5 Humane, Yet Effective, Ways to Get Rid of Mice

It's that time of year when our houses start to fill up with unwanted guests. If you would rather not kill the little creatures, even though they do show up uninvited and their droppings are an unhealthy mess, The Maids offers advice on how some folks deal humanely with such guests:

~> 1.) Susan Womersley, who lives in an old farmhouse in Topeka, Kansas, puts an empty box of peppermint tea in her paper recyclables and noticed the mouse activity dropped dramatically. Now she places a few squares of cotton cloth sprinkled with peppermint oil in the pantry, refreshing them as needed. " No mice, and it smells wonderful!" she reports.

~> 2.) Norn Noe of Vancover, Washington, places small, peppermint-soaked cotton balls around his kitchen and slips them into the walls behind plug sockets. " Twenty-four hours later, no sign of the mice at all," he reports.

~> 3.) About once a month, Milton Ammel of Parker, Kansas, mixes a half gallon of apple cider vinegar with 2 gallons of water and sprinkles it around the outside of his house. "We haven't seen mice around for a long time," he reports.

~> 4.) When Randy Orcutt of Hillsboro, Ohio, was having trouble with mice in his camper, he placed Bounce regular scent dryer sheets in the drawers and cabinets. " All the mice left quickly," he reports, but the generic sheets did not have the same effect.