Hope you send your Critter on the way quickly. One Mouse ran through our basement Suite right past my nephew last night. The traps are out hopefully that will solve the problem :-)

sticky traps = torture for the unwanted critter. snap traps leave something you can't un-see. they make traps where mouse goes in, is done in, and there's nothing to witness. DO NOT use poison, like D-Con... for being sorta OTC, can have really bad consequences if wrong critter gets into it.

We put mothballs in attic crawl spaces that keep raccoons and squirrels at bay.

We have a live trap up there too. DH catches chipmunks all year because they have eaten the bimini cover on our pontoon boat. He releases them at the golf course.

Live traps are the only humane traps, Sticky one are horrific!!

I have the five gallon water bucket one in my garage. I forgot to mention it is baited with peanut butter.

Sue

I'd avoid the D-Con as well. Critter will eat it then wander off somewhere to die........usually somewhere inaccessible but where the smell will be present and obvious. Snap traps are fast and efficient and a dead mouse or rat (or squirrel) is not really any big deal. Just a dead critter to be disposed of.

btw, peanut butter as bait is very effective!! Cherrios maybe not so much :-))

D-con and other poisons are horrific too. It IS a creature, after all, maybe in the wrong place , but to poison any living thing is cruel. Besides they will go off and die and smell and if outside get eaten resulting in another animals' death.

No matter how many you trap, the problem won't be solved until they are blocked from entry into the attic. It's getting cold, and they are coming in.

Yes please do live traps and release. I really hate that humans think they have the right to kill animals that annoy them, especially in cruel ways.

I like the Victor traps as you just have to step on it to release the dead mouse. I just can't imagine live traps for mice.

If we all had a little more compassion, the world would be a better place. It makes me sad to hear these justifications.

We have used Victor snap traps for many years. One mouse got caught by the tail, he crawled up into the sleeper couch and when we moved the couch we found a little pile of hair and bones and the metal of the trap, apparently he chewed the wood of the trap, died and decayed. That was when this was our cottage and we weren't here for 4 months.

In our old house we caught another one years ago and it caught on the tail and that was a fun chase!!!

Yes, I will have DH up there looking for the opening post haste. I think part of the problem is the branches of a pine tree that are too close to the house.

Not using peanut butter because DH afraid that it will summon other critters. He told me he used the 6 Cheerios I gave him, but maybe he just popped them in his mouth. He was not happy about baiting????

Kathy, the Victor ones I use are plastic and open like a jaw so the mouse sticks his head in and trips it. I put peanut butter in them .i am afraid of getting my fingers caught in the wooden ones plus harder to get the mouse out.

Compassion for disease-carrying rodents? You have got to be kidding! My compassion is for people not getting diseases!

I use the Tomcat traps that have have the plastic jaw like teeth. They do a clean kill and I feel it the the most humane way to get rid of mice. The old metal bar ones can snap prematurely on a mouse tail or foot. Glue traps are the most inhumane way of rodent control I can imagine. I wish they would ban the things.

Catch and release avoids both disease and cruelty. It's clear my value system is different than most people here. I just feel that someday I'm going to have to answer to how I treated others, including animals, and I want to be able to honestly say I did my best to respect all lives. I don't feel it's my right to decide what lives and what dies. Clearly other people feel differently.

I have only used humane catch and release traps. In my previous home we lived near open fields and invariably a mouse or two (or 30+ one year) made its way inside. Baiting the trap with peanut butter worked every time. We made nightly trips to relocate the critters. We could not kill living creatures who intend us no harm.

PLEASE no decon poison baits.

Totally agree with the people who agree that animals should be treated humanely. How do you explain that many people have pet mice? An animal should be removed but not killed or poisoned. I just don't get the cruelty some people have. No regard for a feeling living being.

Hmm, what about spiders,bugs, and ants? They are living beings too. Sorry, but if they are in my space, they need to go and I don't want them back. Flys are another problem in the spring and fall. There is no way I am going to relocate them!, they get sucked up in my vacum. Besides, everyone would just be eating veggies if no animals or seafood were killed...

Andi I forgot about that Thanksgiving Turkey that has it's head chopped off.

Go and buy a large rat snake and shove it up there, guaranteed success.

I understand the need to control rodents when they are out of control and causing damage, but those glue traps are horrible. Agree 100% with watchme who said upthread that they should be banned.

