I am traumatized!
 

We've had a mouse problem in our home for the past month. The exterminator came out a few weeks ago, set traps and poison, and we haven't heard a peep. Or a squeak.

Animals and pests don't really bother me much. I grew up around a menagerie of dogs, cat, fish, lizards, horses and hamsters. I even worked at a pet store in high school. But I digress...

This morning, I made my way to my bathroom, all bleary-eyed and still half-asleep. I brushed my teeth and then something, er, caught my attention. In the toilet. A mouse. A drowned furry brown mouse.

I screamed and literally flew up the stairs (my bedroom is in the basement). Common sense prevailed as my heart rate slowed to a normal beat. I got a dust pan and a ton of plastic trash bags, scooped up the floating mouse, slammed down the lid on the toilet, took the mouse outside and dumped it in our big garbage can. He'll have a proper landfill burial when the trash gets picked up Friday morning.

Good lord. I am at the office now, and I am still a bit afraid to use the toilet... and I really have to go!!!! Who would have thought that 15 seconds of terror would undo months of potty training and 23 years of toilet conditioning? I am soooo disinfecting the house this weekend.

LOL. That is hilarious.
I must say that you handled the situation better than me. I can deal with roaches or lizards (typical Florida pests) but I cannot deal with mice or rats.
A few years ago, I went to my parents' place for winter break. I kept hearing scratching sounds in the ceiling and walls at night. I mentioned something to my mother about it and she said, "We had a plumber come out a few weeks ago and he accidently made a hole in our walls. We think some rodents got in. We had an exterminator come out but I guess he didn't get all of them." Yeah, really comforting.
My dad went into the attic and set some traps.
Later that night, I came home at around 3am and I was getting ready for bed. I was closing my closet door when I heard a loud SNAP. I then heard one of the most horrific sounds.
"EEK EEK SQUEAKKKKKK EEEK EEEEEEEEEEEEK!"
I ran down the hallway of my house screaming, "DAAADDDDDDDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!"
He went into my room and started cracking up when he heard the poor rodent's squeals.
The rat stopped squealing and died but I still refused to sleep in my room that night...or for the next 4 nights for that matter.
I'll never forget the next morning when my dad went up into the attic to remove the trap and carcass. He called down from the attic at me, "Don't worry, the rat is dead. Ew, it is definitely dead." I almost vomited. Especially when my father decided to be ugly to me and describe what the rat looked like and where the trap had nailed him. http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmilies.de/pukeface.gif
To this day, when I go back to my parents' house, any little sound I hear at night will put me in a cold sweat.

I used to be a lifeguard and a few times we'd find drowned mice in the skimmer baskets, and their fur had been sucked off by the pump :(

I was fishing around under the passenger seat in my car the other day looking for something, and my hand touched something furry. I pretty much knew what it was, but I figured, I had already touched it so I might as well just pull it out. And yep, it was a dead mouse. I threw it on the ground and screamed. I think I startled some poor guy walking by on the way to his car.

What's gross is that I think it had been there since August, which was the last time it was in a mice-infested garage. I wonder how long it'd been dead under there.

One of the teachers I work with & I used to hear this strange scuttling sound behind our clock in the classroom. We complained about it repeatedly until finally, the janitor took our compaints seriously. He kept making fun of us telling us that there was nothing behind the clock. When he removed it, a shower of roaches fell on him. He started screaming & stamping at them while we ran out of the classroom laughing & grossed out.

oh.my.god.

*shudder*

I simply cannot handle "palmetto bugs", in any way, shape or form. I am just not a vermin person.

My house is VERY close to the country & a major parklands, so deer etc in the backyard is an everyday occurance. Unfortunately, I have to watch out for mice, too, as it turn cold, but I [heart pumping wildly] can [/wild heart] take care of a mouse if found. But...

A friend of mine has the bad habit of not shutting their dishwasher in between running it. One morning, she put the breakfast dishes & soap in, turned it on, and went to work. When she went to unload it that night, she found a drowned mouse in there!! Eeeewwwww......!!!!!

I went totally ballistic when she told me about this!! I would have had to throw away and/or sterilize everything that was in the dishwasher! There would have to be mouse fur in the trap, and all. But she just ran it again. Guess whose house I won't eat in...

We had a mouse once in our house and thankfully my stepdad got rid of him.

