This morning they're all closed (yuck, means we've got more mice than we had figured) - one of the traps has been rolled from the wall to the middle of the pantry shelf so I figure that sucker must be pretty big. The problem is they're not see-through and I'm too chicken to get close enough to check and see if there are actually mice in them. I want to leave them for Claude to release when he gets home, but I feel so sad for them stuck in there! I'm scared they'll die of fright or dehydration by the time he gets home at dinner time.

Want to hold my hand while I go and give the traps a poke? Or have any tips/advice as to how to release the poor critters?

This is the type of trap we used (it's about 4 inches long)....

I'll reset the traps tonight. I also bought 2 little ultrasonic sound emitter thingies that you plug into the wall and apparently rodents hate the sound and will stay away. I'll plug them in the kitchen after a couple of days.

It's weird, but our cats couldn't be bothered with them.

I've used those before successfully. It can be hard to get the mouse out, though! They're pretty scared. I drive to a park a couple of miles away, open the end of the trap (while hunkering down at the ground) and give the back of the trap a hard whack with my hand (while holding it in the other hand) to sort of propel the mouse out without huring it.

Ok, so maybe that's nutty to some, LoL, but that's what I choose to do!

Suzieque

We bought a couple of those little ultrasonic sound emitters. We hadn't realized that they will only work if they are in the direct area of the mouse. For example, that won't keep them out of your cupboards. We don't have a problem here with mice ( keeping my fingers crossed) but we did in the condo where we used to live. They were coming in the basement window and up into the lower cupboards through little spaces around the water pipes.

I'd much rather have mice than rats but prefer to have neither.

Good luck.

I'm with Suzieque. There are plenty of non-populated areas near me that I could release a mouse.

Put a piece of bread in your mouth and gently chew it until your saliva begins to break down the starch (into simple sugars). Put a wad of this moistened bread on the trap treddle. It will stick like glue as it hardens. Mice can not resist it.

White bread may work better than whole wheat.

This bait was popular with frontier farm wives.

Dumping that mouse someplace else puts you in the same category as people that dump pets out in the country. Those mice won't know how to fend for themselves out there, thus you might as well use a snap trap, and finish the deal right away.

Moni

Once, we had a mouse in our cupboard that came in when the house was being built and our exterminator put down a sticky board thing. Next day, the poor dear was stuck, laying on it's side and after donning gloves, I pried it off of the board, stuffed him into a shoe box and we drove waaaaaaaaay into the country near a creek and set him free. Hopefully he lived, if not, well I did my part.

HOWEVER, if we had an actual infestation, I would kill them. They carry so much disease, it's NOT healthy to have them around. With our singleton, I figured that WE moved in on HIS turf and what the heck, it's one mouse! :)

Blessings,
Haley

Regarding causing more problem for someone else by relocating them, I made it clear that I release them in a park (it's not a park where there is risk to little children or anyone else; it's just an open, acres and acres area). As far as mice not knowing how to survive on their own out there - LOL!

Where do you get those traps?

I don't know what happened to my old metal humane trap and our hardware store doesn't carry them any more.

We ended up catching a total of 4 on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and releasing them far from the house (and far from other houses). So far, it SEEMS that there are no more. The traps are baited again tonight, so we shall see.

I really have trouble killing any creature, no matter how tiny. We had an ant problem in our kitchen at one point and had to kill them and I bawled as I threw out the little ant traps.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all....

:)

Mice can squeeze through super small holes.

Get some spray foam in a can. If you have a basement - go down during the day and shut all the lights off. If you see any daylight coming in - squirt some foam in it.

Check around the outside and see if you can spot any chinks in the foundation that they might be squeezing through.

Also foam under your door thresholds if they are raised...anywhere you think they may be sneaking in.

Make sure your doors seal tight too...

I started storing all my pasta, rice, etc. in glass jars just in case.

I don't like them in my house, either, but if the cats keep bringing them in, what else is there to do but catch them? I choose to not kill them, period. They didn't ask to come in here where 4 cats live, just to be hunted and tortured all day. They're not that stupid. lol I've caught them with my bare hands on occasion, when they're small and don't look big enough to nip me. I like mice. I like all kinds of rodents. And as many as we've had around here, if anyone was going to get sick from them, it would be us. And we never have.

And you couldn't force me to use a sticky trap, although it does say on them that you can make the sticky let go with vegetable oil. I still wouldn't use it, can you imagine being stuck to something and left to die a long, lingering death? How mean is that? Mice can scream, you know. They have feelings, too.

