how to catch a clever mouse?

   For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to catch a mouse that my
wife saw in the kitchen.  I put two mouse traps in there, but only one was
messed with - the mouse evidently took its time very, very carefully licking
all of the peanut butter off it it, without even setting it off!  It was
licked clean, too, every bit of peanut butter gone.

  I put my cat inside in the kitchen for a couple of nights, and for a while
thought maybe it had caught and eaten the mouse.  However, this morning when
I walked in the kitchen and turned on the light, the little bugger jumped
off of the countertop and ran back behind the stove.

  I'm getting really sick of it.  It doesn't seem to be getting into any of
our food on the countertop, because we have it inside glass gallon sized
jars.  However, the mouse sure seems to poop and pee a lot up there on the
counter for its size, and I'm tired of having to clean up after it.

  Can anyone suggest a better alternative to traditional mousetraps?
Something that will catch a mouse that seems smart and careful enough to
outwit a traditional trap?

 

try the conventional traps with the big yellow plastic trigger paddle.
Place them in natural choke points.  Eventually he'll screw up.

.max

--
The part of betatron @ earthlink . net was played by a garden gnome

 max wrote:


Whatever you use, bend something so that it has a hair trigger.  They
don't all come from the factory properly-adjusted.

Attach a piece of apple (or cheese, the traditional bait) to the
bait-pad with several windings of thread.  Smear the apple with peanut
butter.

For REAL neatness, place the trap business-end facing outward in a brown
paper lunch bag.  If you see a tail protruding from the bag, pick the
bag up and throw the whole thing in the trash.  If you have to re-use
mousetraps you're in bigger financial trouble than you thought.

--
Cheers, Bev
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"I'm not proud.  We really haven't done everything we could to protect
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 The Real Bev wrote:

Yes, I was going to recommend NOT getting the plastic ones for just that
reason.  You have to get the Victor trap with the metal cheese pedal,
and bend it like Bev said.

I also like to take a chunk from chunky peanut butter and lodge it into
the hole on the "cheese" pedal hoping the mouse will have to pull on it,
though I can't swear that makes a difference.

 timeOday wrote:


Thread.  Works every time.  Greedy little bastards can't resist trying
to get every last bit of savory goodness.

--
Cheers,
Bev
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Vampireware;  n, a project capable of sucking the lifeblood
out of anyone unfortunate enough to be assigned to it,
which never actually sees the light of day, but nonetheless
refuses to die.                              -- Trygve Lode