Unfortunately, it’s come to this. We have endured a recent onslaught of mice here at the WeirdNorth household. I bought box traps, the kind supposed to catch the mouse for later release, this was a waste of money, they didn’t catch a single mouse. I placed snap traps around, and caught a few mice, but lately what we’ve been cursed with are baby mice. They are small, about the size of a quarter, and they think the snap traps are an E ticket ride. They pull on the bait and the bar snaps over their heads, flipping them and the trap into delightful parabolas. I swear I can hear them yelling “wheeeee!” in their little mice voices as they flip around. I’ll be the first to admit that the mice are cute, and all things being equal, I’d much rather catch them and let them go in the field or kill them instantly, but those methods haven’t worked, and I can not live in a house with vermen. We moved a shelving unit t’other day and the floor underneith was covered in mice poop. Which brings us to…
Glue traps. I am sure I can catch the mice with these, there are several pathways they run along, I’ve seen them. The problem is what to do after I catch them. Once, many moons ago, I tried to peel a mouse off of a glue trap for release. It didn’t work. What I wound up peeling off of the trap was the top half of a mouse. :eek: Even though I want the mice out of my house, dead if need be, I don’t fancy having them stuck to traps in the trashcan for days while they starve to death. This seems unnecessarily cruel. So, once I get the little buggers on the traps, what suggestions can you, the Teeming Millions, give me for humaine disposal of the mice?
Oh, and to put the obvious suggestion to rest, a cat WOULD be the ideal solution, unfortunately Ginger is very allergic to cats, and I don’t want her sneezing herself into a miscarrage. I had to send my cats to live in Georgia when we got married.
You have to kill it. It’s the only humane thing to do. Hit it with a hammer, is what I’d suggest-- it’s about as quick and painless as possible.
You ought to try the live traps. They work well. I used them, and then set the mice free in the woods.
It’s not their fault they’re mice. They’re just tryin’ to earn a living, feed the kids, have a warm place to sleep . . . I kinda feel sorry for them. Rather than kill them, I prefer to evict them.
And no, a cat isn’t the perfect solution. Not only can the cat potentially catch parasites or diseases from the mouse, but cats have also been known to torture their prey.
My apartment building had a recent infestation which I helped cure. My kill score is well in the double digits. All you need is a a plastic grocery bag and bucket or sink filled with a couple of inches of water.
Slip the bag tautly over your hand like a glove. With that hand grasp the mousefilled trap by the edges, avoiding the sticky gluepad. Drop the trap in the drink, mouseside down. Tilt it a bit to release any trapped air. Wait a few minutes for Mickey to give up the ghost. Grasp the trap again with your bag-covered hand. Pull the bag over your hand; the trap will now be inside. Tie the bag closed – I like to knot the handle flaps – and dispose.
The hammer was the only thing I could come up with after debating the myriad ways of killing a mouse. Drowning seemed painful, as did suffocation. (Plus, they take too long, and I don’t like the idea of the poor thing struggling in vain for its life.) I didn’t like the idea of decapitation, since I couldn’t ensure that I would instantly kill him with the first blow. Shooting him seemed to be, uh, overkill, and I just couldn’t leave the poor thing to starve. I even considered putting him in the freezer, but, though they say hypothermia isn’t painful, I imagine that it is to begin with. A hammer blow would be instant, painless death, and if you put him in a bag before you struck, you wouldn’t have to worry about any . . . er . . . messes.
I did see where you said that the live trap you had didn’t work. There are probably a couple different kinds out there— I wouldn’t give up yet, was all I was saying. I baited mine with peanut butter and dog food. I actually caught two in the same trap one evening.
The way I’ve dealt with this is to place the trap in a plastic grocery bag and swing it with great force into a wall. No signs of life at all after this. (I’ve checked. I wanted them to die as quickly as possible.)
I believe my father said he killed mice in glue traps by putting them in an old sock and slapping them against the kitchen counter until they stopped twitching.
We’ve had good luck with poison. They eat the poison, and they die. The poison contains a dessicant, so they kinda mummify. IOW, you don’t have decomposing mice stinkin’ up your house. FWIW, we didn’t have any luck with the spring traps, either. I swear, I saw one of the little bastards carrying away the hunk of cheese, and holding up a sign that said “Thanks for the grub”!
If they weren’t so destructive, I’d be happy enough to let them stay, but they crap everywhere, and eat everything in sight, so I can’t have them around. Come to think of it, I just described little kids. I wonder why I let them stay?
We had mice in our apartment when I was in college (we were in a high-rise building). Maintenance brought us glue traps, and told us to dump them down the incinerator chute when we caught a mouse. :eek:
I know that doesn’t help you much, but that’s what we did with 'em.
I’ve killed many a baby mouse with snap traps. They are lighter weight and a little more delicate in their eating habits than adults, which is why they sometimes will clean the bait out of a trap without springing it, but there are additional tweaks you can do to the traps to make them effective.
First of all, forget the nonsense about mice liking cheese. That’s probably the least effective bait you can use. What they do like is bird seed, nuts, and especially peanut butter. Peanut butter is the best bait of all for any kind of trap because it’s sticky and adheres well to the trigger mechanisms, forcing the mouse to stay put while it works at eating. Get the Victor mousetraps with the copper triggers if you can, not the ones with the big plastic fake cheese triggers. The copper trigger curls around on itself. Work the peanut butter into that curl when you bait the trap, and the mouse will just about stand on top of it trying to lick out all the peanut butter.
