# How not to catch a mouse **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 6, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357 "2015-05-06T03:46:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/21 "2015-05-06T22:45:09Z")
You all HAVE seen the fate of the mouse released into the wild by this cadet? [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/1VyQipO4miw/maxresdefault.jpg "Hawk snatches released mouse") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VyQipO4miw) ---
**Author:** ![Marion\_Wormer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d07c76/32.png) [@Marion\_Wormer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marion_Wormer)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2015, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/22 "2015-05-06T22:49:59Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > The worst are those sticky glue sheets where you end up with a live mouse stuck to a sheet of sticky paper unable to move. I had this happen when I was away for two weeks. We had the sicky glue sheets spread around so we could figure out where a stream of bugs were getting into the second floor. When I got home I didn’t smell it. I saw it. So I agree w/ the poster that said they don’t always smell. I took a shovel and put it in a plastic trash bag to take it outside and hyterically called my exterminator and told her I had a dead rat in the house. She came by the next day and said “That’s a field mouse.” “But…but… it’s HUGE! I’ve had cats smaller than that!.” She was nice about it, “Really small cats?” That mouse did a lot of damage. It ate a tube of toothpaste How it got up on the sink, no idea. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/23 "2015-05-07T00:11:18Z")
I worked in a 5 story office building, our main office was on second floor, but we out grew that space & had a dozen or so workers on the first floor. Typical cube farm setup; 5’ high walls containing a desk with a file cabinet underneath of it that stopped about 3" short of the rear wall of the cube. We found evidence of mice, & more specifically that they liked to use the space between my file cabinet & the rear wall as a ‘runway’ so the building laid some spring traps. I come in one morning, crawl under my desk & see that one of the two traps has been sprung so I call upstairs to the receptionist/office manager to contact the building guys to come remove it & put another trap down. 45 mins or so later, the building engineer (there were only two building employees, an engineer & a janitor) comes in & asks who has the dead mouse. He’s pointed in my direction, I get up & he crawls under my desk. BE: I don’t see it Me: It’s behind the file cabinet BE: (crawls a little further back) Nope, I don’t see it, just the one, unsprung trap. Me: Move! Let me look. WTF, it’s gone! 😕 I saw it with my own eyes this morning. BE: (to the floor) Hey everyone, look around, see if you see a mouse in a trap on the floor anywhere. Everyone: :eek: :eek: :eek: No one would put their feet down for fear of one bad-ass, pissed-off not-dead mouse with a headache dragging around a trap that wanted **revenge**. :eek: What we didn’t find out until that afternoon is that both the engineer & the janitor got the request. The janitor, having laid the traps, knew where they were, so he just came in, collected it & left w/o saying a word to anyone during the few seconds I got up to go pee. It wasn’t such a big deal that felt the need to notify his cow-orker that he completed it & none of my cow-orkers noticed him in there to realize that it had already been disposed of. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/24 "2015-05-07T01:33:15Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > You all HAVE seen the fate of the mouse released into the wild by this cadet? I released a mouse the cat caught into the garden. Son of a bitch beat me back to the trailer, ran under it as a approached the porch. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/25 "2015-05-07T02:42:51Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > The worst are those sticky glue sheets where you end up with a live mouse stuck to a sheet of sticky paper unable to move. I’ve used those. Not terribly humane but they really work like charms. I check them twice a day and head-down in a coffee can of water anything I catch. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/26 "2015-05-07T04:06:37Z")
We had a rat that would come into our kitchen within 10 minutes or so after we finished cleaning up after the evening meal. It didn’t even wait for us to turn the lights off. You could set your clock by it. So I set a rat trap (in the style of the traditional mousetrap but rat sized). Damn thing managed to take the bait and set the trap off without getting caught. Twice. Even though I was tying the bait on. So I thought “OK, I’ll set up the video camera pointing at the trap so that I can see how the darn thing is getting away”. Cleaned up the kitchen, set the trap, turned the camera on, left the kitchen. Ten minutes later, “SNAP”, then silence. Check the trap, and it had shattered the rat’s skull but good. I didn’t set out to create a rat snuff film, but I got one, nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![trapezoidal\_jellyfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6f9a4e/32.png) [@trapezoidal\_jellyfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/trapezoidal_jellyfish)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/27 "2015-05-07T05:14:45Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > Clean