My boss was at a party last night and the host took him next store to show him a house that was for sale that he was looking after. Since the house had mice, he had set up some glue traps. My boss wanted to know how a glue trap kills. (And as an aside, do they really not have glue traps in the U.K.?) I assume that they mice just starve, but I never researched it. What’s the straight dope?
I think they just starve or die of thirst if you leave them for a few days. Some get their mouth caught in the glue and sophicate. I use glue traps and the mice are always alive when I catch them. I caught a live one (RIP) just two days ago.
I’ve not seen them here; we have the traditional ‘snap!’ kind, plus the humane live trap kind where the mouse is trapped in a box and you release it outdoors (whereupon it is either captured and eaten by a cat, or promptly finds its way back into your house).
Oh, and we have these little plastic huts ready-baited with poison.
I imagine some significant proportion of the rodents will also panic at being unable to escape and will suffer a murine heart attack. No matter what, it’s arguably not a pleasant death for the critters. I abhor these traps. Either fast-acting poison baits or snap traps are more humane. If you really want to be kind, use any of several types of live traps and release them in the wild somwhere away from your house.
At the warehouse I used to work at had a serious rat problem (as do all warehouses on the river). We used a LOT of glue traps.
One day one of the guys found a trap with two-and-a-half rats on it.
One of the rats had started eating his trapped companion.
The ad below refers to anger management-how not to eat your partner when caught in disagreeable conditions…
I somehow got a mouse in my car a few weeks ago. Based on the timing, I think it stowed away with a bag of food put out by the curb for our Cub Scout food drive.
This rodent did a fair amount of damage to my vehicle in the three weeks it lived in there. It chewed up two pairs of gloves, the ear piece to my cell phone, and pooped everywhere. Everytime I get into my car, I start sneezing now.
I didn’t want to use poison because I didn’t want a dead mouse stuck in an inaccessable area. Snap traps had to be placed and removed each night and morning, as vehicle bumps would trip them.
I ended up putting out an electronic electrocution trap baited with peanut butter and six glue traps baited with gumdrops. The first night, one gum drop was missing. I left it without the gumdrop. Two nights later, still nothing. The next morning, the same glue trap was gone. I found the mouse a few feet away, thoroughly glued and dead. It must have either died of fear or it froze to death.
Fine with me. I absolutely hate mice. They’ve done more damage to my property over the years than any other pest.
What, exactly, are “fast-acting poison baits”? AFAIK, rodent poison is all essentially coumadin–the rodents bleed to death, and not usually quickly. It’s also supposed to be horrible.
There is another common kind, called bromethalin, which is a neurotoxin. “Fast acting” is a relative term, in this case, since death occurs in one to two days as compared to seven or eight days for coumadin-based baits.
Though he probably was eating his companion because he was starving, it’s not uncommon for mice and rats to cannibalize their fallen mischief-mates (or cagemates as the case may be.) Arguably it’s because the dead one nearby will attract predators. But it happens even in captivity with animals kept as pets.
It could’ve just been instinct since the other one died first.
If you absolutely have to kill a mouse, snap-traps are at least quick. Glue traps are very cruel.
I still use good, old-fashioned spring traps. I bait them with peanut butter. I caught a mouse just the other day. He was a tiny guy and the trap caught him above the hips, so I assume it was a slow, unpleasant death. I feel bad for it, I would have preferred a clean crushing of the cervical vertibrae, but what could I do? I’m not going to put up with him pooping all over my dish towels and oven mits while he feasts out of my dog’s bowl.
We put glue traps out during the summer because we were having trouble with brown recluses. A few weeks ago I overheard a mouse which had gotten one of its legs stuck in a glue trap. I tried to free the mouse but the stupid thing bit my finger and would not let go until I pulled it off. The mouse got away and that evening I got rid of the rest of my glue traps.
Please note folks that I am not trapping any animals at all - heck I wasn’t even in the same house of the man who was doing the trapping.
I was simply trying to answer a question that my boss posed to me. (Actually my boss’ boss)
No disrespect intended, but that would be suffocate.