Be Excellent To Each Other

We have a mouse in our shed. Has anyone got any recommendations for humane mouse traps?
I saw these (https://smile.amazon.co.uk/TOPELEK-Reus ... 07XH17H8N/) and they seem ideal, but has anyone actually got any experience with a specific trap as I don't want to just buy the cheapest or first thing I find.

I had a mouse or two in my house once. I think I posted here about it but I didn't use humane traps so I won't be much use here.

Good luck with getting rid of it!

Be careful with humane mouse traps, as once you have caught it, I am pretty sure it's a crime to release it. I'll see if I can find the regulations

ah, It's squirrels I am thinking of.

However, this article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ng.comment

suggest that using Rodent Activated Detection and Riddance device (RADAR) is the most humane thing to do.

Hmmm, I really don’t want to kill the poor thing. It’s in the shed, not the house, and I’d happily let it live there if it wasn’t chewing through everything, and I really don’t want to to chew through a wire and make anything dangerous. Plus anytime I pick up a bag of anything it all falls out as mousetrap has chewed the bottom out. I saw him, and he’s only a wee little thing.

If you've seen it, they're not that tricky to catch by hand. One hand waving in front of it to distract it, grab its tail with the other. When I had cats I'd be liberating mice and evicting them about once a week during the summer

I’m absolutely happy to try and catch it by hand, but… hold on, a picture paints a thousand words…

The previous owner built this shelf, about 8cm off the ground and about 60cm deep, in an attempt to make what I can only assume is a mouse hotel.

I think any movement is just going to send the mouse under there.

Found something in the cupboard. Would this work?

I had some success at uni using a bucket with steep sides and peanut butter inside the bucket. And a way for the mouse to get inside the bucket. However we released it and it just came back, so you'd be best off releasing it miles away if possible.

Yep, I reckon you can shove Darwin under the shelf. He looks pretty slim.

That’s part of the problem. That’s where he sleeps.

Hmm… maybe we’ll have to go on a little car jaunt.

The strangely-compelling Mousetrap Monday Youtube channel caters to all your rodent disposal needs, although I appreciate that some people don't want to see kill traps in use.

Nikachu's suggestion of a bucket-drop trap is a good one.

Hmm, no, I don’t fancy a kill trap. They’re ok when the Slow Mo Guys use them on themselves. That’s about it.

Darwin loves some YouTube channel where someone makes really incredible escape mazes for hamsters.

We bought a humane mouse trap on Snazin, so we’ll give that a go, and if not, we’ll get a bucket in play.

Get that boy a proper bedroom

Nah. I spent all that time decorating it. I don’t want him messing it all up now!

That could end up being daily car jaunts.

Or buy a cage and keep it as a pet.

Or buy a cat.

It’s the first mouse we’ve had in the shed but it’s pretty inevitable. If I could move the shed elsewhere I’d happily let him live there.

Here’s something that not a lot of people know about me…

That mouse won't just be content with staying in the shed though. He'll be in your house before too long where it's warmer... and he'll bring his mouse wife... and mouse babies... and their babies... and their babies babies.

I'd get a cat.

I would seriously consider a humane death trap, as catch and release can be stressful for the mouse and often leads to their slow death (as mentioned in that article I posted before)

But… that’s why Russell started this thread and why we are trying to get rid of it.

Right there with you on that one, Meems. I don't like the idea of animals living in the house. I know that puts me in a tiny minority in the UK especially, but I will never deliberately have a pet. I have long resisted the call for dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters etc. Just not for me at all.

Have you ever used one? Because when I Googled them they weren’t for sale over here and cost $1600.

I do not want the mouse to be stressed, but carbon monoxide poisoning seems generally really unpleasant if human victims are anything to go by. Also PETA are the last animal rights organisation I would listen to.

Oh thank God. I thought I was the only person in the U.K. who didn’t buy a dog last year and wondered if part of me was broken.

We're currently using a cheapo "Big Cheese" live-catch trap to try to extract a mouse that's got under our wardrobe. I will report back on it's results!

A scientist I once knew was doing stuff about the brain and how the neurons interact using mice as a model. I think her preferred route to getting the brains into the blender was snapping the neck (like opening a bottle against the edge of a table) as it produced considerably less stress hormones. So a snap trap could be the same.

I use snap traps and poisoned food, here, but the poison might be less than stellar outside. Indeed, I mentioned this to a friend who brought her dog over but she said the 30kg dog would have to eat packets of it, and after that I have been curious as to what it tastes like.

Ah, when I searched for them I should have realised that the adverts at the top were not for the product, sorry I was not aware that they were so expensive.

I do think a quick death is more humane than a stressful extended slow death though.

When we had issues, I hated the fact that the kindest option was to kill them quickly. But they can be really dangerous to leave around, and anything else other than a quick death really is worse imo.

These house mice really do need to live in someone's house to survive, so even if you release it and it survives, you've just made it someone else's problem.

It's a problem with no easy solutions

Hmm, it turned out that the brute of a cat that brought the bloody thing in to begin with is a more effective mouse trap than the actual mouse trap.

It’s not in our house.

Quite apart from not wanting squashed mice everywhere I’ve heard far too many accounts of ‘not quite dead’ mice being found a day or two later. I don’t know enough to guess where that rates on the ‘humane’ scale, but the descriptions sound pretty upsetting to both human and mouse.

