Only good mouse is a dead mouse, yes, but how to get there?

As seems to be the case most winters, we have mouse droppings starting to pop up (or is it plop down?) in our basement.

Some judicious mouse trap use always stops the problem. But I'm getting old and tired of the "standard" traps - baiting them, making sure to not set them off myself, emptying the gross dead mice from them, repeating...

(By "standard" I'm talking about the kind seen in Looney Tunes and other cartoons - bait with cheese or peanut butter, and a piece of metal snaps onto the mouse and kills it.)

What's a "better" mouse trap? By that I mean one that might kill multiple mice without rebaiting, and that's easy to clean and reuse.

Not so fond of the bait traps that feed them poisoned food, as they force me to figure out where the dead critters are. I'd rather confine my looking for carcass hunting to where the trap(s) are.

Reply to
trader-of-some-jacks
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Feed them Decon rat poison. Makes them go out and seek water while they hemorrhage to death.

Reply to
Van Chocstraw

I use "the bucket method." Just get a 5 gallon plastic pail. Drill two 3/8" holes near the top of the bucket (about 1/2" down from the top edge). Make sure the holes are directly across the bucket from each other so you can stick a 1/4" dowl rod straight through. the dowl rod should be about an inch or so longer than the diameter of the bucket. Then get an empty plastic peanut butter jar with lid and drill 5/16" holes at the center of the bottom of the jar and through the center of the lid. Slide dowl through one of the holes in the side of the bucket, then through the empty peanut butter jar and then through the other hole in the side of the bucket. You should be able to spin the jar around the rod. Put about 4 inches of water in the bucket. Smear cheap peanut butter over the surfaces of the jar. Place the bucket near a wall where you suspect mice might be traveling. Get a narrow (2" wide x 1 " thick) board about 2 or 3 feet long. Lay flatways one end on the floor and the other resting on the top edge of the bucket near where one end of the rod is sticking out of the side of the bucket. By next morning you should have a mouse, or even several mice floating dead in the bucket. Get a small minnow net and scoop the dead mice out of the bucket and dispose of in manner of your choice. There probably should still be enough smeard peanut butter still left on the jar for several more nights depending on how many mice you might have living with you. No need to refresh the peanut butter, old moldy stuff works just as good. Once a week or so or maybe longer you might have to change water in the bucket. If you aren't going to be checking the bucket each day, no problem. Just change the water more often. Good luck! Steve

Reply to
Steve

You are fighting a losing battle. See jpg link

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Reply to
metspitzer

-snip-

I like the bucket for multiple catches.

But I have to plug victor's new electric traps. 4 aa batteries & it electrocutes the little buggers. Flip open the top & dump in toilet. No mess, no touching anything the dead mouse touched. I got 10 on the first set of AA's over a 2 week period.

The signal light was supposed to glow red when the battery was weak-- but when my peanut butter disappeared without a mouse I changed batteries and got a few more the next week.

A little pricey at $20, but I'm glad it was marked wrong at my local Lowes.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

It kills them but I found 3 dead inside in the middle of the dining and living room, so they dont all go out, maybe they all stayed in.

Reply to
ransley

These two are better than the Looney Tune ones, that I never got very good at setting, let alone then sitting them down without tripping them, however they don't meet all of your requirements.

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are very easy to set, and do the job. Unfortunately, you do need to reset and rebait them, but I just use something like a tongue depressor or wooden coffee stirrer (and a jar of peanut butter devoted to that purpose only!). And they are very easy to empty, but you do have to do it manually.

Same with this one -

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It's even easier to empty, and it's covered so you don't even have to see the mouse. (I actually got pretty good at emptying it into a plastic bag without actually looking, LOL).

OTOH, if I had another mouse invasion (like I had a few years ago from some nearby construction), I'd definitely try the battery op one someone else mentioned.

Reply to
Lee B

poision they may not leave die and stink up your home, that happened to a buddy of mine.........

smell lasted 2 weeks:(

you must prevent entry, seal every little crack and crevice, leave NO FOOD SOURCE AROUND.

We were over run once when I was feeding birds sunflower seeds. evicted near 40 mice.

used a live trap released them away from home, no they didnt re enter.........

why kill anything un necessarily?

