When tiny guests stop by, turn compassion into action. Plastic trap catches mice alive and unharmed so they can be released outdoors. Be sure to check the trap frequently, so mice won’t suffer needlessly. Each trap is reusable so that you can catch and release each mouse for relocation.
Glue traps are among the cruelest pest-control devices on the market today. Please take a moment to urge the CEO of Lowe’s to stop selling all glue traps
The problem? The trap doesn’t work. One example: My friend recently saw a mouse in his house. The mouse entered his place because it was cold outside. Snow and ice make life impossible for mice. My friend bought this “humane trap” and set it next to the washing machine. Three times he has placed bait in the trap; three times the filthy little thing has escaped with it. The mouse is now bold. The last time I was at my friend’s house, it brazenly ran across the living room floor and entered the kitchen. It did it just like that. As if it lived there. As if it were time for a snack. Time for something sweet or meaty. I looked at my friend, at his impotent trap, at his lack of a cat, and asked that we go elsewhere to chat and drink. He agreed. We stepped outside. The door was shut with an air of defeat. The mouse had the place all to itself.
Your friend needs a child to play with the dog that chases the cat that eats the mouse that lives in the house that your friend owns.
Whatever his ostensible “topic,” in the end it always leads to “getting Pussy.”
Kill them. Seriously. If he’s squeamish about seeing them all dead and bug-eyed then he should get one of the kill-traps that is covered. It worked for us. If you live-trap them and then move them chances are the mouse’ll die anyway. Or if you release it back right outside your house it’ll get back in the way it first did.
There are plenty of mice.
But you did make sure to write a letter to the CEO of Lowe’s about those inhumane traps that actually work, right?
nation of pussys
Why are there so many tough guys on the Internet? Is that why the people today cry out for a true hero? Because now all the real men are stuck at their keyboards, huffing and puffing, posturing and posing?
Has anyone used a glue trap? I would be dubious because a thin layer of dust would probably make it unusable and they are one use only.
There is only one mouse trap. It snaps, it works, it is great. So does D-con. So do the little sonic things you plug in. Although they work best all together.
But yeah, death is good. Mice and rats are way more adaptable than humans and create way more babies. They also can carry way more diseases. They also won’t die in your freezer (heh… that was a fun lesson).
Humane traps are good if you intend to later kill and freeze them for snake food.
I got one of those that electrocutes them. Sounds awful, but damn it worked like a charm.
@6. Are you talkin’ to me? Ha ha. I’m so not a tough guy. The cave crickets in our basement scare me to death. And don’t get me started on moths. But I also know that live trapping a mouse and letting it go in the woods or something will most likely end up in the mouse dying a slow death of starvation, far from its territory and known food sources. And in urban areas they recommend taking live-caught mice to a rescue site or to a veterinarian’s office where they can be euthanized.
But I don’t understand how people can learn to live with mice in their houses. They’re dirty and poop everywhere.
Cheers.
Is there any team with a rodent as a mascot?? If not, The Stranger Guinea Pigs has a good ring to it. You guys have a softball league with the other newspeople in town, no? I might be thinking of the biotech b-ball league i was in. Fred Hutch was tough, Immunex had so many guys, they had 2! teams; it may have been against Cellpro? where I shot a brick at the foul-line, AWKWARD.
btw, WVU and the Tarheels: a one point game in the 4th quarter. KILL ‘EM!
Your story is not an argument against humane traps. It is merely a statement on the poor quality of *that one trap*.
Try a different brand next time! There are ones that work perfectly.
@7 A place I worked had a warehouse. Behind the warehouse was a waste transfer facility. The warehouse was shit full of rats and dust. We used glue traps and they worked quite well. Some mornings there would be 5 or 6 on one trap alone.
They are a lot less messy then other traps can be, pose little danger to pets and children, and can kill more than one mouse at once. They are cheap and no need to worry about fingers to reset them. Just put a new one down.
@10 The Oregon State Beavers are the first that comes to mind.
THE STRANGER Gerbils!
@ 9 – Who are these “they” who recommend taking a live-caught mouse to a rescue site or a vet’s office so they can be euthanized? Because I’ve never, ever, ever heard of any such thing….
Because….. damn….
My mousetrap has whiskers and runs on tuna. It’s one of the most effective traps on the market. You can buy one here. Models over 1 year old are free.