I have a five year old that is constantly in the shed looking for tools, toys, compost etc who I don’t want to keep away from part of his garden because there are traps that may be a danger to him.

Is (perhaps, when it works) snapping the neck more humane than trapping them? Maybe it is. I’d be surmising if I were to guess (though my guess would be for the percentage of times it doesn’t work, no). But do those kill traps work for my family in this situation? Not that I can see. I want to do the right thing here, but part of the right thing does involve looking after the humans that use that space as well.

I ordered a live trap in the end that’s got plenty of living space and ventilation, just had to guess at the style but was Amazon’s recommended one so went with that with no better guide, and if that doesn’t work I’ll look up the one that Squirt mentioned and try that if the reports show any promise.


EDIT: if Squirt’s cat hasn’t got there first.

Family security is definitely a consideration. Everybody needs to come to their own conclusion as to what works for them and their circumstances.

I hope you (or Squirt's Cat) get it sorted

Oh and sorry if I came across as preachy, I didn't mean to, but if I did, I'm going to blame it staying up late and getting up early for the last week and a half watching the olympics!

The snappy traps I used when we had mice in the garage had no room for escape. They squashed the poor little freeloaders flat.

I had the traps baited with cheese for a few days and the mice ignored them, so I swapped it for peanut butter and in the time it took me to turn off the light and walk into the kitchen, the mouse had set off the trap.

These ones probably cause a pretty quick death, but I can understand reluctance in using them around 5 year olds.

Not preachy, but the relative nature of what’s humane seems quite subjective and also might differ in circumstances which perhaps Russell hadn’t fully explained in regards to individual household and family situation and where the mouse was actually located, perhaps confused further by the RADAR trap being inaccessible (spendy, unavailable) to begin with.

I think what Russell should maybe have said was ‘we will be buying a no-kill mouse trap, has anyone ever used one or does anyone know which are the more effective?’. To be honest, someone here would almost certainly still have suggested buying a 360.

It was this one - https://www.toolstation.com/the-big-che ... rap/p89616.

No idea how well it works yet, but it seems pretty simple so I doubt there's much to go wrong.

I was just coming at it from the point of view, that I wanted the same thing as you did when I had a similar issue, and then I changed my mind when I read more about it. I was trying to bring it to your attention as you may not have been aware of it. I don't think I did a very good job of researching and explaining what I was trying to say.

And reading it back I think it either comes across as preachy or just plain dickish, Neither of those things were my intention.

As I said before, I can only put it down to lack of sleep, sorry once again.

We had a couple of those ultrasonic mouse scarers, a bit like those things they use in the ghettos to annoy the kids who hang around the local Spar, graffitiing the walls and asking older people to buy cigs for them. Old people can't hear the screetch, apparently.

So we had these plug-in things in the garage and kitchen for years and they seemed to be fairly effective at encouraging rodents to go elsewhere.

If you have one, set up a trail cam to test if the trap's in the right location or working properly. Or just to see what other nocturnal visitors you get.

Do they work on normal mice too?

It’s fine, Malc. We’re all just doing our best, wanting to do the right thing. Please don’t feel you need to apologise x

I do have one, as it happens. The shed is only 180cm square, so it’s not got a whole load of choice as far as space is concerned because with the shelves and the weird floor shelf around three of the walls the standing space is about 80cm.

I might looking at getting one of those for the garage as the garage door to floor clearance is such that I myself could probably roll under it like Indiana Jones.

This may be a little much, so feel free to skip over. Essentially while we are experienced with rodents it's not in a way that answers your question, mimi.

Having working fields all around us we can't rely on humane trap and release, especially when mice love our loft - including the one that bit into the lighting ring and nearly burned the house down. Ultrasonic repellents don't work.

We've rewired the loft to minimise fire risk, we've reinsulated with recycled PET stuff that is less tasty than rock wool and put mesh across run spaces as we go to deter them.

Snap traps were our go to as "least inhumane" until there was a weird clattering that took ages to track down, which turned out to be a mouse trying to get back out of the loft with a trap clamped on its neck (that one we did take to the far end of the garden and release, the poor little guy). Now they're second line.

We decided to put bait boxes dotted around outside. We don't like that they probably suffer along the way but we were putting at least 3-5 bodies in the bin a week before, at least now they get a tasty last meal.

Aye, 'cervical dislocation' is generally the method used in many/most labs that use mice (certainly the ones I've worked with), although it's not commonly done for large numbers of animals.

I used to be in the 'humane trap' camp but that changed; and now if I ever need to deal with it, I go for a snap trap (one that has a very strong spring, so it's powerful - for instant effect). Generally the two dogs and one cat tend to minimise any little visitors, which is preferable to me.

Well, the trap came last night, and this morning this wee little guy was inside, quite chilled. He’s been taken on a drive and let out into a field where I hope he has a second shot at things at least. He had some chocolate covered raisins dipped in peanut butter and some sunflower seeds in the trap. I got an extra large trap, slightly different from the size and design of the one Russell put in the first post, in case I or anyone else ever needs a recommendation for the future: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07H82VWW6

Yay! Great news.

No wonder you caught him, with that feast in there.