It's interesting that people actually have opinions and feelings on mousetraps and how it kills mice. Anyway, it's cold outside and a mouse (or maybe more mice?) is living somewhere in the house. Droppings could be found some areas. Ugh. So it's time to exterminate the buggers and place mousetraps.

I'm thinking about getting the glue traps where the mouse gets caught in a gluely demise on a plastic plate. I'm not getting the classic mousetraps, with the mechanical death device that snaps the pest's neck, because they sometimes leave a bloody mess and require setup. The problems with the glue traps are that crap, like bugs, get caught in it and a strong willed mouse can move the plate.

I actually know a few people that are against the glue traps. They find it coldhearted to give a mouse a slow, agonizing death in glue (the mouse is still alive when caught.) And it is best for the little critter to get a quick demise under the cold, metal killing machine of a regular mousetrap. Oh well.

I'll probably get the glue things anyway. But I'm curious what people feel about mousetraps, or who actually cares about what a mouse "feels."

There are some many mice that killing a few isn;t going to matter.

Eh? Once they get in a house, do they reproduce fast?

yeah.. same with humans... 6 billion +? I mean come on...

Yeah, they can.

There are also electronic ones that you can plug in to an outlet tha ill keep the mice from coming into the house.

There are traps that catch mice alive so you can set them free outside.

shotgun

So they can come back inside again.

Wouldn't they just come back inside? It seems like too much effort for a little mouse.

We have about 5 glue traps lying around our house at the moment. They work very well, we've already caught about 10 mice. Anyway, if you're worried about them having a slow agonizing death, you can speed it up once they've been caught you know.... >_> *

*this is known as the "beat with an ugly stick until senseless" method

They have mousetraps that look like hockey pucks. Unlike those huge metal cage "humane" traps, these kill'em but it's confined so theres no mess to clean up and you don't have to look at it. I'd suggest that.

Though, we had mice for awhile and used the classic mousetraps but there was never any blood to clean up. Sure wasn't pretty to see though, and definitely not fun when you forgot about a trap in a specific location and find it months later with a rotting mouse in it.

Nah, echoman, not if you stick 'em in a potato gun.




and then, y'know, leave 'em there, apparently

Consider this: if you use such glue traps, the odds of encountering a mouse trapped in one that is still alive are quite high. That means you will have to manually kill the creature. I, for one, wouldnt have the heart to do that.

This thread brings to mind one of my favorites among quotes:

"The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse always gets the cheese."

Stop being a sissy about things and just clean up after your own mess.

Wow. Of all the people here that could call me a "sissy"...

Now, don't get me wrong, kill the buggers, but sticking them to a piece of paper until they die of starvation? Sick. Get the out of sight out of mind ones that kill them quick. Or get one that drugs them up so their last 10 minutes of life is a high. I don't know, I see no problem with keeping them out of your house [personally, I'd get the kind that capture them and I can rerelease them, and I'd build some sort of logical mouse fort outside that they'd go to, like a bat house] but don't kill them slowly. Killing them is stupid enough, killing them slowly just proves a bad point.

JediKirby

Get a cat, let nature takes its course.

put a bit of cheese or peanut butter in an old microwave, rig it so that the door closes and it turns on once the mouse enters; assuming a mouse weighs on average 20 grams, and that it is comprised mostly of water; at 1000 watts of radiant power it will heat up about 12 degrees celsius every second; so a minute at full power should ensure almost complete vaporization (it will, of course, be dead long before this).

Ah. Leave it to Kyle to put a microwave to use in the matter. I'm still working on my railgun.

Ah, the microwave. Need more ideas like this.

i could fix up a nice little circuit for the MicroWave trap, a few relays will do the trick.

if anyone's genuinely interested that is. it's quite simple to do.

I believe there are poisons that thin the mouse's blood so they get thirsty and go outside to find water before dying. No body to clean up, at least!

When I was a kid, I "cared" about mice, and wasn't interested in pasting them or squishing them. I'd put a glob of peanut butter under a shoebox. The shoebox was propped up with a pencil that had a piece of string on it. The string had my hand on the other end. It was just a waiting game after that, and it always worked.

Later, I gave that up for the sticky things.

Below is my favorite mousetrap of all.

And then you find 30 mice dead in your bathtub in the morning!

Or in the toilet!

Get the mechanical traps. Trust me. My house still has mice, and I keep finding more evidence they they reside here. So far I've caught 5 under the kitchen sink, and droppings in our storage room, and several boxes have shredded cardboard and paper....obviously they're living in comfort...

The glue trays are by far the most effective. I just caught a few rats using them. I also had two of the traditional traps which didn't catch anything.

The glue traps don't always keep the mouse alive, sometimes they'll get suffocated or they'll choke trying to chew their way out. If they're still alive, you could let them go if you wanted, but what's the point?

Just kill them.

Why was there a Cool smily in that post?

We had a mouse problem once... Our dog scared em off [REALLY].

uless said cat doesnt like to chase mice.

Riiight... Thats like saying Humans hate sex, it just doesn't work.

I use whatever large, heavy object is around me. Then I send it hurling at the despicable rodent, which is crushed under the immense weight.

Once I killed a gopher by running up and hitting it with a baseball bat. It died quickly.

when we tried utting my previous cat in a room with a mouse that we had cornered and shut in, he started meowing upsetedly and refused to have anything to do with the mouse. that, and he was fat and lazy.

You can;t jsut up and expect a cat that has never hunted beofre it it's life to hunt a mouse like that.

The idea is to put them somewhere far away. Like, keep them until the next time you have to drive somewhere and let them out on the side of the road somewhere woodsy.

plastic spring traps are good, no mess and kills the mouse quickly.

Just build some sort of trap with a 30,000v power supply attached to it and when the mouse touches it, BAM! Fried mice Just think of it as a big resistor for those of you humane people.

Naw, it's the amps that do the frying. 30,000 volts can't hurt you. Remember that power dissipated by a resistor is I^2*R, so you want as much current as you can get (while, of course, still keeping enough voltage to actually push the current through the mouse).

"....requires set-up"

Step 1) Wind metal bar back.

Very discouraging, I know.

Yes. The metal is way too challenging.