How To Kill Mice In The Stove

By  Paul Dohrman

Things Needed

  • Cotton balls

  • Pepperment oil

  • Spackling paste (heavy)

  • Spackling spatula (wider than the mouse hole)

  • Glue trap

Tip

Glue traps rarely work. The mice just hop over them. But if their lives are in danger (in this case from being cooked!), they can lose their balance during a frantic escape and get caught on a glue trap.

Do not expect traps or bait to work with mice in a stove. They are too close to nicer food in your kitchen to bother with eating baits. Plus, you don't need poisons around your food preparation area.

Mice can find a home in ovens that are never turned on. They are attracted to the warmth of the pilot lights, the food crumbs left in the stove, and the proximity to other food in the kitchen. The strategy for elimination is to close off any mouse holes behind the stove, and then to turn on the stove to force the mice out. The purpose of plugging the hole first is to force any fleeing mice to scamper to other holes that you didn't know about.

Step 1

Pull the stove out to look for a hole behind the stove, including too much gap around any gas intake hose. If you see a hole, pull the stove all the way out so you can get behind the stove to patch it.

Step 2

Pull the stove out fully by first turning the valve on the gas intake hose (if the stove is gas-powered). Then use two wrenches or two pliers to unscrew the hose's screw coupling, to be found closer to the stove than the turnoff valve.

Step 3

Soak a few cotton balls with pure peppermint oil. Drug stores rarely have it, but it can be purchased online. Insert the cotton balls into the mouse hole.

Step 4

Insert steel wool. Then cover the steel wool with spackling paste and use the spatula to smooth it.

Step 5

Tape cardboard over the spackling while it dries, to protect it from mice coming out of the oven.

Step 6

Place mouse glue traps around the stove. Turn on the oven (as opposed to the stovetop burners, which won't bother the mice). Turn on the broiler at the bottom if there is one. The temperature will be hotter and heat more of the appliance than the oven.

Step 7

Follow any escaping mice that make it past the glue traps to any more mouse holes you may not know of. Fill those holes with peppermint oil, steel wool and spackling as well.

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