Still, I am deathly afraid (and will go screaming) at the sight of a roach, and over here we got kamikaze flying ones.

I get the heebeejeebeez when I see geckos and lizards, but I remember that they eat bugs, so they're our friend.

Just don't come into the bathroom when I'm trying to take a shower.

We have the flying kamikaze roaches here, too.

My sorority little had one on the ceiling of her bedroom one day. My roommate, my little, and I played a game of 'How Many Sorority Girls Does It Take to Kill a Roach?'. I got out a broom and swept it off the ceiling. (I think I had the most difficult job since the roach kept flying all over the room while I tried to sweep it away) My roommate grabbed a shoe and squashed it. My little sis vacuumed it up. Keep in mind that we were all screaming the whole time. I wish I had videotaped the scene!

Hokay, even though all it takes is just one swat (or two or 10) of the black rubber flip flop, crumpling it up in newspaper, paper, what have you and flushing it down the toilet, tell me why, whenever I'm at home I'm screaming FOR MY MOMMY to grab the RAID so she can kill that fucker for me?

Nic, I know the feeling. Roaches are just icky.

I'd buy Depends.

We have rats and mice commit suicide in our pool all the time. I don't know how or why but they usually end up in the skimmer with no fur. YUCKY!!!

Last winter we got a bat in our house around Halloween. I am sure he was more afraid than I was but I locked myself outside until someone was able to catch him. I just don't like how close they will fly at you before they change course. In the summer when we eat outside we get buzzed by them constantly.

We had raccoons climb down the chimney and live in our summer house. One of the gave birth and left the afterbirth for us. :eek: They ate part of the doors and left their paws prints everywhere.

Mice, rats, roaches, waterbugs, squirrels, and pigeons are a way of life in New York. Sometimes they get in your home. It's gross, but you just exterminate them. Well, not the squirrels or pigeons. They are part of a catch and release program.

Oh, do I have a rat story for you....be warned, this is long!
So, I used to live in this 100 year old house in Atlanta that was great for its location(literally 20 steps to the bars) except for the fact that it had NO HEAT and rats. We found this out because we kept hearing rustling in the kitchen late at night and finding wrapped food torn open. So, we call our exterminator and the guy comes out and puts down sticky traps at different parts of the kitchen, like under the stove and in the pantry.
Now, lets have a side bar that sticky traps do not KILL the mouse, they just make him stick to the trap.
Anyways, I wake up early one Saturday morning, ready for a run and a nice day and as I walk into the kitchen, I hear a high pitched squeal. I think its my roomate turning on her shower, as our pipes squeaked. But, alas, it was not the pipes but a BLACK BLOB(otherwise known as a RAT) STUCK TO THE PAPER, coming out halfway from the stove.
I SCREAM and go racing into my roomates room and wake her up. Neither of us has a clue what to do, so we call the exterminator and get a recording(it is a SATURDAY, of course!). Next, we call Animal Control and the woman on the phone laughs at me and tells me unless its road kill or a rabid animal, I need to call a pest removal service. So, I get on the phone and the first pest removal place says it will be $250 for emergency removal. I hang up and keep on going down the line till I find Vinnie with SE Pest Removal who says he will do it for $50, but it will be about 2 hours. We say fine and spend 3 hours(he was late!) listening to a rodent scream. It was the WORST!!
Finally, Vinnie arrives and it takes him about 3 seconds to rip the paper off of the floor and put the rat in a humane trap to be released.
The funniest part was we had a For Rent sign in our front yard(we were moving out in 2 weeks) and Vinnie asked us why we were leaving such a great house. Um, you just removed a HALF DEAD RAT from my floor???? Why the hell do you THINK we are moving.
I HATE RATS!!!

Re: I am traumatized!
 

Could you imagine if you had sat down to take care of business and were peeing, but it didnt sound right, and it sounded like you were peeing on a carpet...but it was the mouse.

Re: Re: I am traumatized!
 

oh.my.god.

When I was very little, we lived in Miami for a few years while my dad finished his degree. My mom was still so traumatized by the flying palmetto bugs that once he graduated, she swore she'd never again set foot in Florida.

