yeah they will die in the walls, gross, best thing i ever used was the snap traps with peanut butter, buy some sweet stuff like jiff or peter pan, they love it enough to die.

reason why they like edge of walls is that rats use their wiskers to navigate.. they are almost blind. so they use the walls to run along.
Another interesting fact about rats is that they constantly pee.. they dont have any bladder control at all.. so they pee on everything.


Chris

p.s. ahh isnt the discovery channel a wonderful thing lol..

they are pretty much almost blind so they guide themselves with the wall so your best bet is to put mouse snap traps by the wall and preferably on the counter tops if the problem is in the kitchen (and it usually is) becasue thats where they hang out. I had 2 mice last year and I set the traps on the floor for a week and nothing then I read somewhere that they hang out on the kitchen counters so that night I set the the traps on the counter and they were dead by dawn!! pretty gross but thats where they are at. good luck. oh and make sure you use bacon and wrap it so they can pull on it and it will snap for sure.

After a while, either through genetic mutation, or the 100th monkey, or mammas teaching babies, or whatever, they seem to learn to nibble delicately at the bait then steal it and cheat the trap. I evolved the same tactic of wrapping the nut butter then rubber banding it to the baitbar. They need to bite down & tug to get it. That's all she wrote, folks.

Ugh. I have expressed my loathing of mice in another thread. I HATE the little a$$holes pooping and peeing in my house.

I had a mouse problem about a year ago, and after I got over finding mouse poop in my silverware drawer (*shudder*) I plotted my revenge. I did a lot of research, and it seems the only thing that REALLY works is the old-fashioned mousetrap (the sonic deterrents don't do anything. The mice get used to the sound and realize the sound won't hurt them, so they learn to ignore it). Buy 10 traps and smear the plastic cheese bait lever with peanut butter. Place these along walls, on counter tops, in corners, under couches, etc. It's gross cleanup work, but they really do go for it. Also, make sure you keep your kitchen clean and clear of crumbs and food bits. I haven't found mouse poo on my counter tops since I started being really vigilant about this. I used to eat on my pull-out couch (small studio apt wouldn't allow for a dining room nor table) and the last time I had a guest over and pulled the bed out of the couch, there was mouse poo everywhere under the cushions. SO disgusting (and embarrassing!). They had crawled up in there to eat what little crumbs I had dropped while eating on the couch. So be very careful about your crumbs! I also went along my cupboards and baseboards to seal up any cracks, no matter how small, with steel wool. I also picked up some poison bait but I'm not sure how effective it was when compared with the other methods used.

So far, I've found a few droppings here and there, but no prizes anymore in my mousetraps. Hopefully they smell the death of previous mouse explorers and have decided what few crumbs I now leave behind just aren't worth it for them.

You should also check out the thread a few months back on this subject.