do mice eat snakes?

franklloydwrong · Post by **franklloydwrong** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 8:47 pm

i know in the animal kingdom it is the other way around. but i just used a hole saw to drill a hole from one room to another to run a snake for the drums, and i was wondering if mice might chew through the cord, and if they do, is there something recommended to prevent this (like a protective wrap)? i guess i have never seen evidence of mice eating the cables i have anywhere else, but there is something about the inside of a wall that i don't trust. i don't have huge mouse problems or anything, but i did find some mouse poop the other day and bought some poison. thanks for any help in this matter.

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 9:02 pm

Running your snakes through metal pipe or conduit can't really hurt. I think if you ground the pipe you might get a little shielding bonus thrown in.

But I don't think I'd worry about it. It'll be a lot more expensive when they chew through the AC (power) wiring and burn the place down!

GooberNumber9 · Post by **GooberNumber9** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:08 pm

Rats definitely chew on whatever plenum-grade cables are covered with. I lost a few cat. 5 ethernet cables in an old building that way one time. I actually didn't believe it was rats until the cabling contractor pulled the cable out (while putting in new cable) and showed me.

If you have mice in the building to the extent that you're afraid for your cables, you might want to think about getting rid of them somehow. As much as they are cute and seemingly harmless, they are a health hazard. I'm not sure if there are ways to get rid of them without killing them (assuming you're a bleeding heart like me), but it might be worth looking into.

Todd Wilcox

xhavepatiencex · Post by **xhavepatiencex** » Mon Feb 04, 2008 11:15 pm

This is an interesting question for me too, as I just dealt with a mouse problem. In which I tried to remove them with a humane trap but that just was not working for me so I had to use the good old fashioned D'con, Mice are now gone but around the same time one of the channels on my snake stoped working.... Maybe its karma

mjau · Post by **mjau** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 7:53 am

A studio cat might be in order.

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Tue Feb 05, 2008 9:07 pm

...or a weasle? Ferrets are cool!

The worst part about getting rid of mice/rats is the mites which make their home in the nest. When their hosts are gone they tend to go looking for new sources of food. They can't live off humans, and will die off eventually, but they're annoying as hell!

For that you need army ants. Actually, I guess that would solve the mice problem better than cat or ferret. Probably piss off your neighbors, though...

Nate Dort · Post by **Nate Dort** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 6:42 am

I just started working on my basement studio, and I'm afraid of what I'm going to find when I start tearing down the old paneling. There was mouse shit under the floor moulding, so I imagine there's even more behind the walls. It's probably even worse in the ceiling, which is covered in acoustic tiles. I need to get a respirator and a new filter for the shop-vac before I continue.

I was thinking about putting one of those sonic mouse chasers in the room for a few days before I start working down there again, although I'm not sure it will help until after I pull down the paneling and ceiling tiles. I doubt 32kHz to 62kHz will penetrate very far through a solid surface.

apropos of nothing · Post by **apropos of nothing** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 7:56 am

Nate Dort · Post by **Nate Dort** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 9:37 am

apropos of nothing wrote:Cat.

Yeah, I've got two cats already, and they spend most of their time down there. I think they're just lazy. Or maybe all that mouse shit is old and was there before I bought the house back in July, and there aren't any mice left. I haven't actually SEEN one, except a dead one I found in another wall in another part of the house a few months ago.

the finger genius · Post by **the finger genius** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:28 am

mjau wrote:A studio cat might be in order.

Just keep him out of the live room when you're tracking. I was recording a friend in my apt. this weekend, and the cat made an appearance on 2 of 5 songs.

akg414 · Post by **akg414** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:55 am

apropos of nothing wrote:Cat.

- Blowgun (leaning against the console)
- Hammer
- Cat
- Mousetrap
- BB gun
- Chinese Stars
- Knife
- Cat

channelcat · Post by **channelcat** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:08 am

I'm renting a house with an unfinished basement, and needed to come up with a temporary fix for my basement studio. I wanted to keep the cables off the cement floor; my concern being more about flooding since the foundation walls have broken away and sunk below the slab, but my solution may work for you too.

I ended up making some floating cable troughs out of 1" nylon strapping (cut to different lengths for electrical, computer/data, and audio), plastic buckles, fabric eyelets, and wood screws. I got the strapping (usually used to make dog leashes) and the buckles from Menards, the fabric eyelets from Jo-Ann Fabric, and I had the woood screws laying around. It turned out to be a pretty smart and cheap solution if I do say so myself.

Personally, I say hunt the little buggers down and show no mercy! I had a bee infestation down there about 2 years ago. It turns out that there was a nest behind some pegboard, and they were getting in through a little crack in the wall around the conduit that feeds out to the ComEd meter. I can't even remember how many I killed (yeah, I tried keeping a head count for a while until it reached like 300!). Wasp/bee spray in one hand and a Shop-Vac in the other - I was snagging them in mid-flight and all doped up!

Best of luck to you,
Stu

j_howell · Post by **j_howell** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 10:11 am

I dunno about mice, but rabbits will DEFINITELY eat your cables.

dontfeartheringo · Post by **dontfeartheringo** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:11 am

j_howell wrote:I dunno about mice, but rabbits will DEFINITELY eat your cables.

I'll be incredibly disappointed if I never hear the story behind this....

j_howell · Post by **j_howell** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:02 pm

Well...it's really not that crazy. We have a couple of pet rabbits, and when we moved into our house, the only room carpeted (where they'd have traction to run around and be happy) turned out to be the attic, which is also my little home studio. The male rabbit, Gus, loves wires. He seems to favor those with live current, and especially any that are attached to vintage guitar amps or consoles...

We tried almost everything to discourage this behavior, to no avail. You'd be surprised how aggro a 2 1/2 pound rabbit can be!

Anyway, after embarrassedly taking the same couple of pieces of gear back to my repair guy, I finally had to build a "rabbit wall", thus caging him into about 1/3 of the room...

So now his thing is to rattle his cage when I'm recording.

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do mice eat snakes?

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