Yikes, there's a mouse in the house!

Not at all.

As a crass amer’ken, I’m glad I clicked the link. So much so that I felt the need to immortalize it in the animated gifs thread. From the much higher resolution version at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9OtlYwQvQo

I’ve had some stupid experiences with mice and traps.

Encounter 1: Years ago, I first tried a glue trap on a mouse that was living in my stove. It proved useless, as evidenced by the turds the critter left mockingly in the middle of the trap. I resorted to the metal snaptrap at that point. I was coincidentally nearby when I heard the trap go off, and hurried to dispose of the mess. The mouse was not in the trap, but had apparently been hit by the bar because there was one drop of blood coming out of one of its nostrils. Not sure if it was dead, I used an oven mitt to pick up the mouse by the tail, and slowly, nervously, cautiously carried it to the back door, still not completely sure what I was going to do with it once I got it outside. As soon as I opened the back door, it regained consciousness and began flailing about, scaring the shit out of me and exciting my dog who began barking and scaring both the mouse and myself even more. I probably screamed like a girl and dropped it outside where it then ran into a nearby pile of firewood for cover to collect itself, then no doubt went off to seek its fortune. I wished it well.

Encounter 2: Not long ago, I came to realize that a mouse was living in my basement when said mouse decided to exit the cover of a pile of laundry on the floor as I was reaching down to pick up said pile of laundry on the floor. Involuntary, high-pitched, girlish screams may have been uttered again, which I was convinced amused the mouse enormously. Having learned the effectiveness of the snaptraps from my previous experience, I selected two from a newly purchased package of six, baited them generously with irresistibly delicious peanut butter, placed them in the most strategic, mouse-trafficked, yet non-human-trafficked, out-of-the-way locations, and chuckled a most evil and fiendish chuckle as I ascended the basement stairs. The next day, I found both traps still unsprung, but with all peanut butter somehow expertly removed. I also looked for an expected taunting note of some kind (“More Please!”), but found none. Challenge accepted, Rodent! So, working feverishly, I loaded all 6 traps with obnoxious amounts of PB and most meticulously placed them together, inches apart on the largest cookie sheet I owned (about 16 x 9 in) and set the trap-laden cookie sheet down in the middle of the room, exactly where the pile of laundry had been on first sighting. My evil and fiendish chuckle became a loud, maniacal laugh when I went upstairs this time. Surprisingly, in less than an hour (gluttonous vermin!), I heard all 6 traps snapping very much like firecrackers! I raced downstairs and found my vanquished foe in a quarter-sized pool of blood. Victory was mine! Remembering my last victim’s mutant resurrection powers, I quickly put all (mouse, traps, and cookie sheet) in a garbage bag, tied it up and took it to the trash bin. Problem solved at the cost of 6 traps and a pretty darned nice cookie sheet. Sacrifices must be made.

Sorry if this offends anyone. I really don’t like to harm small animals.

One thing to do is get a mouser cat. I have two, and pretty much every other day there’s a dead mouse on the porch (or a bird, or a lizard, or a huge moth…one rather memorable time, a snake). But there hasn’t been a mouse scratching in the walls since I got them.

Cats are cool and all, but we had three cats in NY, and not only did they not catch the mice in the basement, they brought them toys from outside, to whit: dead birds; live birds; live chipmunks; a young raccoon who was invited in for dinner; the occasional grasshopper when nothing else was to hand. Eventually I managed to trap the mice and kill them by pluggin up the holes in the walls where they were getting in with expandable foam and keeping the cats out of the basement (not very bright cats, they could have caught a paw in a trap) for a couple of months until the mice disappeared.

You don’t want to hear about the bees in the basement.

That sounds like quaint British slang for something moderately horrific.

Cats truly are amazing murder machines.

Also, having a mouse in the walls is the absolute worst. Never could sleep when they were skritch-skritch-skritching in there, the little assholes.

I dunno. I am just not squeamish about murdering pests like mice. I will take a half-dead mouse away from my murdercat and finish the job, because that’s a little over the line. But snap traps? Sure. Pick it up, throw it in the garbage, wash your hands, reset the trap. NBD.

I wanted to contribute to this thread & say that these mouse traps are the cats meow. Way better than cats. Let me expand a bit on what make these traps so awesome:

  1. Out of the 3 months I’ve had them, I’ve only found 3-4 empty snapped traps. Most of the time they are very successful.
  2. You set / discard them in the same step. You just squeeze and the dead mouse drops out into trash, and at the same time it resets it.
  3. The bait lasts forever because in the case of either a miss or a dead mouse, the bait is covered by the lid that comes down, so you don’t have to rebait!
  4. You will not lose a finger nor will your pet get their tongue / nose crushed. This thing has very weak snap, so weak you wonder how effective it will be - but in reality, if you think about it, a mouse’s neck isn’t that strong, so this is plenty. Bonus: No blood! (at least I haven’t noticed any ever)

Yep, those are solid. Wish I knew what happened to mine; they disappeared in one move or another.

Yes! Those are great.

I just got one of those for a mouse that the cat brought in alive and was hiding under the fridge (sometimes cats fail). Left it out in the kitchen with the peanut butter stuff on it. Next morning, one dead mouse.

I hate mice. I especially hate them since waking up as a teenager with one crawling on my head. Yuck. Sadly, I am 99.9% sure I have mice in my new rental. (The 0.1% is delusional wishful thinking.) So after perusing this thread I went on (yet another) Amazonian spending spree: Traps and stuff to try to close up holes. It’s an old house, so there’s probably not a lot I can do, but I’m still declaring war on the little fuckers.

I found this guy’s Mousetrap Monday videos very interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI

One thing he has mentioned many times is when you set traps you need to set a whole bunch at once. Don’t just set one or two, but go for a bunch. The mice will become attuned and wary after the first couple days and it gets harder to catch them after that. SO having a lot of traps at once increases the chance their site and smell is normalized and they don’t resist. And of course, where there’s one there’s often more.

I suppose it depends upon how much you are afraid of just injuring them as opposed to killing them outright. Glue traps work really well. No need for bait. Just lay them out and find the suckers caught the next day. It’s not a humane way to get them, but it works better than snap traps. And you might find a roach or two as well. YMMV.