Let this be a lesson...

You know these hagen containers?
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/b...08-07_2234.jpg
Well at my local petstore, thats what they put my feeders in. Today I got one, and I brought it home. I had to go out right away and I didn't have time to feed it. I thought it should be ok in there. So when I get home, I learned the hard way, those can not contain a mouse for very long.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/b...08-07_2236.jpg
But LUCKILY, just as I was leaving my room, I decided to throw the box into an uninhabited tank I have.
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/b...08-07_2235.jpg
So when I came home, I found this:
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/b...08-07_2237.jpg
This could have been a horrible situation for me. I am glad I had that last little thought to put it in that tank...its scary how close I came to my first escaped feeder.

I'm posting this so people can learn from what I did, I understand I made a mistake so please don't negative rep me.

i know exactly what your talking about.. i learned that when i worked for a pet store, glad you didnt ahve a loose one

if it happens again, you can just get a large peice of cardboard with some peanut butter on the very edge.

Put the cardboard on the very edge of a coffee table or other low peice of furniture so that it's just balancing with the peanut butter on the far edge.

Put an empty garbage can or tank directly under the cardboard.

The mouse will go for the peanut butter as long as he can get onto the table, will throw the cardboard off balance and fall into the tank where you've got him secured...

Works every time, and usually within a few hours of the house being completely quiet... Best of all, it shouldn't harm the mouse at all.

wow thanks

No problem :)

We had a bit of a mouse problem over the winter, so I got a lot of practice finding the best humane way to catch them!!!

Peanut butter works great and the smell will attract them, but they also seem to like oreos if you feel like giving him a little sugar rush and a treat :)

Heh.. lucky break there. :)

I had something similar happen last night. I brought home two feeders rather than go back out the next day. I put them in a kritter keeper with food and a water bottle, but forgot to secure the bottle in the hole with tape. After feeding off one to Nagini, I was watching TV when I saw a little white thing scurry along the floor. Lucky for me it jumped into a plastic bag of fabric when I tried to grab it and I just grabbed the bag and got it back in the keeper, then secured every hole.

I guess we all have to learn lessons like that now and then. :D

Or you could buy a little "Kritter Keeper" and ask the employee at the pet store to throw the feeder in that.

One reason why I always bring my own plastic critter keeper to the pet store to pick up feeders.

Yep we always do too if we have buy a feeder. One "fun time" of hanging nearly upside down trying to grab a mouse under the front seat of a car was more than enough for me!

Oh, yeah. Never underestimate the power of mice or rats' teeth and jaws! You had to see what a pair of male rats (2 months old, at the time) did to a box I was "holding" them in. This was one of those thick boxes that ice cream bars come in. I thought they'd be fine while I cleaned their real enclosure...um, nope! Their work was very impressive, though, I must say!! :D

The one time I stopped into my local petstore with OUT my critter keeper, they were out of boxes and get this - put the mice into an empty Krispy Kreme box. The kind with the celophane on it for viewing the donuts. Celophane does not hold mice in well. I'm driving with the mice in the seat next to me, thumping noses to keep them in the box.


Luckily, I live less than a mile from this pet store, but I rushed in the house and dumped glaze covered mice into the critter keeper. I was not amused!

OMG...a donut box...

If I don't have my critter keeper, they usually put the mice/rats in double layer paper bags. Naturally, you have to get them home fast that way...which is why I never forget my keeper :)

wow thank god he didnt get loose in the house

Another problem with the little cardboard boxes is that they don't have very good air flow. I actually had some mice die on the way home once because the pet store put 4 mice in a box, by the time I got home I had a couple of dead ones and everyone was soaked in sweat. A plastic pet carrier is a very good investment if you buy a lot of feeder mice.

Yet another good reason to breed your own.

Mark

Hehe....funny stories!


Once, when I was living in Tucson, I went to the pet store and picked up a mouse and a small rat for feeding my snakies. They always put them in little paper bags with the top stapled shut and then put those in a plastic shopping bag. Not very secure at all, but good enough for me to get home.