@10 the Minnesota Gophers.
Your friend is not setting the trap right. You can adjust the treadle (the mechanism that sets the trap off) to be more sensitive to the weight of the mouse. Re-set it and use peanut butter rolled with oats so that it sticks to the treadle and can’t be grabbed and walked away with.
Snap traps and/or poison works well.
Live trapping and release requires you to move the animal at least a mile away. They will return to their home territory asap.
xoxo,
burke museum mammalogist
i’m not searching the interweb, bu t i wouldn’tve guessed that beavers were in the Rodentia families, still, OSU!OSU!
WVU has won! Now off to tackle/seize the day like a tough guy..the plant nursery…band practice..whoooosh —>
glue traps ARE inhumane. What do you do with the mouse once it’s on there-drown it, beat it? It’s wrong. I swear by traps that snap-along with a tiny piece of cheese, tiny dollop peanut butter wedged into the “bait groove” oh, and I only use them once.
Glue traps are horrible. The last one I used required the use of a large rock to put the mouse out of its misery.
Snap traps work but only if they are sized to your quarry: a mouse trap will not kill a rat.
My cats have killed three rats in three days. Now if only I could figure out how to keep them from “gifting” the half-eaten carcass to me.
Poison is not good because you might end up killing a cat which dines on your poison-addled rat.
Charles, too bad your friend left that mouse alone in his house. I’ll bet he comes home to find the mouse lying on the couch surrounded by empty beer cans and half eaten pizza crusts (with extra cheese) watching old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
@18, Second largest actually…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver
if you have problems with seeing a struggling mouse in a glue trap, then just wait a few days. it won’t be struggling any longer.
most modern rodent poisons work by causing internal bleeding in the rodent. it loses toxicity after the rodent is dead, and there’s not enough poison to have any detrimental effects on larger animals like cats or children.
that said, the rat zapper ultra is my second-favorite, to a cat. zzzzt!
If you let your cat kill things you’re exposing yourself to parasites like trichinosis when you empty the litter box. Not that having dead rodent bodies in your traps is exactly sanitary.
And the outdoor supply of rodents is infinite, as long as you continue to offer them food and shelter. You’ll never kill them all. You’re just adding selection pressure for smarter rodents.
I’d go with repairing the holes that let them in (and let your heat out), and cutting off whatever food source you’ve been providing them with.
Root cause, you know? Because real pussy liberals are all about root causes.
My family used a plastic trap to catch a group of mice that moved in after the deaths of our cats. (Not that our cats were pest-killers. One was too fat and lazy to be bothered, and the other was scared of rodents, but the mere smell of them was enough to make mice avoid our house.) The thing worked for us. After we caught them we put them in a pet cage. They bred in there and it got so crowded the males started killing each other, so we took a car trip across town and dumped them out in our church’s large wooded backyard.
I’ve had mice come in from the cold these past few days. Snap traps are useless with them. I find the bait nibbled clean off of them, and yes, I’m setting them up right.
Sorry, nice people, but glue traps are the only things that have worked. I’ve laid out a minefield of snap traps that sit there unsnapped (I know about the proper places to put them), but glue traps have caught half a dozen mice (Jesus!) this last week. If you’re so worried about them suffering, you don’t have to go through any elaborate steps to finish them off; just drown them in water after.
My only problem now is finding more glue traps. Anyone know who stocks them around downtown Seattle?
i’m working with the mice to manufacture glue traps to kill humans. if you burn your traps and leave our house you will be spared.
Glue traps work wonderfully, but I was put off them when I saw how one mouse disembowelled itself trying to get out of it. The covered snap traps work the best.
I find glue traps don’t work so well. I’ve found a mouse paw on the trap. Yes, it gnawed it’s foot off to get out. Others I’ll find with the food gone, mouse shit on it, and lots of mouse fur, but no mouse. Some have caught mice, these are usually dead shortly — I think mostly because they die of shock.
In the end though I’d just say live and let live. A little mouse shit ain’t gonna kill you, and you don’t need to take it to the vet. Just live with the mice, people. You live with tons of other nasty shit — take a microscope to, well, anything.
@29: Ever heard of bubonic plague?
The only good mouse is a dead mouse. They carry with them diseases and filth. Not the human kind.
My dad used to catch mouse in “humane” traps that would simply tip and shut the door when the mouse entered.
