Hi Paul Sorry to hear of the problems. I’ve had some experience with the furry little ...... Your quest is multi layered. Supply, trap and restrict access. That’s the order of successfulness that I’ve experienced. There’s food for them evidently. Eliminating the food source is level one. I know you only have so much power to control such things in a school setting. A mouse needs food for it’s family and bedding to sleep in. The bedding is what the piano supplies them. My ex-wife thought peppermint oil or some such mint oil on a cotton swab worked to deter mice. Woodstream out of Lititz, PA makes a squeeze to set trap that I’ve never used but I have a few sitting on top of my water heater just in case I don’t want to use the traditional type. The advantage with the prior is safety. You can place one in the bottom of a piano without worry of injury to the casual human visitor. Cheese turns hard with age and I’ve found peanut butter to be longer lasting and more effective. I use the crunchy type and actually push a part of the nut into the bait platform making it hard for the mouse to remove. >From time to time they come around here hoping to set up shop. As soon as I see they’re calling cards I set a trap and within an hour I have my first one. By the end of a few days I have Mom, Dad and all the kids. Lately I’ve been lucky enough to catch Momma before she hatches. The gestation period is only a week or so I think and so replacement troops are easily called upon. My point here is to maintain your focus with daily rounds. I didn’t read your bio but if you’re there every day, check your traps, empty and resupply. It doesn’t take much of a hole for a mouse to pass through ........ half an inch/8 mm comes to mind. My kitchen is waiting for a pile of money to fix it up so there’s lots of holes with neon signs evidently inviting the dirty little stinkers into my life. It’s been my experience that mice don’t like aluminum foil. Stuff the holes with foil and they’ll dig a new one somewhere else. Installing a tin box cover over the pedal mech would eliminate that entry point. I’m constantly concerned about mice and squirrels getting into my shop ....... a separate building. I don’t eat any food out there and there’s no food garbage in my waste cans. Squirrels find their own food and make nests out of moving pads, boxes of felt supplies, and can chew through a piano in a matter of an hour or two. The rafter tails on the roof are a lasting record of how damaging they can be. I put up chicken wire and they chewed through that so I put up three layers of chicken wire and they finally stopped but I had to deal with at least two generations of squirrels to get them and their kids reprogrammed when I first moved here. Good luck. Lar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20121129/88a0b06d/attachment.htm>
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