Is there a size limit for some people where cruelty to animals becomes an issue? A certain weight? Most people I know are against trapping, where animals get their paws trapped in vicious metal traps. How is a sticky trap that much different? I just don't get that way of thinking. Just because they got into my house doesn't change my feelings about killing them.

Nicole, good luck with your problem! I'm glad you got up the nerve to check your boxes. Good girl!

There's a link on the page for a pool lily pad to assist creatures out of your swimming pool.

Helene

I discovered that pest control had put glue traps in my classroom and I extricated two juvenile mice from them on Friday, using salad oil and a pencil to unstick the poor, pitiful creatures. One didn't survive the night, but the other is okay. I'll be dropping it off in the country soon.

If they must be killed as pests, they should be killed in a quick, painless manner, not stuck in glue until they starve. That's just too darn cruel.

... you got 3,200 before very long!

Rabbits are malingerers when compared with mice!

No worry about mice disappearing from the face of the earth, any time soon!

I like snap traps.

My barn cats, most of whom won't let me pet them except when they're eating, some not even then, aren't allowed into the house. They like mice, too ... and aren't so fastidious that they won't eat a mouse that's been dead for a day or two.

Cats are sadistic ... no - they just like playing with something, once they've fixed it so that it can't get away.

To a dog - you're the respected leader, (though s/he'll try you out, every now and then) ...

... but to a cat - you're staff!

ole joyful

Well, lately there has been one little bugger who delights in exploring my stove top as soon as the lights are off for the night. For some reason Kitty has given up I guess. After cleaning up mouse presents for the last time (I thought) yesterday I bought a snap trap. Something I haven't had to do in years. Put Peanut Butter on it and felt certain, with a twinge of guilt, that I'd hear the "snap" during the night and would have caught him. No such luck. He just licked the PNB off. So I'll go the wet bread trick tonight - that works also as jemdandy notes.

If you put out a snap trap, make sure to put it somewhere where the cat won't get snapped. Owwwww. Velveeta cheese is great bait, it's sticky and smelly and the mice love it.

Our kitten LOVES peanut butter. That would be awful, if she got her nose in the trap!

Wow, pathetic and heartless doesn't even begin to describe you.

If you release the mice a block or so away, they won't come back. A wife's tale with no substance behind it, used by lazy people with an excuse to kill animals. Or by pest control operators to scare people for their cash.

If releasing wild mice somewhere else was such a big problem, then live traps wouldn't even exist on the market. There would also be laws forbidding it. You people are also assuming that the released mouse will even be a problem, it might not. If there is one mouse in your house, chances are there are more... releasing one mouse is not going to make ANY difference, neither is killing one.

Please don't lecture me about "oh but they might be someone else's problem" - like you people really care. All that you care about is getting rid of YOUR problem. If you really cared about the possibility about mice infesting other homes, then you would be going outside and hunting/killing every mouse you see in order to avoid that. Of course, those that don't have mice really do not care and leave them be when not in their house so I wonder about the sudden change of heart. What do I think?

I think it's being lazy. Killing is far easier, so is this fake concern about the mouse going to someone's house (you don't even know it will, don't know that the house has access points, predators about, etc) in order to justify pointless killing. Far as I'm concerned, the mice were here for generations longer than any of you people so this view of "house invasion" is completely ridiculous. You're encroaching, and they are adapting, not the other way around.

Other animals can be bad pests too, and also carry disease. Foxes, raccoons, possums, all sort of critters. But since people like them more and they're "cuter", people are more inclined to release them. Despite these animals having the same opportunity to wreck havoc as a mouse would.

So I am throwing a spanner in the works here, and questioning the integrity of killing a mouse for the purposes of getting rid of it because you're worried about disease when you actually do not *have* to kill it.

However, someone who has no option other than to kill the mouse, for whatever reason, should do it humanely. Starving mice to death in traps when you can prevent such unnecessary suffering with a swift, relatively painless kill should be considered criminal. And it says a lot about the people using said method of torture rather than the actual mouse.

So "linda_in_iowa", please toss yourself in the trash promptly in a container. Perhaps it will give you time to think that callous actions have consequences, no matter how trivial you may think they are. And before you get on my back about being judgemental, then what are you... deciding what is deserving of being killed or not being killed? Being killed humanely or inhumanely?

... you got 3,200 before very long! "

Simplistic logic. You're ignoring factors such has predation, exposure, lack of food due to competition, etc. In some cases that very well exists, but not for most. Otherwise, every country in the world would have mouse plagues up to their ears. Conditions have to be exactly right for that to happen. And in or urban world, they are certainly not.