Being poisoned is also a slow, painful death and the poison works it's way up the food chain. I imagine it can also work it's way into the soil and our ground water. I would like to see it banned as well. If pets or small children get into the poison, it can be tragic.

When mice, rats and other rodents must be dispatched, there are traps that do it in the most humane way possible. If a person chooses not to use live traps, why not use something that will be quick and (hopefully) painless?

Re: bugs. There is a huge difference between a housefly and a little chipmunk, squirrel, or mouse. I have never in my life killed a living animal but I do kill mosquitos, fleas, Japanese beetles, houseflies, ticks. I have never seen a roach but would kill that too but never ever a spider or ladybug. They do tremendous good and if I find one in my house, I put it on my greenhouse plants to eat aphids. (Of course all are nonpoisonous spiders)

And no I haven't eaten meat for 35 years.

Mary, insects go outside - no need to squish them. I leave spiders alone. I have not eaten meat in 18 years.

The only spider that I "like" is a daddy -long-legs. I guess because I think they can't bite me. Have never had one in the house and him/her I would carry outside.

All land belongs to somebody. When releasing trapped animals at locations removed from your own you are putting them on somebody else's private property or on public lands where they may also not be welcome. For instance in my area eastern gray squirrels appear to still be in the process of spreading through the region, trapping and releasing these at random seems like a great way to help the infestation become general. Here this species is at the very least a significant home orchard pest, apart from any ecological impacts it may be having.

Nature is "red in tooth and claw" ... but I try to not add to the suffering of anything. If I want to kill vermin I want to do it quickly, be it mouse or truly harmful insect. Most critters that find their way inside my house are harmless and get escorted outdoors.

a d-con story. sister has a place in mountains... in the woods. the occasional mouse, especially during cold weather or times when house is empty, are inevitable. she had seen "evidence" of unwanted critters during a weekend there. she was planning the next trip with a friend and their 2 dogs. idea was, as they were getting ready to come home, they would put the d-con bait traps out. luckily, one of them noticed scraps of cardboard in little used room before they even left. one or both dogs had snacked on the d-con. off to animal hospital, stomachs pumped, frequent blood monitoring for clotting factor. vet said by the time the dogs had started acting sick, thy would have been as good as dead! very scary and expensive weekend!

catch and release for vermin like mice is just silly. would you catch and release a RAT that got into your house??

Stepping in to comment although I've only ever been a lurker on this particular forum...RE: catch and release; in some states, like mine, it is illegal.

I agree about sticky traps. Many years ago I caught a mouse on a sticky trap and did not have the common sense to drown it. I am still haunted by the cruel end that unfortunate mouse had. These days I resort to the one-use Tomcat traps when needed. And I will kill any spider I find in my house as I have huge reactions to bites, even to little spider bites.

Back in SoCal a neighbor decided to contract with a pest management company to have them set traps for raccoons (they were only outside, never got into a laundry room or attic space of any home in the HOA - so as far as I was concerned their presence alone wasn't enough to make trapping them necessary but she did. *sigh*).

The company specifically is required to take any raccoons that are trapped as a result of their business contract with homeowners to a wildlife facility, they run a 'humane' only operation. The first night only one of two traps caught a raccoon, it happened before midnight and the entire time preceding the company sending someone out for pickup was filled with the cries and screams of a trapped raccoon and the cries of other raccoons who were drawn to where the traps were. LOUD cries and screams. The pickup also didn't show up until almost noon despite myself, the neighbor, and another neighbor repeatedly calling for them to come out - I put some ice cubes on the top of the trap, and the raccoon was quick to consume them as soon as they had melted enough to get through the metal wire. An animal with a thick fur coat and that usually spends the day hiding somewhere less warm before coming out at night is NOT going to do well stuck in a trap which is exposed to the sun as it gets to the hottest part of the day! The next night both traps caught a raccoon and the screams and cries were heard once again, same for the third night, and neighbors were getting pissed about it,. Evidently one was so upset that on the fourth night they released the raccoon(s) and threw the trap out into the middle of the lake which was part of our landscape/hardscape in the HOA. The neighbor's contract was ended the next morning when the last pickup of the retrieved empty traps was made, as the company wasn't willing to continue setting traps after that. The only somewhat positive thing that those traps having raccoons caught in them for multiple nights did was that they probably reunited all of them at the same wildlife facility. And if that's unlikely I don't want to hear about it, it's better for me to imagine them cavorting together someplace nice as a raccoon family. :)

OMG I'd have thought that paying for live-trapping would have been humane. That's awful.