So far, he has safely removed peanut butter from conventional mouse traps on three occasions without tripping them. He ignores various types of poison bait. The two cats don't have a clue.
So yesterday, I paid $20 for an electronic Victor meecie trap. This morning, the green light was lit, AHA, success at last!
Bullshit, not only was there no carcass, he somehow escaped, despite the manufacturer's assurance to the contrary. His main residence is under the kitchen oven; hope he ain't chewing on that wire with its
240V power.
All fruits and paper and cardboard-packaged food is safely put away. Guess the only thing to do is continue to use the conventional meece traps and hope that he gets cocky.
Next time take a little cotton batting and mix the peanut butter into it. Bait the trap with this. The fibers will make it more difficult to get the bait off the trap without tripping it.
I've had luck putting p-butter on the bait lever, inside the little space where the bait lever rolls around, and also on the arm that holds the swatting-arm down.
Eventually the little cuss stands on the bait pan.
Recently I caught one with a baitless victor trap- it has a large pedal on it, and you shove it against a wall where they run. They step on the pedal, and snappo.
I don't catch-and-release, but I always have good luck with the little gray trap that just tilts and allows the door to shut. If they go in, they're getting caught.
Charlie has a really good idea. Just a SMALL amount of peanut butter mixed with the cotton batting! Maybe alot more than just one trap, too. Try glueing a small piece of peanut onto the trap....instead of glue, use corn syrup....do it early in the day so that it will harden. Good Luck....hope it isn't a pregnant female!!!
If you know where they are you are in good shape. stuff a towell under the front of the stove (or do you only mean oven?) and put down glue traps at the front sides. If you think there is any chance a mouse can side-step the trap, put down two, one after the other. Do the same at the end of row of floor cabinets, so he can't get out that way. I've seen a mouse go across t he counter and down the gap I have between the counter and the unfortunately not-straight wall. I haven't seen one come out that way, but they are good acrobats. Put a box on a crack if you have even a tiny crack there, and weight it down. Make a perimeter as if you were at the Battle of the Bulge commanding American forces, so they have to go across the glue traps to get out, or in.
This is good, but in my case, it was too late to put things away after something had attracted them into the house in the first place. Once they are in, they can find something to eat, iiuc.
Remember, they run along the walls and not in the middle of the room (though I saw some run across my hall from a bedroom to the stairs. But there was no way, short of entering the bathroom and then the big bedroom and running along all those walls,( more than 100 feet total, as opposed to 3 feet in the open), But the hall was not the place to put the trap. Rather, at each side of the doorway to the bedroom.
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He may be chewing and nesting on the stove insulation. I had to buy a new stove because of this. Be sure there is not a hole under the stove too. Often a hole around gas pipe. Once you know there is no hole in the floor or wall, Get some glue traps. Put boards around stove so the only way out is across the glue trap. That mouse will need food and water and will be forced to cross the glue trap. (I perfer the larger "rat sized" glue traps.
Why are you fixated on the peanut butter for bait?
The one time I had a mouse and was catless, I used a chunk of cheese cut fom a block of cheddar.
It may be that a cheese chunk, on the spring trap, will take enough moving and tugging and pulling that musey will trigger the trap and get guillotined (sp?).
I live in a country setting.....our mice is pretty stupid....they head for the traps every time they smell peanut butter. But, like the guy said before me....they LOVE insulation, evidently, it makes great baby mouse beds. We were having a terrible problem with mice in the early Spring...we found the hole they were coming thru...added some caulk...and no more mice. Like the guy above me said, make a maze to lead them to the traps. Maybe put some regular traps right beside the glue traps.....if one don't get'em the other will! Good luck on your mouse hunting...lol..
I don't recall in your original post if you had actually seen a mouse or were just seeing droppings and damage to food packages. The large outdoor roaches will have droppings as big as if not bigger than mouse and they will readily attack ripe fruit on a counter and will eat through paper/cardboard packaging in a pantry.
If you are using the trap with the metal pedal (not the fake cheese-looking ones) try putting the peanut butter under the pedal. Those type trip in either up or down direction & he has to wedge his nose under to get the bait. I've had good luck doing that.
He will soon start a family in the insulation in the over, and piss and shit all over, so that when you turn on your oven a week from now to bake that pie, the smell will make you gag and go running for the door.
Take a 100 percent dry kitchen sponge. Cut it up in small pieces. Coat each piece liberally with peanut butter. Mouse eats sponge, sponge gets wet and swells up in mouse, dead mouse. Works everytime.
Some good advice here, except I hate glue traps. I've had them dragged off, and worse, have had to watch a mouse try to free itself, getting more and more stuck in the process. Now some of you might enjoy that, but to me, it's painful. I don't like watching things die, even if I want them to die. I'd rather it be instant, like a standard trap.
Also I wouldn't recommend poison -- they'll go off and die somewhere (where it's least convenient to find them) and stink to high heavens.
Try the rat size trays, I don't think they will drag that off.
That's how they work. I have a true animal loving daughter (now a zoo keeper) who when a bit younger informed me I had to rescue the mouse caught in the glue. She keep that mouse as a pet until it died of old age. BTW rubbing alcohol will clean the glue off the mouse.
When it was warm, I put such traps at the opening of the sliding glass door. The screen actually. (although someone had eaten holes in both lower corners of the screen. I think I leaned a board against the hole and left as the only easy exit the path across the glue trap(s).
Although I didn't catch any.
I also put a box of mouse poison pellets facing out right in front of the door opening, after I found evidence of a rat. And some stuff at the rear of the house which had holes (not sure if they were being used or not.) The very next day, I found the dead rat in the front of the house, right next to the front door stoop, between the oil tank filler pipe and the oil pipe vent pipe.
A couple days later, I found a dead mouse under the lawn mower by the sliding door entrance.
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