Daley Ponderings

We have had the joy of testing out various mouse trap products over the last year with varying degrees of success.

Our goals are, in priority order:

1. Get rid of the mice from inside our house, or at least from inside our silverware drawers
2. Protect the kids' fingers from getting smashed by the traps
3. Easy to maintain
4. Humane (mousane?) removal

I first bought some glue/sticky pads and some "easy to set" plastic fairly regular looking (defined as the ones that have one board and a couple of pieces of coat hanger size wire and a spring) traps.  One of the traps was very hard to set, and would often spring without anything touching it, particularly when I tried to put it on the floor after setting it (it would only set in a certain orientation, so you couldn't "one click" set it on the floor like the pictures said).  The other one worked pretty well, and caught a number of mice, though it left three out of the eight still alive, and struggling.  (though the third one ran away with the trap, so he must not have been struggling too much - we have no idea where the trap is...)  So, a new criteria - the trap needs to be heavy enough for a mouse to not drag away, and also kill him on the first try.  We drowned a couple of the half-dead mice, and their squeaks are surprisingly loud through the bucket of water (recommendation, if you are going to drown a mouse, fill up the bucket, toss him in, and go away).  The third half-caught one I put out back: he looked like he might be alright, and I wasn't going to drown any more.

The sticky/glue things didn't work at all - no mice were caught, though there were some signs of fur and things being near the traps.  I've heard other people with worse success than not catching any mice, but only finding their feet left in the glue.  ick.

I went out searching for some other designs.  I debated about a couple of the "live" traps, where they are a much bigger box, and there is only a door that closes, so you catch them, and release them out back.  I almost bought one, but the size was really big, so it wouldn't fit anywhere in our kitchen (the primary hangout) except in the middle of the floor, which I thought I didn't really want to have it around.

So, I bought another plastic one (d-CON Ultra Set), but it is larger than the small ones -- the mouse walks inside the box before hitting the trap, so he can't walk off with it, and Faith would have to work harder at getting her fingers caught.  This trap has caught a number of mice successfully, and no half-dead ones.   I went back (Trader Horn) to buy another one, and they didn't have any, and the only bigger ones were one-use ones, that were advertised as a "never see a mouse -- if the door is closed, throw it away" trap, so I ended up buying an expensive ($25) signal generator (Global Instruments, Model Number: PAC-1C), and so far we haven't seen a mouse!  It has been working since Thanksgiving, so we will see how it goes.