<p>EWWWWWWW I don't remember any creatures in my dorms back in the day. The post about poop in the beds and in front of the beepy mouse repeller made my skin crawl (((((shudder))))))). I love animals in general but rodents are in a class of their own. </p>
<p>Now that I think about it I wonder why there wasn't more of this problem. My roommates and I were not tidy kids.</p>
<p>Re student 615 and dmd's posts. I remember as a kid my mom lifted the cat onto the kitchen counter (otherwise a no-no) where mom had cornered a mouse. When my mom released the mouse the cat watched it run away. In a related story we have a Boston Terrier and last fall we had a bit of a mouse problem in our house. I tried my mom's cat technique with the same result. The dog was confused, the mouse scurried away and I screamed and broke a glass.</p>
<p>This is creepy like the "bats in the dorm" thread.</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~shudder~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>DD1 had mice in her NYC apt just like everyone else. She and Roommate wanted to get cats. Neither are ever home. I bought several traps and told them to name them cat names and try to take of those first. They gave up on the cat idea. We also packed every opening with steel wool. No mice since then.</p>
<p>RE: Cockroaches. Get rid of all boxes and paper bags, especially from the grocery store. They lay eggs in the folds and seams and before you know it you have a problem.</p>
<p>Why don't your kids who have mice in their dorms put in a request for an exterminator? Exterminators can most likely see where the problem is coming from and get it under control. Sometimes after the rodent problem is eliminated, holes might have to be closed up to prevent a reinfestation. With so many allergic people, cats probably won't work in most dorms. Good luck to all. I would hate to have that problem.</p>
<p>In a dorm, the trouble is that you might be the cleanest kid on the planet, but the kid on the other side of your wall might be creating some sort of rodent heaven. Mice can often squeeze right under a door, or through some virtually invisible (or hidden by furniture, in the back of a closet, etc.) hole. Even if they can't get into the room, the scurrying-through-the-walls sound is no fun to listen to! So an exterminator has to address a dorm as a whole, and has to be brought in by the school. Sometimes this is no trouble, but I imagine that sometimes, red-tape can turn it into an obnoxious situation (and in either case, it's probably going to be a slow fix).</p>
<p>I had a mouse problem for one semester. Frankly, not something that was okay with me! I called maintenance, who immediately brought in humane traps and then came in to check/empty them periodically. I got a plug-in beepy thing and took cardboard boxes out of my room. Over winter break, the school had the dorm re-sealed and the problem went entirely away. The next year (same wonderful, beautiful, but old dorm), I had a short-lived ant problem. Not the whole dorm...just my room. I had a bathroom with tub/shower adjoining my room, and apparently the ants loved the water in the wall, which had my closet on the other side. So. Bathroom and closet full of ants. I called maintenance, who said that the exterminator would be on campus a few days later (apparently, he came on a weekly basis to take care of any issues), and they asked if I had anything I could do in the meantime, like get myself to Target for traps or spray. Nope. Later that evening, a maintenance worker showed up in my room with ant traps, apologizing left and right for the fact that I'd had to wait even a few hours! I think someone also came in to check for any leaks that might've been exacerbating the issue. The problem went away almost immediately.</p>
<p>I can't stand sharing my room with any living creature that isn't supposed to be in it. My parents' stories of roaches in their dorms (deep south) terrified me. But I went to a school that's known for having some of the nicest dorms in the country, and we still had issues. They were handled quite effectively, though, which made everything alright in the long run. I don't think I'd brush the idea off so lightly if I'd been told to tough it out!</p>
<p>Try googling a product called Rat Zapper ...</p>
<p>My mom's coworker's daughter is a soph @ GW and she swears by this device! Supposedly she had a terrible problem w/mice in her dorm room freshman year and now she recommends it to everyone. It's not an ultrasonic device and it doesn't use springs, glue or poison. It's a box trap that kills mice with electric current from batteries. It's not cheap (about $30) but she says it really does work.</p>