I'd always assumed we had those creatures in our apartment because we were poor and lived in a nasty, dilapidated place. Regular people have those in their houses too? :eek:

A) I did NOT know that roaches can FLY!!! Now I have a whole new facet of phobia added to my life!!! *shudder*


B) I used those, and they are HORRIBLE!!!! In my case, I had just tiny little Beatrix Potter type mice who looked up at me with big, sad eyes. I couldn't find anything to pick it up with, so I ended up using silver pastry tongs to pick up the darn thing, put it in a bag and tried to suffocate it. (My fiance says he would have paid very real money to see me do this!) Anyhow, I had to get him to come over and drown the poor thing so he wouldn't suffer.

I hate those slam-bang traps, but they really are more humane. Especially the ones that you don't even have to see the little mousey body afterwards. blech.

This is how you should use a glue trap. When the mouse is stuck, you smash it with a something big and heavy like a telephone book. I know it is easier said than done, but that's what the instruction said.

I hope that you threw out the pastry tongs after you used them on a mouse. :eek:

This thread is grossing me out now.

I meant to add that I did indeed toss the pastry tongs afterwards, although it was heartbreaking to do to sterling. Do I have to tell you what I got for my birthday that year? Yep, a new set - of tongs, not mice!!!!

Oh, yes. You are not a real Floridian unless you've found a palmetto bug or lizard in your house. You will usually find them inside your home during the rainy season since they want to go someplace dry.
My roommate's dog LOVES lizards so whenever we find one we're like, "Buddy, look! A lizard!" Buddy goes running over to it, picks up in his mouth and shakes the thing until its dead. I do feel bad since lizards are harmless but they scare the crap out of me when I'm walking through the house and they dart out at me.

Last year when I was living in my apartment, there was a HUGE frog in my bedroom. I was sitting in my room when I heard a thud against my wall. I saw Mr. Froggy hopping around. I screamed and ran into my roommate's room. I made sure to stuff the bottom of the door with pillows so the frog couldn't get in there. I called my roommate (who was in class) and begged her to come home and dispose of the frog. Thankfully, my roommate is ok when it comes to frogs, lizards, and rodents. I'm not but I'm ok with the palmetto bugs. She grabbed some tupperware, scooped up the frog, and put him outside. We threw out the tupperware.

You guys have NO idea how much this thread made me laugh!!!

Ok, got a little story of my own.

So I hadn't been home in weeks, and I finally got home to see my boyfriend. We're downstairs in the basement, and we're starting to get a bit "frisky" if you know what I'm getting at. All of a sudden, I look up at the cieling and I see THIS!
http://www.richard-seaman.com/Wallpa...eCentipede.jpg

It's an effing HOUSE CENTIPEDE!! My boyfriend freaked the hell out as well, grabbed one of my mom's workout tapes and tried to smash it on the cieling, but it fell and started to scamper away...and let me tell you, those suckers are FAST! But my boyfriend finally ended up getting it. eeeeeeeeeew.

We moved into our new house, and discovered there were some mice.

Daughter #1 insisted on HUMANE TRAPS. You know the kind the mouse crawls in and then the door closes and you can take it out and dump it.

Trap catches mousey...stupid Mr Sageofages wants to show it off to spawnlings "see look at the mouse that is alive!". Shows the trap to spawnlings tipping it around to see from all sides. Somehow mousey gets loose in the livingroom.

Daughters SCREAM...son shrieks. Sageofages is NOT happy. Mousey is scurrying around the livingroom floor from sofa to chair and back and forth. Daughters scream more and jump on furniture, standing there telling Mr. Sagesofages to protect them from 2 ounce killer mousey. Mr Sageofages is trying to figure out how to catch mousey. Son is hysterical and crying as he cowers standing on back of couch. Sageofages is even more UNHAPPY. Mousey has run a livingroom marathon at this point.

Mr. Sageofages gets the CATS. Daughters scream some more at the thought of cats eating mousey. Cats see mousey and the chase is on. (cue chase music and screeching tire and toenail sounds) Dog sees cats trying to corner mousey and want to get in the action. Son is sobbing "don't let Spike eat the mousey" Daughter #1 is crying "don't kill the mouse, it is just a baby" (who cares!)

Mousey has circled the room enough to make it transatlantic at this point. Takes refuge under the entertainment center. Cats assume the siege positions. Dog is barking at the floor.

Sageofages says "enough!!!" gets kill trap and yummy peanut butter, sends redeyed snotty nose spawnlings to their rooms.

