How to fight mice on front line. A few basic methods

Author: Violetta Kirtoka

"There is nothing so refreshing in the morning as a mouse in your sleeping bag" - a real rodent plague on the front line has led to new jokes. And we asked the soldiers which product proved to be the best in the fight against these small pests

In October, the Ukrainian military had to open a second front - along the entire line of fire. In the dugouts and occupied abandoned houses, a battle for their own space began with mice, who ran away from the cold to where it was warm and there was food. And where do you always get the best food and comfortable living conditions? That's right - in the army. So now our soldiers are not only worried about the enemy, who is constantly attacking them but also about the plague of mice that hide in their sleeping bags, under blankets, in their backpacks. And everywhere else. We tried to find out what forces and methods help to get rid of rodents.

Soledar direction

-"There were years when there were many more mice than now," said Serge, a fighter with the 206th Territorial Defense Battalion. In 2016-2018, he served in a marine unit. "Sometimes they would come into our dugout, but mostly they would settle between the boards and the ground. Of course, we poisoned them, but in principle, we had a normal coexistence. In the summer of 16, I remember there was also an incursion. Either the fields were burning or something else happened... We had two or three cats in each dugout. The cats carried those headless mice to our sleeping bags. They gave them to us, showed us that they were working. It came to the point where you would take a mug, shake out the mouse shit, and pour yourself coffee or tea. Or you open the lid of a box with bread, shake the shit out of the loaf, cut off the edges, and eat it. That's how we coexisted. But the cats cleaned up the mouse population well then.

At the same time, a weasel, most likely, settled in the dugout where I lived. It killed almost all the mice in a week. But it was very noisy.

The mice urinated in my boots, and although I washed them well, I had to throw them away. Because after half a day of wearing them, the socks stink. There was no way to remove that smell.

And this fall, some gluttons came to us. They eat absolutely everything! Cables from starlinks, any wires, rubber boots and slippers, combat boots. They even ate gas masks! We had to replace them. They spoil everything.

If you hid cookies in your backpack, even well-packed ones, that's it! Consider it as if your property is not there. Everything will be chewed and destroyed. They huddle together as a family. I saw 15 mice living in one backpack.

When you sleep, they bite your fingers, ears, nose. Believe me, when a mouse runs across your face, it's not very pleasant. We sleep like that. You pull the sleeping bag up. You stick your nose out and wait... We have mice chewing through even the walls. We covered the hole with transparent tape and watched a horror movie: mouse teeth are trying to chew through the tape... They even climb the ceilings.

They even chew through water bottles. There is nothing that can be hidden so that they don't damage it.

What helps to fight? When the frost hit, there were fewer of these neighbors. And the poison! We lived in abandoned houses, tried sticky tapes. They didn't help much. But the poison "Tif" seems to work. There are much fewer mice. When I go out to the kitchen at night to smoke, one usually crawls around. It doesn't bother me. These animals are funny, ridiculous. If only there weren't so many of them! Before, you would turn on a flashlight and see a flock dispersing in different directions, jumping off the tables. We refused to use sticky tapes ourselves. The mouse sticks, squeaks. You feel sorry for it. It's already covered in glue, it won't survive even if you release it. How can you kill a defenseless animal with your own hands?

By the way, all our fighters talk about this. No one wants to take a sin on their souls and kill rodents, even if they are terribly annoying. The moment of killing should happen without direct human involvement. Our mice have also joined the enemy, and I hope they will be doing them as much harm as possible throughout the winter. So, our specialists who study enemy telegram channels and social networks found pictures of crucified mice, hanging... Nothing new - they torture all the living.

-"We tried all the means, including mousetraps and all kinds of devices. Only the poison "Tif" works. And once we brought some kind of mouse virus so that they would get infected themselves and the whole colony would get fatally ill. This also works. We also tried ultrasonic devices. But this machine gives a signal that I can also hear. It also makes me scared and fearful. I want to run away from that dugout," laughs Serge.

By the way. A weasel came to our dugout. She rustled and rustled, and on the third day - not a single mouse in the mousetrap! This is the best method. My comrade told me how he found the weasel: there was a small mouse-like animal lying on the floor. He picked it up and realized that it was a baby weasel. He breathed on the animal. The baby began to squeak. He found some milk or cream and began to pour it into the baby. He went away. My comrade gave him the name Mytiai. He lives in my pocket. And he gets very offended when people take him out in the cold. Once he was given a wounded mouse, the same size as a weasel. Mitiai just grabbed it and started tearing it apart. He is a hunter. 

Warning: profane language!

Vuhledar

Last year, near this city, mice were staging sabotage attacks that surprised our army. They chewed through the wires to the starlinks and gained antennas used by the operators to control the drones. We had to order new ones regularly. Still, there were not as many rodents as this year. At least they didn't settle in cars as actively!

-"It was a nightmare when I realized that I had mouse into my car," said a fighter with the 72nd Brigade, Canada. "I tried to get it out of there, but it didn't work...- I tried to smoke her out of there somehow, but no luck... Moreover, she invited her friends there as well. Sometimes you are driving and mice are stomping from place to place over your head. I was knocking on the ceiling like a neighbor. Most of all, I was afraid that they would chew on the wires in the car's mechanism. How did you get rid of the passengers? I used sticky tapes. It turned out to be an effective tool. I managed to catch five of them. Now the car is safe. However, my exclusive belongings - where can you find T-shirts and underpants for me, a 200-kilogram man? The same creatures decided to do us a favor and keep us company in our coal mining basements. They even needed staples for some reason. 

