Lerots ??

[Gyn_Paul]

My stone house joins, and shares a wall with, my large stone barn. On the house side, the party wall is well-pointed exposed stonework downstairs, and plaster directly to the stone wall upstairs. The barn side seems to be sound but obviously not well enough because we have gnawing, tap-dancing, stone rolling noises from the middle of the wall.

The butt ends of the first floor joists go into the wall, and I suspect the noise we can hear is nest building around the end of the wood. I can't explain the volume any other way as - sitting in the house - you can't even hear the motor mower when it's running in the barn, the wall is so thick, but you can hear this (these) little monster(s) well enough.

Honestly, listening in the dead of night you'd swear the noise was directly above your head; 4 feet along from the corner, and 2 or 3 feet out into the room, except that it can't be because the downstairs has no proper ceiling, so the 'ceiling' as such is, in reality, the underside of the 1st floor bedroom floorboards. Standing in exactly that place in the bedroom, you'd swear it was under your feet.

Anyway, I've crawled all over the barn wall with a trusty can or 4 of foam filler and packets of poison and I'd swear there are no more holes, but the little ****** is STILL there each night (if I've walled him in, he's taking a damn long time to die!).

My questions is, does anyone know if they are suseptible to the ultrasonic kit for mice, and would it work any distance through stone?

Any other suggestions for ensuring a quiet night (short of demolishing the whole bloody wall) gratefully received.

Paul

(tired and emotional)

 

[Chardie]

Ear-plugs help!

[Jackie]

They could be loir or Glis glis, the edible dormouse. We have these and there have been quite a few posts about them on both this site and the Total France Forum. We don't use poison as it might also kill the owls that prey on them and put our cats at risk! We catch them in a two section rat trap, the one with the falling door into the second chamber. This works well when baited with fruit, we use apple halves which they love. Caught 32 this way over the last two years and they are released back into the wild in a wood some kilometres away. Tried ultrasonics and no good, several people have had the same experience. Despite all this we still have stirrings in the walls at night but we have baited the traps again so you never know we might get lucky and get them all......................John not Jackie 

PS Tried the foam filler but they go through that like a hot knife through butter, also tried mothballs and various sprays, no use at all!

[Gyn_Paul]

[quote]They could be loir or Glis glis, the edible dormouse. We have these and there have been quite a few posts about them on both this site and the Total France Forum. We don't use poison as it might also ...[/quote]

Actually ear plugs don't seem to help in this case: I'm an expert on earplugs (for reasons I won't detain you with just now) and even my strongest -70dB wax plugs aren't man enough to shut out this structural noise.  Never thought the day would come whenI missed the city with its constant background noise; seems the country is just too damn quiet sometmes!

John/Jackie - is there a name for this type of trap and have you any hints as to where to place them? Off to get a couple 1st thing tomorrow.

paul

[Jackie]

Sorry to be so slow in coming back to you on this but LF seems to take nearly two days to notify us of follow up posts at the moment!

The trap is made of wire mesh and is semi-circular with a flat bottom. Picture of one (Nasse a rat 40cm) at http://www.univers-eleveur.fr/catalogue_online/pieges_rats.htm We got ours at E. Leclerc but I have seen them in many different shops around here in Deux Sevres. It has two sections with a falling trap door between them. The bait (fruit) is placed in the second section and there is a little door at the end of this second section to allow the placing of bait and the eventual release of the occupant. We caught our first one of the season this morning and it is now running around the woods some kilometres from here. I just hope that it was not a female with babies that will now starve! A bit early for that I think but we have heard some activity in the walls for the last two weeks! There is a French saying “To sleep like a loir” which refers to their long hibernation period.

We have one trap in the grenier and another in the cellar. They can tunnel through the soft mortar that one often finds in these old houses and get through the smallest of spaces. In our case they dig down through the driveway next to the house and through the cellar wall! I have given up trying to block all the holes, as soon as you block one they dig another. They are about the size of a squirrel with a big bushy tail. You can see pics at http://www.glirarium.org/dormouse/photo/glis-glis.html

Good luck with the trap and I hope that you catch some soon……………..John