Your cat and dog and ultrasonic boxes.

[Jackie]

This is about Monsieur Loir and all his cousins, sisters and aunts, ultrasonic scaring boxes and your cat or dog. We have caught 10 loir so far this year compared with 21 last year, so are we winning or are they getting wise to the traps?

Been doing some research on ultrasonic/radiation scaring devices. You may remember I don't want to use poison for all sorts of reasons, we have cats and I don't want to poison the owls and other predators that feed on the loir. I have tried one of these ultrasonic boxes for a few days and the wall noises of scrabbling, humping, chasing and God knows what else did reduce while it was operating, it was set to squirt sound into the wall cavity and I moved it around a bit. It was also a bit colder so they may have just been a bit lethargic. 

Looking at the net I find that all those who sell these devices say they are wonderful, well they would, and all the no axe to grind reports say they don't really work and are a waste of time.

See http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/eb1663/eb1663.html 

The argument against ultrasonics and radiation boxes is that any noise may startle but why should Glis Glis (Loir) be more sensitive to ultrasonics than most other mammals as it would not seem to serve any purpose for them unless they are like rats. Baby rats emit distress calls up to 50kHz but studies show that rats soon get used to ultrasonic sounds and ignore them eventually. I have not found anything yet on the auditory range of loir that is helpful. Experiments at some university or other has shown, their words not mine, that feeding and breeding seems not to be affected by these noises. The variation in electromagnetic radiation from the house wiring, a big selling point by the manufacturers, is so small as to compare with normal household variations, or less, which clearly have no effect on their nervous systems of any importance or they would not still be there.

Pets are not supposed to be affected yet at least one researcher maintains that some cats and dogs have had their hearing affected by the high pitched noises that these boxes make after some time though not immediately. Have you such a box and how are your pets? One researcher though that in time the rodents would become used to any noise and would associate it with a location that had food available and would therefore eventually attract them. So where do we go from here? The latest sub-sonic boxes I would not have thought produce sufficient acoustic vibration to upset them and if it did it would upset us as well. I should have thought that it needs a few kilowatts of sub-sonics blasting away, just plain silly! This would not happen with these new boxes as they must be very low power and therefore not effective it is said! Any biologist care to comment?

Trapping works but I am sure will not get rid of them all, at some stage we must reach a balance point where they breed fast enough to compensate for the really thick ones caught by the traps. Blocking all entry points must help but we have found that they just dig new holes through the walls in the cellar and up under the gravel driveway. Every roof tile is a possible entry point and I cannot stick them all down. So what do you think folks......................John in 79 (Anyone want some furry friends?)

[I1]

Last winter I had a lot of success trapping mice in the house. First I tried the horrible sprint type (that kills them) and caught nothing. Then I tries the humane type (small cage with a snap down "door" and caught loads. Just using cheese I was cattching one or two each night (with two traps) until I started catching none. Got 20 plus in the end and was confident I got them all as they stopped being caught so suddenly i.e. some every night for around 2 weeks weeks (reliably), then none for several weeks (and I stopped putting out the traps).

[Jackie]

Thanks for the reply. I don't know much about the habits of mice, other than the white ones I used to breed as a kid and sell for 6 pence each to the pet shop who then sold them for 1 shilling and 6 pence each.

The loir (Glis glis) go into hibernation about this time of year here in 79 and last year we had trapped 21 of these and had thought that we too had got rid of them but we were proved wrong come the late spring! Unlike mice they seem like fruit best and apples in particular and like you we use a trap with a falling door designed for rats and they work well. Anyway good luck with the mice, were they field mice or the grey "town" mouse?

Regards................John in 79