Neighborhood plagued by mouse plague: ‘They even walk over my head’

Eaten chairs, cupboards and sofas. William IJpelaar from Vlijmen looks at it in confusion. Like several neighbors, he has been plagued by a mouse plague for a long time. According to him, spreading poison and placing clamps do not work.

There are mouse droppings everywhere in William’s house: from the kitchen cupboards to the pantry and from the corners of the living room to the meter cupboard. There are wood chips in one of the drawers of the TV cabinet.

“They eat my cupboards. And when I lie on the couch, the mice even walk over my head. It won’t be long before I’m a mouse myself,” says William cynically.

When he wants to show the mouse droppings in the pantry, a squeak can be heard. “No, that’s not the dog. That’s the mice. I hear that sound all the time.”

William’s eyes well up several times as he talks about the mice. “I’m devastated. I don’t know anymore. Those mouse droppings are driving me crazy.”

Neighbor Els Kuis also suffered from mice in the house. “We thought they came from underground. We closed everything up, including the shed. Yet there was still a dead mouse in the garden last week.”

Her nuisance is now limited to the shed. “Look, there’s another droppings here,” she says as she examines the top of the refrigerator.

According to the neighbors, the mouse plague has been going on for a year and a half. They tried everything themselves. They placed bowls of poison and placed clamps.

“I caught twelve, but it’s no use,” says William, who says he has no money to hire a professional mouse exterminator. Els mainly wanted to try to solve it herself.

William is now desperate and says he has already knocked on the door of housing association Woonveste ten times. “They only come to close the holes, but that doesn’t help. The Woonveste booklets state that they are there for residents, but it’s just a joke. It’s scandalous.” Els also hopes that the misery will be over soon.

Housing association Woonveste was not available for comment.