I’ve found evidence of a mouse (or mice) in the garage. What’s the best bait for a trap? I’ve heard it’s peanut butter - is this true?
Yes, peanut butter works best in my experience.
Unclviny
We have mice here at the office. I have been using Tootsie Rolls since Halloween with great results (37 since I started keeping track).
Peanut butter with some birdseed mixed in seems to work really well.
Peanut butter - with cheese and other solid things, they can steal the bait and run away before the trap snaps shut. With peanut butter, they have to stay there and lick it, so there’s a better chance of setting off the trap.
I’ve had trouble with peanut butter, because the damn things can lick so softly.
I shoved some peanuts into the trigger with peanut butter, forcing them to chew . . . much better results.
I wonder if crunchy peanut butter would be as effective?
Try a slice of apple!
Hence the beauty of the Tootsie Roll. Just malleable enough to form to the trigger, sticky enough to stay there, durable enough to require quite a bit of exertion on the part of the mouse. I see little teeth marks in the Tootsie Roll after they’ve gone to their reward. And reusable! I’ve bagged several mice off of a single glob.
I had tried jelly, the only other edible thing I could find around the office, and the mice could get it no problem. And that was their undoing. They got used to the jelly gravy train, freebie meal, and when I made the switch to Tootsie Rolls, it was a sad day.
Don’t listen to the old wife’s tales about how mice won’t use a trap that’s had a dead mouse in it, either. When the weather turned cold, I’d get a couple a day sometimes, and usually one overnight. Used the same trap for months, and often the same bait.
I found a Hazelnut very effective - just the one on the spike of a conventional trap.
I have also heard that a small piece of chocolate works well.
My one and only experience trapping mice involved the use of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup (well a chunk of it anyways.
The PB stuck it to the trigger and chocolate provided something to gnaw on. If I had a tootsie roll, I’d have probably given it a shot. I’d probably add a bit of PB just for the scent though.
-DF
I can second (third, fourth???) the peanut butter.
Only thing I’ve found that works better is the peanut butter flavored candy they sell around Halloween. It is a short, squat cylinder shape and is wrapped in orange or black waxy paper. More solid than peanut butter, but sticky enough to stay in place.
Count another in the peanut butter column.
I’ve had the best results with pb.
I even tried cheese whiz.
If I knew I had lots of the little critters I’d try to snare them. 
Just for the sport
I caught one one time with a novelty long spring trap like fur trappers use.
It was a blind set. No bait.
Here is a url for a few snares. Snares And Traps
Some of those are pretty complex.
Dunno where those old timers found the time to fool with building them.
Bacon rind also works.
Peanut butter, sometimes mixed with oatmeal, is the standard small-mammal bait used by professional mammalogists in trapping studies.
We had a mouse in our house when we first moved in. We could hear it scrambling around each night and pinpointed a certain spot that he liked to be in. We set a trap with a tootsie roll on it and caught the mouse literally less than 3 minutes later!
So I say go for tootsie rolls.
Hell, I’d brave a mouse trap for a Mary Jane!
Mmmm…Mary Janes…
I buy Reeses Peanut butter cups and melt them up and put a big ol’ dollup on the trap. Seems to work pretty well.
Another vote for peanut butter.
Runner up: Feta cheese…stinky, pliable and lasts weeks if not months.
I use peanut butter and it always works like a charm.
I had the trouble with the peanut butter getting licked off of the traps. I sewed a raisin to the trap and caught a mouse soon after.