Well....this one day, I walked out of the store and saw that the tire on my van was totally flat! I changed it out with the spare that wasn't in much better shape and limped to the nearest tire-change place, which was Sears. It was going to take them over an hour to get to my tire, so I took my bag of rodents (too hot outside, and the last thing I wanted was escaped rodents in the van!) The whole time, I was SO paranoid about them chewing through and escaping into the crowded food court.....while at the same time amusing myself by imagining how people would react to scampering rodents under their feet! :halohorn:

I'd give the bag a little thump every now and then if it sounded like they were chewing and I managed to survive the ordeal and not have any escapes. Whew!

I've taken stapled paper bags of mice into the grocery store (shhhh, don't tell!) before when I've forgotten one thing on my way home from a feeder run...

My worst 'bringing feeders home' story is this. I usually bring two plastic shoeboxes with holes with me on feeders run. That particular day, one tub was to hold a small rat and a hopper mouse. They put the hopper in a double brown paper and the rat rogether in the tub - usually never a problem.

Got home to find that the mouse had eaten his way through the bag...and the rat had eaten his way through the mouse. *sigh*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cassandra

I've taken stapled paper bags of mice into the grocery store (shhhh, don't tell!) before when I've forgotten one thing on my way home from a feeder run...

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Haha... I snuck my pet rat in a couple times on the way home from the vet because it was on the way... I always felt like I was doing something super wrong... I stopped in on my way home with my third pet rat as well... The friend I was with kept joking that we should just let him go and see what happened!!! But then we got by the 'household' aisle with all the rodent traps and I decided there was no question of what would.

It is completely ridiculous that they even put rodents into cardboard boxes like that. It is like putting a fish into a plastic bag with holes.

Yikes! Glad it didn't go AWOL!

Will the peanut butter, trash can thing work for wild rats or would they be able to climb out? I saw a rat in my house the other night and, as we all know, where there's one there is generally 1000 :O and I don't want it/them as house mates.

Oh and just in case anyone asks, NO, I would not feed it to my snakes. It would be taken out and relocated.... far from my house.

It's worked for all the wild mice in my past three homes... Just make sure that it's a tall smooth garbage can, and that the cardboard isn't big enough to form a ramp when it falls in, but big enough to hand about 5 - 6" over the edge of the table.

Make sure to release them at least 1.5 miles from your house or they'll just get back in as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shadowspider

Yikes! Glad it didn't go AWOL!

Will the peanut butter, trash can thing work for wild rats or would they be able to climb out? I saw a rat in my house the other night and, as we all know, where there's one there is generally 1000 :O and I don't want it/them as house mates.

Oh and just in case anyone asks, NO, I would not feed it to my snakes. It would be taken out and relocated.... far from my house.

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Oh, I have another humane design involving a coffee can, a screen and a rat trap that I found online which also works, but the cardboard one is just way easier... Involves no assembly and pretty much zero possibility of an injury to the rat, whereas the coffee can with screen top method could conceivable snap shut on the rat's tail.

Would a standard, plastic tall kitchen trash can work or do you think they'd be able to grip with their claws and climb out?
If I don't have to poison it/them then have dead rat(s) somewhere in my house, I'd rather not. :)

Should work! I just used a standard platic bathroom one for my mouse.

Plus, you may also hear it fall in, in which case you just go and get it right away...

In all seriousness, I've never had to wait more than 4 hours to catch one.

And the inhumane trap reluctance I understand... My old landlord put one in my fruit cellar once without me knowing (I just told them I had mice)... I walked in one day to a tail hanging infront of my face and had to call the boyfriend to remove it... Then about 4 weeks later there was an odd smell in there... Turns out he'd hidden two traps in the same spot and I didn't know... Again, thanks to the boyfriend... I was angry with the landlord, was just going to go with humane options.

Oh... I've also used our extra 20 gallon aquarium, it works great :)

I have one of those but it has a 10" tarantula currently residing in it. :D
I have a lot of standard 10 gallon tanks but I don't know if those would be tall enough that a rat would not be able to get out.

What's the height on them? Contrary to some belief, rats aren't really the greatest jumpers out there...

Look at all the people on the feeder page who have a couple stowed away in uncovered tanks! As long as there isn't something he can climb on, you should be good.

The 10s are 12" high