Today’s subject is mouse traps.
If you had read my Steam Vent thread, from about a month ago (misnamed Household Electrical Problem), about my amp that needed repair, I mentioned a mouse, and wondered if a mouse had chewed on the amp’s power cord. That turned out to be not so, and I later caught one mouse. After 5-6 more nights of baited traps, I caught no more mice. The traps I used each had a trap door which contained the mouse inside the box without killing it (see below). I find these Trap & Contain mousetraps as effective as the standard Spring-Kill mouse traps, where a powerful spring (sometimes) kills the mouse as he takes the bait. These Trap & Contain mousetraps do require talking a short walk in the morning before releasing the mouse, or killing it directly, but they are less messy than the Spring-Kill traps.
Last week, my mouse problem returned. This time, the mouse was smarter or luckier. Apparently, he learned how to get the peanut butter without getting caught in the trap. I’ve seen standard Spring-Kill mousetraps that failed to kill a mouse while allowing the bait to disappear. Usually, the trigger mechanism needed some adjustment. But the mechanism in these Trap & Contain mousetraps is so simple that there is nothing to adjust. They work on balance and gravity, a mouse entering the trap causes the balance to shift toward the rear, the closed end of the trap, and the door drops down and locks. The yellow bit of plastic springs outward as the door shuts and keeps the door from opening until it’s pressed from the outside.
It is possible that I used too much peanut butter, or put the dab of peanut butter too close to the door, allowing the mouse to get it without fully entering the trap. If you put the bait too far away from the door, the door never stays open.
For two out of three successive nights he got peanut butter from each of two traps while never getting caught. On one night he got the peanut butter from one trap, and escaped from the other trap while leaving the bait behind. And on a fourth night, he avoided being trapped while managing to flip the trap upside down. This is one crafty and athletic mouse. And all I was doing was training him how to outsmart my “humane” traps.
I talk about this mouse as if it’s just one. I know that if you have a mouse in your house, you usually never have just one, but many. I also talk about it as if I knew it was male. I never determined the gender, only that this mouse was one rat bastard of a mouse.
And he was getting me angry! One night, while watching Netflix, my wife & I saw him run around from behind the bookshelves, and stop near the fireplace. I swear I saw him stand on his hind legs and grin as he flipped me the bird with his tiny mouse paw! I think he even was using my wifi. I started hating that mouse!
So I started looking on Amazon for a better mousetrap. There were the usual wooden Spring-Kill traps, and similar looking plastic traps with different looking spring mechanisms, said to work better. I could always get a half dozen traps and get this mouse by brute force. But I didn’t just want to get this guy, I wanted to execute him.
Then I saw the
Victor Electronic Mouse Trap.
It uses 4 AA batteries and
electrocutes the mouse!
The first user review, titled
Questions, Complaints Answered!, convinced me to try it. It was written by a squeamish woman who clearly detests mice, “I do shuddering freak-outs at the sight of a mouse, dead OR alive.” Despite that, she educated herself on the topic because she wanted a trap that absolutely worked. It’s worth reading.
Yesterday the trap arrived from Amazon. Last night I baited it and switched it on. This morning, I found it with the blinking green light indicating it had done it’s job.
Scratch One Mouse!
I’ll set it out again and again until I don’t catch any more mice.