around where the trap was with bleach (and possibly a second time with vinegar) and put a plastic bin (say left-overs sized) of charcoal next to the spot. If you can get the small fish-tank-filter charcoal all the better. > > (What can I say? In my family, odd pieces of dead things turning up isn’t all that unusual.) The trap was something like [this](http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20110815/big/Mouse-trap-2.jpeg), so there wasn’t really any mess on the floor. We just kept the windows open all day, and the smell is pretty much gone by now. > [@Musicat](#): > > May depend largely on the length of time. I have discovered 2yo dead mice in forgotten traps in the basement. No smell, no flesh, just a flat pile of fur and bones. I once found one when I was cleaning out a closet. It was slightly stuck to the floor and completely stiff. I have no idea how long it had been there, because it didn’t smell at all. It hadn’t disintegrated, and I don’t remember it even being shriveled, so maybe it was a more recently deceased mouse than the ones you’ve found. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/28 "2015-05-07T08:24:02Z")
It seemed to me that dessicating and putrefying were mutually exclusive outcomes – one or the other happened, never both. Most dead mice I encountered were dessicated – they just dried out and became fossils. When they occasionally putrefied, it happened within a day of them dieing, and the body mostly decomposed into stinky glop. Maybe you could wait it out for a few weeks until it just all dried up, but then you would have a dried-up gloppy tarry blackish puddle, not a recognizable mouse carcass. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/29 "2015-05-07T12:50:20Z")
[The bucket traps are kind of interesting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jezQKOl5q-w) ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/30 "2015-05-07T16:40:35Z")
88mm anti-mouse cannon hooked up to mouse-detecting radar. No more mouse. Er, no more house either, but it seems a small price to pay ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/31 "2015-05-07T16:48:57Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > 88mm anti-mouse cannon hooked up to mouse-detecting radar. > > No more mouse. Er, no more house either, but it seems a small price to pay If you’re going to do that, why not go all the way and nuke it from orbit? ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/32 "2015-05-07T16:54:01Z")
> [@Spiderman](#): > > No one would put their feet down for fear of one bad-ass, pissed-off not-dead mouse with a headache dragging around a trap that wanted **revenge**. :eek: I once had a lobster that tried to kill me using my own knife still stuck in his head. Apparently bisecting his brain just pissed him off and he came after me. ---
**Author:** ![StGermain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stgermain/32/2868_2.png) [@StGermain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StGermain)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/33 "2015-05-07T19:32:55Z")
My cat horked up a dead mouse last night. Fortunately I didn’t find it with my bare feet. StG ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/34 "2015-05-07T19:59:24Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The leaf dies after half a dozen closures. And I’m just supposed to take it on faith that you know about this stuff? You user name is not “meateatingvegetation”, ya know. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2015, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/35 "2015-05-07T20:21:58Z")
> [@Doctor\_Jackson](#): > > And I’m just supposed to take it on faith that you know about this stuff? You user name is not “meateatingvegetation”, ya know. You caught me. I just like to make shit up and fool folks. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/36 "2015-05-08T00:03:59Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > It seemed to me that dessicating and putrefying were mutually exclusive outcomes – one or the other happened, never both. You left out the middle option – putrefying, then dessicating. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/37 "2015-05-08T01:13:25Z")
Mice caught in snap traps generally die at once. Let me tell you what I found in a broom closet at work. I set the traps, and found a dead mouse in one of them. But he died of blood loss I think. The trap snapped juuuuust on the end of his pointy little nose. While hurt I don’t think it was a killing blow. But then he thrashed around so much he finally cut his throat on the wooden base of the trap. Quite a bit of blood smeared around. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/38 "2015-05-08T02:32:49Z")
The little guys are just trying to make a living, like you and I. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/39 "2015-05-08T02:54:55Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The little guys are just trying to make a living, like you and I. > ☹ OK, just not in my house. ---
**Author:** ![excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e8c25b/32.png) [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2015, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357/40 "2015-05-08T03:00:54Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The little guys are just trying to make a living, like you and I. > ☹ You obviously haven’t worked with the people I’ve worked with… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-not-to-catch-a-mouse/719357.md?page=3)