Rat or mouse in outdoor enclosure

jamest0o0

Chameleon Enthusiast
This morning I found this guy trapped in my cham's enclosure. Looked large to be a mouse. This worries me because rats will attack chameleons given the chance. I live in the woods so there are all sorts of wild animals around... any thoughts?
 

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Take a trip to home depot/ any hardware store that is local to you and buy a few feet of mesh and some zip ties and cover the cage. rodents can get through surprisingly small gaps. And possibly even pick up some rodent poison and place it around the yard ?
 
This morning I found this guy trapped in my cham's enclosure. Looked large to be a mouse. This worries me because rats will attack chameleons given the chance. I live in the woods so there are all sorts of wild animals around... any thoughts?

Take that thing Far Far Far away, and get a mask and your family out. Get any poop that thing laid out of your house, now.

That is a deer mouse, they carry the Hantavirus, it is in their fecal, and becomes airborne and will kill you. 36% fatality rate for people that get infected and get treatment.

They normally don't come inside of houses, that's strange it did, it isn't nesscarily infected, but if it is, it's bad. A friend of mine was an Exterminator, and he got them under his house and went down there to spray and he passed away. That shit is no joke.

You need to approach this with extreme caution and take this very seriously.
 

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Oh the enclosure is outside. Phew. I just saw the deer mouse and went full on panic.

Okay that makes more sense. Please tell me you didn't touch the mouse.

I would get a respritrator, or call an expert. That Viv needs everything out of it scrapped, and cleaned safely.

I just want to strain again, be extremely careful James. This shit is no joke, that thing is Dangerous

I would also call a Exterminator and have your property treated, just in case. You don't not want those things anywhere around you.
 
Not just a mouse, A deer mouse!

You can tell by it's size and coloring. House mice and field mice are grey/brown, they do not have that white belly, and are not as Large as Deer Mice.

They can squeeze through holes and gaps the size of a Dime. So after effective cleaning (safely) you need to ensure there is no hole bigger than the size of a pencil. They eat bugs, and seek shelter in covered areas like a Cham Viv, that are still outdoors.

You need to replace your mesh with 1/4 size instead of the 1/2 inch you have currently.

Under houses, in sheds, fences with holes, ect are other likely locations.



See that's cute. This deer mouse is the devil incarnate.
 
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Not just a mouse, A deer mouse!

You can tell by it's size and coloring. House mice and field mice are grey/brown, they do not have that white belly, and are not as Large as Deer Mice.

They can squeeze through holes and gaps the size of a Dime. So after effective cleaning (safely) you need to ensure there is no hole bigger than the size of a pencil. They eat bugs, and seek shelter in covered areas like a Cham Viv, that are still outdoors.

You need to replace your mesh with 1/4 size instead of the 1/2 inch you have currently.

Under houses, in sheds, fences with holes, ect are other likely locations.




See that's cute. This deer mouse is the devil incarnate.
I never knew the deer mouse was so bad. Thanks for letting us know.
 
I never knew the deer mouse was so bad. Thanks for letting us know.

They are not all infected, alot of them are though. If they are a carrier, of Hantavirus and you get infected it's like playing the lottery. Even with treatment 36-38% (depending what site you read) of people still die.

The town we live in is full of them, so people make a big deal about it around here. Even when we get a house mouse my wife freaks out.

It's not even really the fecal or urate that is dangerous. It's touching the dead mouse, or disturbing it, and touching or disturbing the fecal/urates. When its disturbed it becomes Airborne, you breath it in, and get infected.


Your first photo, is showing the white belly prominently. House and field mice, belly is usually the same color as the rest of the mouse. If PAs mice have a light undercoat that isn't white, it could be a different type of Field mouse than we have in AZ.
 
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Not just a mouse, A deer mouse!

You can tell by it's size and coloring. House mice and field mice are grey/brown, they do not have that white belly, and are not as Large as Deer Mice.