Reply to
hallerb

the sticky pads work good. put them around the edges where they run. you don't have to fold them into a tube.

s

Reply to
Steve Barker

For a long time, that was the only method. I haven't tried it but think may still be the best.

In 1880, Luchs, a German company, began selling the Capito Original mouse trap. It was in production until 1920. Many were sold in Britain and America. That seemed to usher in the Age of Mousetraps.

It seems to be consumer appeal more than efficacy that sells mouse traps. The appeal to the Capito was that it was a Rube Goldberg contraption. In the vestibule, a seesaw would trip a latch, letting the door fall. Then the mouse would clime in a vertical tube and go out on another seesaw, which would drop him into a drowning tank while raising the door to admit the next mouse. The design was so popular that several American knockoffs were patented. The latest was in 1990.

The snap trap, invented in 1894, took over the trap market. What it lacks in efficacy it makes up for in consumer appeal.

The electrocuting mouse trap was invented in 1909.

At one time I had a Victor Tin Cat. It's about the size of a cigar box and holds mice for disposal. It could trap several at once. One disadvantage was that even if I picked it up to look through the vents, a mouse inside could be invisible. Nowadays I think they have transparent covers. Eaton makes one for a much lower price.

I also had Kness Tip Traps. It's a rectangular plastic tube big enough to hold a hot dog. You could see from across the room if there was a mouse in it.

Reply to
E Z Peaces

Out in my back yard there are mice colony. But I don't have any one inside the house. Peppermint oil smell is good mouse chaser. Since weather got so cold, we have birds, peasants, wild bunnies, deer in my back yard for food.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

Let's see... you want:

  1. No or minimal baiting.
  2. Automatic resetting.
  3. Deals with multiple rodents.
  4. Easy to reuse.
  5. Self cleaning.

Think cat.

You can even borrow one.

Reply to
HeyBub

A 5 gallon steel pail 1/2 full of water, with aramp up to the top and a stich across the top - with the bait on a metal wheel off the side. When the mouse goes for the bait, the slick wheel turns and dumps him into the water. He might swim for a while but he won't last long.

Reply to
clare

Use the Victor quick-set plastic traps. Easy to bait, set and empty, and not so gross since they don't snap hard enough to cause "shrapnel".

Reply to
Pete C.

Thats a myth. They don't seek water. Instead they get sick, they crawl off to a quiet, secluded spot. They die, they decompose and stink the place out for a month or so. I know. I've used it and after mutiple kills ended up ripping down the ceiling drywall in the rec room. This year we have 2 cats. We made a pact. I feed them and they keep the mice out - and it works better than any trap or bait.

Reply to
jim

clipped

Mouse traps are cheap and disposable for very good reasons - so folks don't contact the disease-carrying rodents. Good grief!

Clean up the place, put all cereal, grain, pet food in hard containers. Put a dab of peanut butter on a mouse trap, put trap in path of meese, check often. I used plastic bag to pick up the mouse and trap so's I would not touch it; dispose of the whole thing. Only mice I have had indoors were seasonal, late fall, and the always showed first signs by droppings and chewing into food packages, esp. flour sack in lower cupboard. I tried Decon once, but the mouse died beneath kitchen sink - retrieveable, fortunately, as the smell was pretty bad.

Reply to
Norminn

If you go the cat route, you need to get a hunter. Not all cats will hunt and kill (chase and play with, yes, but actually slay, not necessarily) prey as they have to be taught by their mothers. Kittens rescued from the outdoors with their mothers are probably the best bet.

Reply to
KLS

Outdoors, they are wild life. Indoors they are vermin.

Reply to
Norminn

Look up "Towser," a cat who, for 23 years, was the "Mouser-In-Chief" at the Glennturrent Distillery in Scotland. During her career she dispatched 23,898 mice (plus a few rats and an occasional rabbit).

Enshrined in the Guiness Book of Records, Towser averaged about three mice per day during her service.

As an aside, if I were Towser's supervisor, and she was brining me three mice a day, I'd have hired a mouser-trainee to assist in the project.

Reply to
HeyBub

the only cat that wont mouse is one who is either a: over fed. or b: fed canned food.

cats who you expect to mouse should only be fed dry food sparingly.

s
Reply to
Steve Barker

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