RM> > Mice are another story.. This year is very light on mice for some
  > > reason but last year at this time, just before the snow covers
  > > the ground seriously, I caught about 20 of them over a couple
  > > of weeks.. They happily live outside all summer but, come the
  > > cold weather, they come looking for warmer places to make a nest.

  > > So far this year I've only caught one..

MP>I wonder if that is a sign that the serious snow cover is not near yet?

Funny, possibly while I was writing this message I caught my second
mouse for this fall.. I checked the trap and there was a very fresh
one in there that same night..

Generally the snow is what stops them coming in. Once you start
getting temperatures down below 50f they start to look for ways
to get in to make their winter nest in a warmer place. They move
back outside when things warm up again in the spring suggesting
they don't really like being in the house. (More food outside?)

One thing most people don't know is that mice live in fairly
big colonies so if you catch a few, that will just be a small
part of the colonie in your area. They generally number over
50 to as many as 100 in one fairly small area covering just
a few thousand square feet.

That may not be quite the same within cities as it is in open
rural country like we have here.

One year I found a mouse had built a nest under the hood of my
pickup truck, so I set a trap under the hood, and when I checked
the next day I'd caught a mouse. I figured I should set the trap
again in case there were others, and sure enough the next day
I'd caught another mouse...  So, set it again just to be on
the safe side?  Long story short, after I caught my 17th mouse
I decided that the bait in my trap was just drawing them in so
I stopped setting the trap and they didn't come back..

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 * SLMR Rob  * It's the greedy gets taken
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