Can mice eat this?

[thogan3]

I have been modeling in my back basement for nearly 10 years....never a mouse problem....tonight for the 1st time I noticed a bag of Woodlandsenics fine gray ballast with the bottom chewed open and the nearly full bag missing!?!? No other mouse signs anywhere......other bags of scenic materials around.....untouched!

[RonP]

Could be some nice bedding material

[domiluk]

I think I would buy a mouse trap you might be going to be a grandfather of little kidders or something.
or get a cat.[mobile mouse trap.]

[Eastern Roads]

If you get the mobile mouse trap as Mike calls it, the added benefit is the rodents smell the kitty cat and know their life expectancy is about to drop and find another domicile to inhabit/invade. Besides, cats are way easy to take care of, and the chicks dig them!! Other than that, take the good old fashioned snap traps and tie a piece of stale bread to the trip plate, then cover it in peanut butter. Then get your gloves on, cause you'll be busy cleaning them out. Don't ask me how I know,,,,

[Allegany2666]

About a year a go I go to the shelf where I keep wood from kit bashing/building and I pick up a piece of wood with little critter teeth marks in it and the ends are completely chewed GONE! Well if that wasn't bad enough I go over to a shelf that had the station that I WAS going to finish that night and the little S.O.B. ate part of the roof. I hope he choked on it.

Well I now declare war and set traps and I start catching Mickey and his cousins. Now my wife being the Ellie Mae Clampett type don't want me to harm the little critters, yeah ok. So if your like my wife Ellie Mae and don't want to see the little pecker with his head or neck smashed to a pulp what you do is bate your trap with peanut butter like Mike said (the little varmints can't resist it) and you slide the trap into a piece of PVC pipe and 2 or 3 inches around and cap one end. When you find one you pick up the tube trap and all and toss the little varmint in the trash. Funny thing is I haven't seen one tooth mark in any of my styrene buildings.
Oh and I now have a 120lb mobile mouse trap, a German Shepard who thinks he's a cat. Who cares as long as he gets the job done.
Oh and yes they will eat almost anything including your ballast which I bet isn't real stone if it is thats one bound up mouse you have there.

[TallDude]

I had a squirrel get into my house when i lived in Virginia... would run up and down the soffit under the eave.. well... the little guy decided to chew/scratch his way through the drywall ceiling.. then found a few trains.. and anything else interesting.. Talk about some damage!!

Was glad when i finally caught him (2 weeks later)

[Eastern Roads]

Last year in the fall, I started hearing noises at night in the house, I went searching, and found a squirrels nest in the attic just below the roof fan they chewed into. I set out the spring loaded rat traps (they're bigger than the mouse traps) as described earlier, and those guys were cleaned out in two days flat! Don't use the mouse traps, it only stuns them for a few minutes, and when they wake up they aren't happy campers anymore! Don't ask me how I know...
As far as Brian's little mouse catcher goes, those rodents are just
hor d'ouvre's for that puppy!

[TallDude]

I used a squirrel trap that catches them live, then drove them 10 miles away and dropped them off in the woods so they could terrorize someone else. Caught about 3 of them.

[abutt1]

NEVER let a cat near a layout! They have an oil in their paws that is absolutely the best insulating medium on the market. I learned that the hard way on one of my earliest, and largest layouts...and, of course, the little darlings loved to snuggle up in the tunnels. So guess where all the trains stopped?
I love my cats. But there's no such thing as a railroad cat in my basement.
Allan

[Allegany2666]

Kevin you trapping squirrels and transporting them out of town is an old guy trait........lol I know this becasue my crazy old man who is 78 makes it his life ambition to rid his neighborhood of squirrles by doing the same thing. I on the other hand have a swiming pool and thats all I'm gonna say about that part of it. Howard Zane has something like 7 cats in his house and one who resembles a small bear loves to sleep on his layout. Now I mainly have plywood and bench work but his layout is world class I would have to fry mr. kitty if it was me.