Twenty minutes later, mousey is in heaven and calm returns.

oh good god.

That sucks for mice and rats then. They're just a bushy tail away. :( Keep trying little squeaker, you'll make it.

Oh the irony...
 

All of my research is dealing with mice... Let's just say, the PETA people would not like me... But, if they wanna FCUK with me, I am insured by Smith and Wesson... I digress...

So a few years ago, I lived in SoCal... My mom decided to have a birthday party for me but invited all her friends... My folks have a pool and it was around Labor Day weekend when she had my party... It was a nice warm evening and everyone was outside talking having a good time. Then out of the corner from the backside of the house ran this little gray furry thing that immediately jumped into my folks pool... It started swimming around and found a way to get on this crawl space between the spa and the regular pool. Me, I was going to grap it and "euthanize it by cervical dislocation"... But someone got the pool net and scooped it up. We had it hanging over the pool like as if what to do... All the afraid of bizarre animal folks were freaking out (like my mom and brother)--whereas all the health practioners were like, what's the best way to get rid of this varmit... I was down for the full euthanization--but others were like whatever... So the guy that had the net just threw it in someone elses backyard where there are dogs and cats...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last year, my husband the vet and I were visiting my folks (same house) and speaking to my visiting grandmother... Now, just to let you know, the PETA people DEFINITELY DO NOT LIKE my husband--'cuz he's dealing with the regulatory affairs for the humane care of ALL research related animals although is specialty is aquatic animals... So basically, when any animal gets sick in our facilities he's the person who has the say so to euthanize those animals--he makes the call... So here we are, having a discussion with my grandmother when some pigeon decided to fly into a window--thus committing suicide--and falls to the ground... Again, my mom freaks... My dad is clueless... My grandmother could care less... And my husband--well, he goes and wants to necropsy (like autopsy but on an animal--that's the official term) the dayum thing... He goes out, takes a pin, lifts of the wing, analyzes its injuries and makes the diagnosis... :rolleyes:... Then he wraps it up--in paper towels and puts it in a plastic bag, ties it off and throws it in the trash can...



So the official AALAAC accredited IACUC approved procedure to remove carcasses (dead mammals) is:

Put on rubber gloves

Remove carcass with paper towels and/or plastic bags

Put into another plastic bag, then into a paper bag if you have one

And set it outside by your trash and call animal control to come pick it up...

Why? Because animal control may be doing animal studies of "vectors" that go around into houses that may or may not be carrying diseases. And they may want to test for those items.

Catching the vectors alive is very difficult and should be done humanely since these kinds of things bite... Just let an exterminator or "qualified and approved" animal technician do that...

As far as removing the "vectors" not coming into the house... Well, traps work... Boric acid around your house works... The diazonine (sp.) will remove the insects--ants in particular... You have to keep your house sterilely clean--barely any nooks and crannies for animals to thrive there... And they are looking for food and water. The food they like is sugary, but they also like the starches... So keep most of your sugar items--like cereal in the refrigerator... Make sure stacks of newspapers are removed regularly. Keep other items encased in strong plastic containers. And keep water leaks to a minimum. If you have pets, minimize the amount of food area that they eat in. And pets usually do not eat in food if other animals eat there too... Those are the kinds of things if you want to minimize the number of nusiances...

I had no idea my story would span so many other interesting horror stories today! :)

I'm still a little timid about the bathroom... but I'm sure you can understand why!

I have never seen a bug so terrifying.

I will have nightmares about that horrible thing.:eek:

I grew up in Florida and I live in NYC now. NOTHING can make me become "ok" with fricking cockroaches/waterbugs/palmetto bugs.

I can handle everything else! Snakes, mice, rats, spiders--I'm okay with.

I can't even read the rest of the thread. That picture just did me in.


______/\_____________________


Call the coroner, I'm gone. :eek:

I'm sorry, but that is one of the funnier "mousey goes to heaven" stories I've ever read! I was really lmao!!!


I did not even try to look at that centipede or whatever. They are disgusting creatures that shouldn't have been let on the Ark!! Yes, I too would have had major nightmares if I had.



adpiucf - shall I send a crate of depends your way? Being in geriatrics & all, we get them in major bulk!

There are wetlands behind my house, so in warm weather it's pretty much bug city. I'm not too squeamish to dispatch post-haste anything with six or eight legs. My husband calls ME to dispatch bugs!

