Dealing with dead mice - risk of disease?

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Globalti

Legendary Member
The attic in the holiday cottage we're using as temporary accommodation is absolutely filthy with mouse droppings and stinks of mouse urine. Last night I set three traps up there and caught a large mouse, which I removed this morning. The piley jacket I wore stinks of mouse urine so I've washed it and my trousers and this morning I wore a mask, vinyl gloves and went up in an old T shirt and pants, which I'm also washing. Then I had a shower.

There are some nasty diseases you can get from mouse droppings and dead bodies - has anybody ever caught anything or known anybody who did? The rodent control guys didn't seem to be worried when they came.
 
Who owns the place?
It's their responsibility to sort it.
Environmental Health at the council will jump at the chance to get involved.
 
Practise good hygiene and you will be fine. As an aside is there a source of food for the mice? If you can find it and remove the food source it will go a long way to solving the problem. keep setting the traps, bait them with smeared on chocolate until you have a week without a kill.
 

Dave7

Legendary Member
Location
Cheshire
Globalti...... I have nothing positive to offer but do wonder how you know what mouse urine smells like.
Hope you get it sorted.
We have what I assume are mouse droppings in the attic but traps have failed to catch anything.
 
OP
OP
Globalti

Globalti

Legendary Member
The attic stinks of dried urine, some of the smell has even got into one of the bedrooms, which we are using for storage. I am quite worried about even going up there to check the traps. My first trap caught a large mouse last night ten minutes after we went to bed, I heard the snap then a commotion then the mouse shuddering as it died.

The landlord has instructed the pest controllers to come but they are mad busy at this time of year. They came a month ago and set bait, a mouse died and our bedroom absolutely stank for two weeks.

I'm already suffering a mental breakdown so this is doing me no good at all. Thank God our cat is lodging with us, which is probably what's keeping the mice out of the kitchen as they will be smelling her. Everyone has got mice at this time of year.
 

delb0y

Legendary Member
Location
Quedgeley, Glos
Had mice in the garage a few years back. Always felt guilty about killing them in traps, but I did. Probably a dozen in all. And I never caught anything (that I'm aware of) from handling the bodies. Turned out that it was my fishing bait (bags of boilies and groundbait) that had lured them in to the garage.
 

welsh dragon

Thanks but no thanks. I think I'll pass.
Although unpleasant, you shoukd be OK.

Rats are another thing though as weils disease can be caught from rats urinating on tin cans, then passers by pick the cans up and end up suffering.

As above, practise good hygiene, wear old clothes, take them off as soon as you exit the loft, wear a mask, shower and you will be fine.

Feed your cat a little less food. It might be inclined to hunt more and above all else do not leave any food even crumbs lying around. And the pest control person might use poison in which case you can't send your cat up Into the loft.
 

G3CWI

Veteran
Location
Macclesfield
Who owns the place?
It's their responsibility to sort it.
Environmental Health at the council will jump at the chance to get involved.
EH are rather busy with other issues at the moment.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Double bag on hands before emptying the trap. Then use the same two bags to dispose of them. Fastening both bags as you go.
 

BoldonLad

Not part of the Elite
Location
South Tyneside
This does not help you, but, may amuse:

We once hired a Gite, in France, with Daughter, SiL, and grand children.

There were lots of mice.

Myself and SiL decided not to mention anything to the wives.

First problem was to explain to the situation to the owner, in our schoolboy French. We eventually got the message across and were presented with a couple of mouse-traps.

Using chocolate as bait, we caught about six mice, over the next few days, without "the wives" being any the wiser.

One evening, we were having a barbecue when a particularly athletic mouse began running around the window frame of the French Windows onto the patio. The wives were not amused. ;)
 

ColinJ

Puzzle game procrastinator!
I wouldn't have been amused at being patronised by being called 'the wife' nor by having secrets kept from me. :whistle:
"Hey, woman, there's a rodent in there with your name on it!" :whistle:

(I've never been married, but in that situation I imagine that I would schedule a meeting to determine which of us was most like to be able to solve the infestation with the minimum of stress/fuss. And I would ask her to phone me when she had finished and it was safe for me to come back to the house! :laugh:)
 
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