Reply #59: i get a rush of mice after a big snow.

[ucmike]

i tried humane traps but learned quickly that a field mouse humanely trapped at midnight will chew apart a plastic trap by the a.m.

now i use the old fashioned neck breakers. i tie a piece of dry cat food to the spring arm with copper wire so it doesn't move or fly off and i don't have to bait it everytime. then i found where they come in and set the trap so its perpendicular to the wall near the entry point. mice and rats will run along the baseboards for cover so if you place it properly you don't even need to bait it. if you can "bottle neck" them into running across the trap it works really well also. after a big storm last year i caught three mice in 8 minutes, my neighbor caught 14 in 6 hours and we live in a nice neighborhood.

i don't like to kill them, but i know what they can do very quickly if left unchecked.

when i first bought my house i was eating take-out, but decided on a friday night to make my very first home cooked meal in my mostly empty house. i was quite excited, made a quick noodle casserole and placed it into the barely preheated oven. i went outside to do somehting and came back in 10 minutes later to find the entire interior of the house smelled like hot urine. the mice had been nesting in the insulation inside the oven and once it reached a certain temp it went airborne. it took days to clear the smell.