After the major renovation of our building in August-September last year, mice got into the house. The new flooring does not fit well to the concrete slabs of the base – large cracks. So, the mice decided to pay us visits.

I don’t want to kill them with mousetraps or poison, let them live and eat in garbage cans, where sloppy people throw out a lot of quite edible products not only for mice, but also for humans. But I couldn’t let them run around my apartment day and night and nibble on bags of food for birds, squirrels and homeless animals that I feed every time I go outside.

I bought several ultrasonic repellers, a Chinese junk (due to inexperience), which began to act on mice after a week and a half from the moment they were connected to the network. The design itself is already striking in its stupidity and absurdity: The ultrasound-emitting window is turned in the same direction as the mains plugs. So the emitter directs the sound not into the room, but into the wall and only, scattering sideways from it (and part of the ultrasound energy is absorbed by the wall), “voices” the apartment space.

Yesterday I received reasonably constructed ultrasound emitters from the American company Bell & Howell, which irradiate the surrounding space. And while reading their simple instructions, I came across such an interesting phrase:

“In some cases, over time, some rodents GET USED to the signals and come back.”

Immediately, in a few seconds, I came up with a solution to this “passionately difficult child problem” and sent them an email with a description of how to do it.

On your ultrasound “Pest repeller aid”

“In some cases, over the time, some rodents may become accustomed to signals”.

To eliminate such a “customization” ultrasound generator has to change sporadically the basic frequency of signals, it’s amplitude modulation, on-off time of impulses etc.

It could be achieved by use of random numbers generator, as controller of ultrasound generator.

No one living object can be “accustomed” to such random changes of environment, audio or any other!

Yours Esprit de L’Escalier

17 V 2025

The solution is simple, but tasteful, as it seems to me.

If I’m wrong, let my seniors correct me.

17 V 2025