Mice (Mus domesticus) eat especially at night grains, insects, worms.. They can have 5 to 10 x / year a litter of about 8 offspring. They can make food fast unfit for human consumption.
Birds of prey and foxes love them. They can pass through a small crack (if no mesh around). Not for nothing is the cat for more than 9,500 years our favorite pet.A mouse can get through a hole of 9 mm, and can easily climb along a rough wall (e.g. brick).
Mice avoiding: clean up food residues. Keep all food inaccessible, hung in closed jars. They do not like cats and mint (Mentha pulegium), but love nuts (bait!).
You can catch them with spring loaded traps, metal wire life catch traps, or high, steep pots where they cannot get out. (Not underestimate them.) Lead them in there with (tilting) enter board and bait. Attach a spring trap with metal wire, so not killed, wounded animals (especially rats) do not tow them.

You would think that our mousetrap has been used for centuries throughout the world. Wrong. Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1845 found the spring trap with bait. And yet acquired 271 other patents. Robust and simple thought, it is still an efficient thing.

Insert a straight stick like ax trough a tin. Insert the shaft ends in two holes just below the top edge of a high bucket so the can is easily churning. Bind or stick bait on it. Put some boards to walk on up to a 5 cm range of the can, so that mice can reach it. They rumble of the rotating can. And drown if you do water in the bucket. With such a trap so you can catch on a night efficient a whole series. ( It can also be a bottle or a shelf. )

( For rats: higher bucket and longer distance walking board - bait.)

Mice do not like peppermint oil.

Rats and mice could also be killed with a dish of plaster. In order to make it edible join flour, and also for the taste some salt and / or sugar. The stuff would harden in their intestines, causing them to die.

On Internet circulate reports that soft drinks would be fatal, because they cannot 'blurb'. But as many experts seem to contradict this. So it is no proven or demonstrated or convincingly argued.

I have twice seen chickens running after a mouse and fighting for it. A fight of wild animals in an ancient Roman arena is a peace (hm) of cake, compared to this. The mouse is literally torn apart and devoured!

Said the mouse, "I have three sisters in Psychology, and an uncle on Diseases.'