I don't think you'd find anything if you used a shotgun. I presume you have a fence compost pile? Can you get some metal to put along the bottom on the outside to prevent the mouse from entering but tall enough so it cannot scurry up. Just a thought. I went to durable plastic when I had raccons visiting my fence compost.

how about a couple of the large sticky "mouse " traps?

have you ever used the sticky traps? someone set them up in our office. within two days, the mouse someone didn't like was caught, and in a vain attempt to get out it completely chewed off its tail and one back leg, and proceeded to chew off half of the other back leg before it was found. i ended up having the person who set the traps beg me to take the mouse outside and smash its brains in to put it out of its misery.

with that in mind, i tend to think the old fashioned traps are a bit more humane; if you're going to rid of a rodent, might as well make it as quick and suffer-free as possible.

oh yeah - and while running cable at the office, i managed to put my forearm in one of those dang things that someone put in a drop ceiling...and had to peel it off. my arm was shiny and tacky to the touch for almost a week. no fun!

It is fenced in - built from pallets and wrapped with chicken wire. The metal idea is a good one, but...do these guys jump? The bins are about a foot from garden fence.

SH~ I hear ya on the sticky traps. DH used them in the house last winter. One sandwiched himself between two of them. He took him out to the garage for the hammer routine too.

You need a rat snake.

We had this problem a couple of years ago; in fact these "mice" were kind of a neighborhood problem. All my immediate neighbors did whatever they could. My husband set the regular spring traps where he found the most droppings. We caught about 3 or 4 of them I think. (I am personally not sure since I thankfully have a husband who is willing to do the dirty work). The problem is resolved now. However, I have been banned from having a regular compost heap like I use to have.

So I've not had a way to dispose of my household peelings, coffee grinds (except under the roses sometimes), basically the home/food stuff. I have a pile of leaves from the fall but no food. For two years this has bugged the heck out of me so I'm trying to figure out how to handle this year. We never have enough "extra" money to buy a big enclosed revolving composter, so I'm thinking about just making a compost pile inside of a big garbage can with some small holes around the sides and bottom. Or, maybe a worm composter.

Good luck with this horrific problem. (Today's Ga. GW seems obsessed with unspeakable pests!)
Rose

Check this out, it's basically what I'm looking at doing. Pretty inexpensive.

I found a few other videos on Youtube for a horizontally-mounted unit, where your main pole goes directly through the center of the barrel - i like this idea better, but getting it perfectly center seems as if it could post a serious challenge.

Just a thought :)

I guess I should provide the alternate version of the bin, which is horizontally mounted and reportedly cost $8 to make :)