• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

using snake as mousers

tsst

tsst

Deuce is watching!
Anyone ever heard of someone using snakes to catch mice in their house?

My uncle (in his 60s) was telling me that when he was a kid his dad would catch garter snakes and let them go in the basement. They lived in an old farm house where the basement was dirt floor and only used for the furnace, storage and canning. I found it an interesting story.
 
I don't know that garter snakes is a good choice. I have a Honduran Milksnake that has been loose for about two months. And now that you mention it, I haven't seen a single mouse. Haven't seen any elephants either. Hmmmm
 
Well... I didn't get any mice during the year my adult snow corn was missing... However,
my parents have several large black snakes living under their house and under the siding of the house (they found them when replacing the old wooden stuff with vinal and told the guys to leave them alone...so they crawled further up the walls) and they still get some mice. So while they might help, they certainly don't catch them all. I would say it wouldn't hurt but chances are there are already snakes down there. :)
I remember when I was in college there was a news story about a college apartment building that found a boa in the walls. A kid had lost his baby boa several years previous, and the thing had grown quite fat on the city rats. Stayed warm in those old walls and thrived. Now how true the story is I can't say...but the snake was adopted out! LOL!
 
Well I don't know about my snakes but my dog is a great mouser! On another strange note, we used to have a mouse actually living in our snake room, what a dumb mouse.
 
In our previouse house (the one that burnt down in Oct. for those who remember) we had cute little fuzzie mice invading our home. We lived way out in the desert and still do. I tried to be humane and did the humane traps but the night I was letting the kids's chicken nuggets cool on the stove and I saw a head pop out and grab a nugget, that made me mad. When I saw mouse poop in my silverware drawer I declared war. I set traps and got a cat. The cat cleared the place and was such a great hunter. I would get a cat!
 
Tara, do you know what kind of mice they were. Cute little fuzzie mice in the desert sound like Deer mice. Deer mice are the known carrier of hantavirus
 
I have no idea Wade, all I know is they pissed me off. One crawled across my forehead one night and he had black fur. I felt like a vegan with a wanna be shot gun.
 
Funny you should ask this, because I was just thinking about it the other day! We've been finding evidence of mice in our laundry room for a few months and we can't figure out where the heck they're living or what they're eating, because we keep the dog food and stuff in mouse-proof containers, and haven't caught any in traps. The cat is totally useless unfortunately. She kills bugs, but not mice. She trapped a mouse once but all she did was play with it.

My mom thought they might be living in the wall between the closet in my dad's office and the laundry room. I suggested she get an adult corn to go after the mice but she said my dad probably wouldn't like the idea of a snake loose in the house. :p
 
I had a friend who had an old, dark, damp basement. She'd get leopard frogs down there! it wouldn't have surprised me at all that a garter could stay alive in her basement.
 
I've heard of Farmers in South America catching Boas and putting them in their grain silos.
Do you have a silo? lol
 
I think if you have a mouse problem, there are usually more mice than what you actually see. It would take a lot of snakes I think to remedy a mouse problem. Get a good 'ol barn cat.
 
For the record I don't have a mouse problem. It was just an interesting story my uncle told me from his childhood about my grandfather.
 
I "use" snakes at work for controlling rodents.
We have (had, really) brown norways at work. For several years it was a problem for me, they would chew wiring in our electric lifts and other equipment and cause problems that were very difficult to find.
For the last 10 years or so I have been on a crusade to keep as many elaphe obsoleta (and other snakes, but mainly the black rats) on or near the property as possible. All snakes are to be dealt with by me, no snake killing. If you don't like it, if it scares you, just walk away and call me. I move the ones with bad timing, the ones that don't leave the warehouse before the people get in. I also move the snakes in bad locations; forklift and truck areas, places where people work. All other snakes are left to do what they do.
I have not used poison or traps outside for several years, which was another goal of mine. In the winter I use poison inside the shop and warehouses for the occasional mouse or rat but it's nothing like the problem it was before.
Other people that have been there for a while have noticed and commented to me on the much smaller rodent population is now. Another plus, when moving snakes a few people have been able to get up-close to and some held snakes with me. A few people have changed their mind about snakes, and a few are now more curious than scared. There have been many positive results.
If anybody is thinking about releasing snakes as ratters/mousers in a place they didn't live previously, please don't. Only release animals that already live in the area, species that you have actually seen there in the wild. I wouldn't rely on a free-roaming non-indigenous snake's instincts to guide it to stay in a basement when it is warm out, it will probably leave then die in the winter. In the other extreme, you don't want to release non-indigenous snakes into an area where they might thrive and replace or crowd native species.
 
My dad grew up on a small family ranch in TX. ~His~ father carefully protected non-hots around the barn while exterminating any and all hots he found. The barn was home to whatever flavor of rat snake is native to that part of TX, and my father found several of them brumating around the property in the winter as a kid. His father told him to leave them alone! That plus barn cats who were good hunters kept the rodents at bay. His father had a line of cats who would preferentially hunt RATS rather than mice, BTW.
 
My brother and I growing up new of the general location of a big arse black snake or a bull snake most of the time...not hard to find. We would reguarly catch field mice under the hay bails when feeding the cattle, we placed the snake in a 55 gallon barrel and start tossing in mouse after mouse. We feed a bull snake something like 14 mice one day when cleaning out a grain bin...must have been like Thanksgiving lunch for him that day! After feeding we just layed the barrel on its side and watch our not so little friend slither away :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top