How Big Is A Mouse?

[Aquagility]

Is it possible for a mouse to squeeze through the 12mm hole in an ordinary air brick?
(With winter coming, it's time to pull up the drawbridge).

[Misky]

Apparently a mouse can squeeze through a hole the size of a normal pencil, so two of them could fit into one of those holes together!

[boxtops]

Yep, especially a little one....

[jon1968]

Yep, little sods! I got 'round it by using aluminium repair mesh from a car shop (which can be cut to size with scissors) and some no-more nails type stuff from the pound shop to glue it in place! Worked a treat!

[jomifl]

Yep, they used to get into the kitchen through a hole in the concrete floor where some conduit came through. The gap was about 8mmx15mm I had disregarded it as the access route until greasy marks began to develop around the hole.

[Old_Geezer]

Really ? I'd like to see that. It must end up looking as long and thin as toothpaste squeezed from a tube !

[emmie]

yes, we had them, the blighters got in such tiny spaces, told by pest control how they do it, yuck

[Aquagility]

Well OK. I must now stop trying to convince myself that it's not possible, and get off my bum. Many thanks for to all of you for straightening me out.

[RATTER15]

Ive heard it many times but I used to catch mice and rats in a monarch trap with made from a mesh with 10mm holes all over. I'm not saying its impossible but I have never seen it happen and I doubt it would.

I may be wrong.

[Ratty2E]

I used to keep fancy mice and they lived in cages with 1cm gaps between the bars ( they never escaped) very young ones are obviously smaller and can get through much smaller spaces. There bodies a pretty squishy and flexible and basically if they can squeeze their head through the rest of them will follow with ease.

[sandyRoe]

They've just eaten a hole through the floorboards and oilcloth. It's not much bigger than a 1p coin.

[RATTER15]

Sandy, a 1p coin is 20mm and I bet they enlarge that hole given the chance, 20mm will still be a bit of a squeeze i'm sure.

[Ratty2E]

They'll get through 20 mm easy, a young rat could get through that (sorry). To be fair the wild branch of the family might well be slightly larger so I'll bow to Ratter's superior knowledge of them beasties.

[jomifl]

Ratty Where I once worked we kept some rats in what were supposed to be rat cages. The sexes were kept separate, imagine my surprise when the females all became pregnant. The explanation was revealed to me one evening when I was doing some overtime, I went into the animal house to discover a female rat scurrying back through the bars of the cage on her return from an evening out ...with the male rat.

[Ratty2E]

Not a good idea to keep males and females within sniffing distance. Females especially, will try to do a Houdini when love is in the air. I've just got boys now and frankly they're much too lazy to bother with that nonsense and would rather stay where the comfy beds and food are.