He then would proceed to the sink, fill the trap with water and hold it up to the light and watch the mouse die.
No, I was not abused as a child and my mother is still happily married to this man.
The hanta virus is spread by rodent dropping. It is fatal and endemic in Washington state. So the choice becomes you or the mouse. Darwin will win whoever survives.
I say barrow a young cat until the deed is done.
I ignore the preview button, thus the reason why “mouse” should equal “mice” in paragraph two. Werd.
I used to catch mice professionally (as a biologist, not an exterminator). Sherman traps are the best, period: http://www.shermantraps.com/
Snap traps freak me out. They break your fingers while you set them and they break your toes when you step on them. Glue traps=rotting mouse.
@32 Hanta virus is NOT carried by either house mice or the two rats species that are common to urban areas. The species that do carry it, do not live in urban areas.
Deer mice (Peromyscus sp.) and harvest mice (Reithrodontomys sp.) are the groups that carry the hanta virus in Washington. They live in RURAL areas/farms, grasslands, and forests.
To those of you who are defending the use of glue traps, like the one who says that “just wait a few days” and they’ll be dead…SERIOUSLY?
Thing is, all animals suffer. They may not love, they may not read poetry, they may not write vapid shit on blogs, but they suffer. Fear, terror, suffering; probably the most basic emotions of all.
For all of Mudede’s posts on what does/doesn’t separate humans from other animals, I think maybe he ought to visit this one.
Anyways, you people defending glue traps suck. The end does NOT justify the means in this case. Get a snap trap. Or. Something. Else.
Minnie what is this sticky glue all over you and where are you clothes?
Electronic noise traps are worthless. Poison traps don’t work on mice that have adapted to the poison. Snap traps are the only ones that work. If you had a cabin in the woods and your bed was full of mouse shit and shredded wood and wool every time you tried to sleep in it, you wouldn’t be so happy to see mice live. Kill them. Kill the mothers, kill the fathers, kill the babies.
To convince my family that humane traps work, I made one myself. I used a large bucket, a thin metal rod, a small wooden plank, some peanut butter, and some leaves – a variation of the homemade-drowning-trap variety. The next day I had a fucking huge (unharmed) rat, and the $20 from the bet.
@36:
Since when is suffering a bad thing, for mice or people?
@ 10 my high school mascot was a dead rat
…but we didn’t have any teams for it to represent.
i’m looking for a Dog-Sized Glue Trap i can take with me when i go out to eat.
just sayin’.
Ruger Mark II loaded with snakeshot, and a good flashlight.
Sit in the dark until you hear little feet, and then try for a top score. Very little suffering, unless you have furniture lilely to be damaged by little tiny meteor strikes.
I live in a row house, in a city. There’s 5 units in my row. Units 3 & 4 (mine & my neighbor to the left) don’t have mice. Because we have cats. It’s true it’s not healthy for the cats to eat mice, so I try to intervene before they’ve gotten too far w/ them. But killing mice & other vermin is one of the reasons we domesticated cats to begin with. The mice mostly have gotten the message to steer clear of my home, it would seem.
Yes kill them all! Kill the mice! Mice in your mattress sucks! Kill every last one!
Just please, please, do it with the least amount of suffering. That is all. Easy.
and @49 I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out when suffering is good and all I can come up with is some romanticized, human situation where one might be able to LEARN from a moderate amount of suffering.
But since the mice in question are going to be DEAD as a result of their suffering, there is no point to it. No learning. No benefit. And I’m sure drowning or struggling on some glue til the point of a heart attack is a little more than moderate. It is terror.
You make a pretty shitty commie Marxist, Charles. You should share everything you have with the mice. Fuck you! You are racist against animals!
There is nothing worse than the domination of man by rodents. Cat people are the unselfish sort who would readily loan out their resident predator.
People, for fuck sake. Listen to yourselves. How have we got to this point where we sit around discussing the merits of humanity to rats and mice when there are people in the world who don’t have any food for themselves or their families. Why don’t all you liberal wankers out there be concerned about that not rats and mice. Give it some friggen perspective.
You should also be equally worried about the health of you and your family. Welfare of your family v welfare of a rat. Do the math. These little animals cause a mulitude of disease. It’s a proven fact. Don’t risk the health of your children, get rid of the rodents any way which works for you. Most of us are adult enough to be trusted to do this without enjoying seeing them suffer.