And what about cats? Our cat would catch one mouse a day and bring it to the cast-iron stove for some reason. Maybe he was conducting experiments to see if it would come back to life in the heat. Or maybe it was the place where the mouse cemetery was set up. And when we brought another captured mouse to the cats, they looked at us as if we were sick and moved closer to the sardine cans: what do you mean, mice? In our case, only various mousetraps and adhesive surfaces help. But nothing can knock out the mouse smell. And it's a bit of a nightmare.

Zaporizhzhia direction

-"The prolonged warm autumn has led to mice traveling in search of food, and for some reason, we were the last point," said 82nd Brigade fighter Shaman, "and these rodents have settled everywhere.  In dugouts, abandoned old houses where we lived or are living, in cars, they started to get into our cars. God forbid you leave any food or even something that looks like food. They eat everything. They chewed up the cords from the starlink, leaving us without connection. And they cost a lot of money. They chewed on medicines. It seemed that they should have died from those medicines, but they did not. The record for what the mice ate is a printer. They ate it from the inside! It was warm from the work. That's probably why they decided to make a nest there. And there wasn't much space, so they expanded their nest by eating up space.

We tried to poison them. We bought multi-colored tinder like small popcorn. In a few days, the mice had to turn their toes. I poured it near a folding-bed for one of our comrades, because it was near him that those mice were huddled at night. So I poured out a whole jar in a week, but there were no fewer mice. The poison disappeared, but they did not.

We had a similar situation in 2016 in Novooleksiivka near Crimea. But we succeeded when I was presented with an ammunition kit of cats for my birthday - there were 30 cats without a few. That's when we managed to get rid of the mice.

But there we had a rating to see who could catch a mouse in the most unexpected way. Our commander then shot a mouse with a shotgun - it was sitting brazenly on a water pipe. The mouse was executed, but the pipe remained intact! The deputy commander with a Makarov gun aimed at a running mouse. And Sasha stabbed the mouse with a fork while it was running. It was my personal rating of the most ferocious mouse death in the Armed Forces.

The shaman has provided us with a table of mice elimination, which he is carefully maintaining this fall

Avdiivka direction

-"In my observation, this mouse plague seems to be particularly fond of anything rubber," says a fighter who has been fighting since 2014 and has seen various waves of mouse plague. - Everything is gnawed away at. The most unexpected thing was a hand grenade launcher cover! I saw this at the weapons depot as well. I was most angry when I found chewed up packets of Celox in the first aid kit. This is an expensive drug to stop blood. One bite and that's it, you don't want to stick a drug chewed by a mouse into a wound. Do you know why they stuck their noses into the first aid kits? Because they either had a chocolate bar near them or in them, just in case. You know, hidden, in case of an withdrawal. You forget about them, but they give off a smell. And in search of chocolate, the mouse chews through everything in its path. It was similar in the first years of the war, in the 14th and 15th. But still, they didn't gnaw everything so badly.

I have also witnessed such damage to the defense forces: after training, the soldiers left a bird that can carry munitions in the warehouse. It was unnecessary for several days. Either the weather was bad, or other things were being done. When the drone was needed, it turned out that all the wires in it had been chewed to pieces. There was nothing to save! So mice need to be watched not only where people live, but also in all warehouses, in all rooms where something valuable is stored. Otherwise, this valuable thing may not exist.

I also had mice in my car. And why? Because I hid a bar of white chocolate behind the visor in the car. How did they smell it? But they climbed behind the paneling, made their way along the ceiling, and gnawed a hole right in front of the visor and got to that chocolate. One day, when I was tired, I remembered my hiding place. I thought: I'll eat it. I turn down the visor and see a hole from which a mouse is looking at me. It didn't even wink! The chocolate bar was just a foil rag! I had no more food in the car. So the mice left on their own.

I consider poison to be the best method of rodent control. Multi-colored grains. Mice eat them and run around for a few hours, after which they behave like drug addicts. And then they die. Some people say that when they die in inaccessible places, they stink. I never noticed. And cats, there is an opinion that if they eat such a mouse, they can get poisoned. But I myself observed a situation when a cat got a mouse in its claws, which no longer ran away, and walked staggeringly. It was obviously after poison. The cat caught it and ran to eat it. I went to see if he would eat it completely. And then we watched the cat for several days. Everything was fine. He didn't complain. He is still alive today. And I don't like sticky tape. I feel sorry for the mice, they squeak and suffer... Ultrasound doesn't work on so many rodents either. Only poison.

This video was taken a few days ago near Bakhmut. The mouse plague has been going on here for two months

The fight against mice is ongoing. As one fighter said: "We use all means. We use poisons, mouse traps. We make mousetraps out of oil cans. We are constantly fighting this internal enemy. When we catch a hundred of them, there are fewer of them." Another soldier said: "When you wake up at night to find yourself surrounded by mice, it's disgusting. But it is warm."

Violetta Kirtoka, Censor. NET