Mammals are another issue... When I was in college, most of the dorms (including mine) had a problem with mice. One morning I walked into my suite kitchen, half awake, to fix breakfast, and Jerry the mouse went scurrying across the floor in front of me. I woke up in a hurry! I contacted the house manager, but he would only put out those sticky traps. Thanks, that's just what I need, a half-dead mouse stuck to a trap in my suite lounge, screaming for its life...

Cats (actually, all pets other than fish) were forbidden in the dorms, but a few people in my building had them anyway. Notice that the suites with resident cats never had problems with mice... I knew I should have gotten a cat!

I discovered a worse problem than the mice, the hard way. I was on my way back from lab at 3am one night when I heard a rustling in the bushes. I saw something the size of a cat, and I had just gotten through thinking "aww, a kitty" when the "kitty" emerged from the bushes and turned out to be a RIVER RAT!!! Those things are immense! I think I broke the sound barrier running back to my dorm...!

They're all God's creatures but if I see an icky one in my place all bets are off.

Never go rent the movie Willard. It will creep you out.

Thanks for the pic of the centipede, I saw a one every once in awhile at an old apartment and never knew what it was.

Ugh, let me also mention that those house centipedes like dark wet spaces....a'la my darkroom. I get super freaked out when I'm in there working alone. I always try to bring one of the dogs in there with me, that's how afraid I am of them. CREEP tastic.

I was just pissed because it ruined the mood between my boy and I :(

What she said! Rodents scare the isht outta me! So do snakes. I hate spiders and roaches too :eek:

Thanks for the offer to send Depends, but I spent an hour cleaning my very tiny bathroom last night with all sorts of disinfectant and bleach (I'm a clean freak, so the idea of having creepy crawlies in the house is not fun!), and I think I finally kicked my toilet fears...

Not to stress you all even more over the centipede...keep in mind two things....

If you have centipedes, you won't have roaches, as they feed on those nasty icky disgusting roaches!!!

Centipedes *do* bite and the bite is really really nasty. (Imagine something like that nibbling on sweet roach flesh, it has to be industrial strength!)

Given my choice, I take the centipedes.

My dad the dentist...
 

So at my dad's dental office, some old "bag" lady opened her 1972 black purse and all the roaches ran out of there into his office... So here go the roach motels...

Then somehow a mouse got into the office and one of the dental assistants caught it with a broom and told my dad to do "something"... My dad "stepped" on it and squashed it like a bug... An unapproved usage of euthanasia...

Once while walking to my dorm room in California, my folks and I were walking through one of the pathways and this little green reptilian head "peeped" up--it was somebody's pet snake... Freaked my mom out...

Then finally, has anyone had larger animals roaming their neighborhoods???

Well at my mom's house, it had a really stinky smell... The smell persisted all day long... Later that afternoon, my folks walked around the house and there was some black and white fur laying under the fence... It appears that a skunk tried to go through the fence, but it was so fat that it could not get through the fence!!! So there a scratch marks on the fence... Then the thing died... It looked like his little skunk buddies tried to push him through...

And at my current housing location, my husband and I have seen one coyote roaming the streets at least 3 months ago... And since that time, posters of missing cats and dogs have been up a long time... Oh well...

My son got a centipede bite once, under his eye, when he was only like 4 years old. He got a bump the size of a golf ball under his eye because it was infected. The doctor said it was probably a centipede because they are such dirty bugs, they would cause the infection.

Mice... mice... mice.. When I was still married, they started building new houses on the street behind ours. Suddenly, I started seeing mice. I could sit at the kitchen table at night and watch them come from behind the dishwasher and go along the baseboard and scurry behind the fridge. We were going on vacation so we set traps before we left and got 3 mice while we were gone. Then the (now ex) hubby got the great idea to use the glue traps. We caught two with glue traps, but it was so gross to have this live squeaking thing struggling to get off the trap. I used a broom and long handled dustpan to dump the traps into the trash in the garage. One night, I watched 3 mice start their usual route along the baseboard and when each one go to the glue trap, they jumped right over it and kept going!!!! I insisted then that the cheapskate FINALLY call an exterminator, after screaming at the mice that night to "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!". The exterminator put some good poison out and we saw no more mice.. phew!

Dee