They can squeeze through holes and gaps the size of a Dime. So after effective cleaning (safely) you need to ensure there is no hole bigger than the size of a pencil. They eat bugs, and seek shelter in covered areas like a Cham Viv, that are still outdoors.

You need to replace your mesh with 1/4 size instead of the 1/2 inch you have currently.

Under houses, in sheds, fences with holes, ect are other likely locations.




See that's cute. This deer mouse is the devil incarnate.

So not to underplay this, as I wasn't aware of the severity, but there are a lot of woods here. Removing it I feel wouldn't do anything, as they're all around. There'a also a lot of people around here that live in the woods. I read something that there's only been 4 cases of the virus in PA since its discovery and they seemed to be away from here. Maybe there is some new info on that though? While I don't want to ignore this being a risk, I really don't have the time or money right now to trash the cage if it's unnecessary. If they were all around and there's so many people here too, wouldn't somebody have come down with it by now?
 
Also, based off all the pictures I see. Other than being on the larger size, it didn't look like a deer mouse. The body shape, ears, and coloration looked more like a house mouse. In the picture it looks like it had a white underbelly, but it was more of a lighter color. It was mostly the same color on top as it was on the bottom.

Well the bottom color was more of a silver, I wouldn't say it was the same.
 
So not to underplay this, as I wasn't aware of the severity, but there are a lot of woods here. Removing it I feel wouldn't do anything, as they're all around. There'a also a lot of people around here that live in the woods. I read something that there's only been 4 cases of the virus in PA since its discovery and they seemed to be away from here. Maybe there is some new info on that though? While I don't want to ignore this being a risk, I really don't have the time or money right now to trash the cage if it's unnecessary. If they were all around and there's so many people here too, wouldn't somebody have come down with it by now?


Well it's like I said, it's rare because they usually don't come out of the woods. It's unusual for them to do so.

When they do, it's not the live mouse that's an issue, it's their Fecals and urates that are the problem or a dead mouse.

Even then, it's only when its disturbed. If the mouse poops and no one touches it, then it will dry up and I think the disease dies off, over a period of time.

Usually infection is caused by cleaning, or disturbing the poop. Such as vaccuming it up, or sweeping it up. Especially when inside of a non ventilated area. Outdoors, I reckon it's harder to breathe in, but still possible.

I wasn't saying scrap the cage, I would switch the mesh to keep them out of the cage though. I would scrap all the soil, and clean the dirt below it. And I would wear a respritrator to do so.



Field mice, do not normally have a different color belly at all. Your first pic, shows what appears on my phone to be a white belly.

Another way to tell, is field mice tails are hairless and skin color, where deer mouse tails have short hair and thus are darker, with a light color to the underside of the tail, like in the belly.

That mouse in the photo does not have the pink tail a field mouse or rat will have. Like the furless cat from Austin Powers :p.

It's tail, at least for the Pic, is dark.
 
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Ahhh I got you. Well in PA(not sure if you've ever been here, but basically everyone other than the inner city, lived within the woods. We have huge deer populations and tick diseases are a real issue. I've never heard of this virus though. I'd imagine these mice are pretty common around here. The good news is, it definitely wasn't living in the cage. I havent put a bottom on the cage and he must have sneaked in and couldn't get out. He did run into the bushes that are near our front door though so he's probably close...
 
Ahhh I got you. Well in PA(not sure if you've ever been here, but basically everyone other than the inner city, lived within the woods. We have huge deer populations and tick diseases are a real issue. I've never heard of this virus though. I'd imagine these mice are pretty common around here. The good news is, it definitely wasn't living in the cage. I havent put a bottom on the cage and he must have sneaked in and couldn't get out. He did run into the bushes that are near our front door though so he's probably close...


It does, seem to be more of a problem here than on the east coast, for some reason, btw. Like I said, I lost a friend to it, so I get a little paranoid about it.

Still good to raise awareness to those of us in those hot states, of which I know there is quite a few.

2017-hps-us-state-reporting.jpg
 
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