<p>One of the problems is that students sometimes "feel sorry" for the mice, thus preventing college exterminators from bringing in the heavy artillery. The real way to address a dorm problem is to liberally bait the entire building with mouse poison and kill the population, not try to trap them one by one.</p>
<p>And if you try to trap it, how do you get it to go into the trap? What if there is more than one? I have visions of colonies running around the walls! Will getting a cat scare them away? Or will it have to hunt them down one at a time!!!</p>
<p>I used the Rat Zapper for my mouse in the car problem. It killed the mouse by the next morning and is supposed to be humane. They will eat the electrical system right out of the car. I think interesteddad is right though, in general.</p>
<p>I have caught one in a paper bag before. The hard part is scooping up the bag and closing off the top before the mouse gets away.</p>
<p>ag54</p>
<p>With the Rat Zapper, you smear peanut butter on the back wall of the trap. With the paper bag, we put cheese in the back of the bag, I think.</p>
<p>ag54 - if you set traps place them where you see droppings or where you have seen the mouse running. If it is a sticky trap they will get caught when they try to run over it. The baited spring traps with food, we have placed in kitchen cabinets, along the baseboards and on top of the foundation wall in the basement.</p>
<p>This year we took a pro active approach and placed the small blocks of poison outside around the foundation. It is not recommended becasue it will kill, or make sick, any animal who eats it. We do not have pets and live in the country so neighbors' pets are not a concern. As the for squirrels, bunnies, and deer. Well, we have too many of those also so they will have to take their chances if they get that close to the house. First year in many - no field mice.</p>
<p>DS is at college in Boston and tells me that he sees rats-a-plenty, especially at night. He hasnt had a problem in his freshman dorm, but many of the upperclass dorms are in old buildings and are known to have problems.</p>
<p>This is most definitely my thread o the day with lots of good tips Im certain my son will need in the future:</p>
<p>metal containers for <em>all</em> food substances
steel wool stuffed in holes
no boxes or paper bags
the Rat Zapper</p>
<p>Reminds me of "Friendly" the name my now-college student gave to the field mouse in our new house when he was 3, we were able to capture it and release it into the woods of our yard in a day or so.</p>
<p>How timely. I sat here at the computer last night and realized the cold had finally driven a mouse inside for the first time in years. Despite various mouse families at times having lived in the compost pile, I haven't been troubled in years, as there are sufficient cats in the neighborhood, as well as two mostly indoor cats in my house. They've both been good mousers historically. But It's been awhile. Well, my two are falling down on the job. The female, a nervous sort, batted the little mouse around, followed it around the room, looking intrigued. I heard an occasional squeek, but the mouse seemed quite physically intact, though not especially fast moving. I went upstairs, and roused from my bed what I thought would be the big guns, uncle cat. He managed to look curious, but far from engaged. Cat and mouse games ensued, but my cats were clearly only interested in the entertainment value, rather than the food value! Too well fed, apparently. Finally, when I caught the two cats sitting on the carpet, staring at the mouse quietly sitting between them, I decided I'd had enough. Covered the mouse with a yogurt container, slipped a dustpan under, and threw him out into the snow. The mouse was cute, and I could imagine naming him 'Friendly' if feeling a little more friendly myself. I prefer to think in historical terms. These battles between rodents and humans have a long history, and I'll continue to stay on the side of my own species.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be naming the creature that has invaded "friendly" I ran out of the room like I'd encountered the boogy man!!! I want the invader out!!!</p>
<p>We had mice in our house, and after disposing of the gruesome results of a spring trap, I thought I'd try humane traps. The ones I bought are clear plastic rectangular boxes that close up when the mouse goes in. There were a couple of problems with this approach, though. When I first caught a mouse in one of these, I took it to a park to release it. The problem is that you have go open up the little box with your fingers, and then the mouse jumps out! Yahh! The next--and worse--problem is when I put another one of these traps down, and then forgot about it for weeks, maybe months. When I next saw it, inside was a mouse mummy. Boy, did I feel humane! But I will say that that was the last sign of mice--maybe that scared the rest of them off.</p>