The second tweak is to take a pair of needlenose pliers and adjust the little prong on the trigger that holds the catch. Move the prong a little closer to the trigger so it doesn’t stick out as far, and the trap will be a LOT more sensitive. Mice that were formerly able to clean out the bait without springing the trap will be caught easily - actually, they’re the easiest to catch because they’re already conditioned to think of your traps as safe food sources.
When I’m forced to use glue traps, after they’ve caught a mouse, I fold them over on the mouse, sandwiching the poor little S.O.B., then I step on them to put them out of their misery.
Oh, and catch-and-release is a bad idea. Mice don’t stay outside when you let them go. They will always come back.
Not true. My cat caught a rat in the rental I moved out of last year. I told my vet I was concerned about the cat being exposed to bubonic plague. I was kidding, but she politely informed me that realistically, the perfect diet for a cat would be small rodents. They contain all the perfect levels of proteins, vitamins and minerals that healthy cats need to survive! (Aren’t I starting to sound like a cat food commercial?) So I disagree with the parasites or diseases part of your post. I think the cat would be a perfect solution if it weren’t for the allergies. Now the torture part I won’t argue with and can only shrug my shoulders… Cats will be cats, I’m afraid. I think they’d be less likely to torture if we didn’t also feed 'em cat food. A hungry cat will hunt to eat. A spoiled well-fed house cat will play with its “caught” food.
As for the OP, I hate the glue traps. I’d rather watch a cat torture a mouse than listen to the bitty squeaks of a mouse starving to death. I once worked in a place with a horrible mouse problem and the solution of preference was glue traps. I’d come into work on Monday to find a couple starving mice under my desk, pleading for freedom. I had to call maintenance to get rid of the traps.
Doesn’t anyone use poison anymore? (Now that we’ve established there’s no cats in the OP’s house!)
WeirdDave, there were points during my pregnancy when I was really hard to live with; maybe you can catch the mice in the glue traps, and then let Ginger bitch at them until they kill themselves!
We’ve had a good deal of success with these. (bought at the hardware store, not online.) We found they’re more sensitive than the balsa wood/wire traps (we never once had the bait stolen), kill cleanly when properly baited* and are easy to empty. They also close OVER the mouse, so even if it’s a teeny one, it’s caught. And no, I don’t work for the company or anything.
*The instructions suggest you put peanut butter on the ROOF of the trap. Do not do this. The two mice we caught with these instructions were still kicking when we found them and had to be killed. Eeeuuurgh. Put the peanut butter on the bait paddle. Every mouse we caught that way was caught right across the neck.
Weirddave, the bottom line, once you’ve decided to actually kill the critters, is:
Just how humane do you want/hope/pretend to be?
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a Jainist vegan who wouldn’t dare use mouthwash out of fear of hurting a single bacterium…
Well, I guess you’ve guessed by now that glue traps score a low “zero”.
How would YOU want to die?
S l o w l y … in agonizing sticky terror? [BITE THE STICKY LEG! BITE THE STICKY FOOT! BITE THE STICKY TAIL!!! BITEBITEBITE!!!]
Or would you want it quick and painless, and unsuspected, while dining on your favorite snack?
If you say you’d like to meet your end by being played with by some toothy predator, I’m afraid you haven’t quite achieved or understood the essence of mouse existence, and you need to meditate a bit more.
Good grief, gluteus biggus, I said in the OP that I’d prefer to catch and release the mice, or, failing that, kill them instantly. Glue traps are cruel, that’s kind of the point of this thread. What else do I have to do to achieve zen and the art of mousecide?
Yes, but at least send Mickey out in style. First, rent a large stage and charge admission. Then dress up in funny clothes and get a great freakin’ big, oversized wooden mallet. Have a small table right up front and break the ice by first smashing a few watermelons, etc. Then, have everyone coverup in plastic sheeting, set the little mouse up on the table, raise the mallet high and… Whammo!
While I think this is a fine, and certainly one of the easiest methods, it does seem a bit less humane than the OP is looking for. I’d recommend a little sleep chamber. Collect your glue traps, take them to the garage or driveway, place a box over them and pipe(with a garden hose or something similar) the exhaust from a car into the box. Cutting a small hole in the box and placing it right next to the tailpipe should work as well. The exhaust fumes will kill the mice. Wait a bit and then dispose. Not quite as humane as the drugs used in shelters to euthanize dogs and such, but since you probably don’t want to purchase those drugs and then inject each individual mouse with them this is probably a more viable option.
This really won’t be helpful to you, but what I did the one and only time I used a glue trap was to scrap the little guy off the glue and into an old hamster cage I had. I kept him all winter and then released him outside in the spring.
Glue traps have to be about the most vile method of mousecatching I’ve ever seen. The former kitchen manager at the homeless shelter I cooked in set some of those things out. I came in the next day and found, in most of the traps, two mice, screaming in pain and terror and eating each other alive. Yuck.
Poison works very well, but with cats around it should be avoided. I’ve already seen one cat who got so sick from eating poisoned mice that she had to be put to sleep. Granted, she was already a very old cat, but still…
I’ve personally had very good luck with the Victor fake-yellow-cheese-trigger snap traps. The mice in the shelter were always able to lick all the peanut butter off the copper-trigger traps without springing them. But because you don’t bait the yellow-trigger traps (the plastic is scented), the mice have to actually chew on the trigger. That will set it off almost every time.
