray the perimeter of the house outside with Home Defense.

Yesterday, he was working around the weigelas. He picked up a piece of border and red ants came flowing out of the ground. Home Defense. He sprayed the entire area. I hate ants.

We don't have any problems with mice. Not even the occasional field mouse. But man, I hate ants.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I know our pest company put down some kind of granules this winter but I didn’t ask west kind. They do something different every quarter depending on what kind of pests are active. We also have bait stations in the ground all around the house; but I think those were for the termites only. I’ll ask DH if those were supposed to get rid of carpenter ants too.

 

[Jem]

Well I have an appointment on June 3rd for an exterior spray. I have not seen anymore ants in the house, so I'm hoping that means it just meandered in from outside, so the exterior spray will help stop anymore from getting in...well, they'll die if they do...
We do have a huge population of several different kinds of ants outside...so it's not unheard of that they find their way in. We live in very sandy soil...great for drainage and preventing flooding...but very popular for ants. I did more yard clean up on Monday, and could not find evidence of carpenter ant nests in those areas. I'll keep at it though, and continue investigating...but I really do suspect they are coming from my neighbors.
Keep your fingers crossed that this was a one off and the nest isn't back!

 

[MoochNNoodles]

That's exactly what we have; super sandy soil with ants everywhere. I think just keeping aware of them will help you out. Hopefully they will get rid of that garage. If they do have it torn down; maybe ask your pest company if they can spray right before to discourage anything from traveling to your place. Our company said that's likely how we ended up with the termites. But DH is observant so we caught them quickly.

 

[Jem]

So the guy came and instead of spraying the poison/barrier, this time he used the exterior granules bait. It's the stuff I had been researching...so I guess I was on the right track. It's nice that we didn't have to use the spray poison....but I do hope it works. The granules are supposed to kill the nest by the ants bringing it back to the queen for food, but we don't have to worry about animals. I hope the ants are hungry!!!!
Something my husband forgot to mention to me was that before the new neighbor started work on the garage, they actually had an exterminator come by. So I'm assuming that I was right that the main nest was there. Unless the exterminator was taking care of a different pest.....
I'm hoping they were there for ants and it has been dealt with.

So, feeling a little hopeful that this will be then end of our ordeal.

 

[Jem]

So the neighbors, it seemed, were attempting to rebuild the garage bit by bit, without actually demolishing it. They replaced one wall, and over the last couple of weeks, they started working on the roof. First they scraped off the shingles and some of the plywood. Then today, I saw them cutting the rafters off. Obviously some banging going on....But I stepped outside earlier and the whole thing is down!
I'm not sure if it collapsed while they attempted to repair the roof because they cut too much of the supports for the walls, or they gave up and decided that demolishing it would be better.
Thankfully the exterminator was here on Thursday, so if any critters have now lost their home, hopefully they don't find a new home here!
As much as I wanted their garage gone, I now don't have as much privacy. Their garage extended past the end of my house, so now that it's gone I can see right into their back yard...which means they can see in mine. It's only about a 5-6 foot section that's clear as I have fully grown cedar hedges and big trees for the rest of the way down the yard.
If the garage did collapse, I hope it didn't do any damage to my fence along the side of my house...I'll check it later though, I don't want to go snooping while they are outside. I'm a bit of a chicken when it comes to confrontation, and I'm in PJs right now....and too lazy to change.

 

[susanm9006]

Fingers crossed they are intending to build a new and ant free one!

 

[MoochNNoodles]

Hopefully they are starting something from scratch!! I know how you feel about your privacy though. I wasn’t excited about how they positioned the trailer on the property next door. Especially before they remodeled it. But we ended up with a nice neighbor. And she can shut her curtains while I weed my gardens. Her view is my whole backyard.