My Mice vs Ortho Home Defense Max Kill and Contain Mouse Trap

Okay so here’s my mouse trap story. I’ve known for a while there were mice in the basement. If you’re a reader of my blog you know that my basement is just a hole blown in the blue stone/shale big enough for giant spiders, the water heater, furnace, oil tank and mice. It’s about 5 feet tall so not quite a crawlspace and certainly not a basement like most people imagine.

Last year the Bottini oil guys came to adjust the air vent on my oil tank because it had settled into a downward slope vent-side and oil was blowing out of the tank when they were trying to fill it. As I was watching the guy work in the basement (I didn’t want him stealing none of my precious basement rocks but mostly just like to see people who know how to do their jobs, do their jobs.) a little mouse skittered by on the stone foundation.

Now, I don’t particularly mind mice. They eat bugs and if they live in the basement that’s cool. I’ve never seen evidence of them in the house. After hearing them climbing up through the uninsulated walls though I decided I need to get a handle on the situation before it got out of control. I bought some mouse traps and decided to give them a whirl. The traps were the “Ortho® Home Defense® Max Kill and Contain Mouse Trap (0320110)”. That sounded suitable for a mouse trap. It kills the poor little bugger and I don’t have to see it’s corpse.

Here’s a picture of the packaging for the Ortho Home Defense Max Mouse Trap:

Well I set two of these traps in the house with peanut butter. One by the base of the fridge where crumbs and other things might settle, and one in the back project room where there’s plenty of places for mice to run around and play. I left them there for about a month but no success. I had considered setting them up outdoors but I figured that’d be a bit unfair to the mice.

Finally I spread a little honey over the original peanut butter bait which was untouched and stuck the traps on the top of the basement stairs. Nothing for the first couple of days and then this evening I checked again and presto, both of the traps had been tripped. No legs or tails hanging out, so I though all was good. Unfortunately I heard a soft scratching noise in one of the traps. I poked at one of them and nothing. I then poked at the other one and it wiggled back at me! I was pretty sure that at least one trap had a severely mangled live mouse in it that I’d have to put out of it’s misery.

I opened up the non-moving trap and there was obviously a dead mouse inside of it. My heart kind of sunk at that. More so because there were a lot of plastic shreds all over showing the mouse didn’t die quickly but was scratching away trying to get out. At least this model has good springs on the door, I guess.

I didn’t really want to kill the mice it wasn’t a vengeance thing or a hate for mice. I just didn’t want them in the basement or in the walls eating the wiring and burning my house down. I threw the trap with the dead mouse in the trash can outside. In the other trap, though, I knew the mouse was alive so I took it outside and under the ultra-high-power LED yard light slowly pried the trap open. I haven’t dealt with ‘wild’ mice before so I wasn’t sure if the thing was going to jump out at me in a rage of self defense or what.

As I opened the trap nothing came out so I peered in and there looking back at me was this tiny, cute mouse with little beady black eyes staring back at me. I blew into the trap to see if it would respond and didn’t do anything but breath. I turned the trap over and shook it just above the ground to try and release the mouse but it didn’t come out. I set the trap down on the ground and pressed the door open, thinking the mouse could climb out. But of course the trap closed back up on it again. I bet that was traumatic for the mouse, too, when it tripped again. I probably spent 5 minutes gently shaking and knocking on the trap to get the little thing to bail out. I did manage to knock a spider out, but not the mouse. I looked into the trap a few times and the little guy was cowering and clinging for dear life inside the trap. FINALLY the mouse shook out of the trap and hopped a couple times atop the snow then ran into the woods.

These traps suck. They aren’t completely successful at killing the mice so you might end up with a live mouse slowly starving to death in the trap if you don’t check it often. That’s not cool. At my most basic instincts I don’t want to slowly starve to death inside a small plastic box, and I suspect a mouse doesn’t either. I don’t think that’s appropriate, but it really depends on your point of view. Of course I don’t want my guts picked out of me by a falcon while I’m still alive either, but I can only control myself 😀

My next traps are going to be live catch traps or I’ll make a mouse trap myself and I’ll just let the little things go out at the R/C flying field or somewhere where they can live their natural mouse life cycle of eventually being something’s dinner. At least I’ll be leaving it to nature to continue the cycle.

I’ve added some product links to live / no-kill / humane mouse traps on Amazon below if you want to see what’s out there and available. If you want to kill your mice there’s plenty of those inhumane mouse traps on there as well ranging from simple crush types to poisons to mini-mice-electric chair mouse electrocution devices as well and sticky traps. I think the sticky traps are particularly terrible.

Updated 3/13/2011: Here’s a cute little mouse I caught in a no-kill trap. I actually caught two mice, one in each of two traps. The pic is blurry as I was trying to get a photo before the mouse bailed out of the open trap. I did get a picture of the other one as it ran away but it’s just a blur of brown. The traps worked pretty efficiently at keeping the mouse inside until I got to them. I just checked the traps in the morning before going to work every day. This was a victor trap but the mice are gnawing on the doors and I don’t think they’ll last long.

There’s another mouse trap design I’ve been reading about as I was looking at various mouse trap designs and that’s the simple gravity door mouse trap. the ‘Mice Cube’ traps seem to work pretty good, aren’t very advanced mouse traps (less to go wrong) but are super simple and don’t seem extremely prone to failure or chewing. I ordered a four pack of Mice Cubes for $8 from Amazon.

Amazon.com Widgets

Update 3/18/2011: My Mice Cube mouse traps came in yesterday so I set one up to try it out. I didn’t catch anything in the evening but when I checked it in the morning before work I found one trapped mouse. I had seen in the reviews that there’s sometimes a lot of condensation in these traps and that maybe they should have ventilation. As you can see in the photo below there was quite a bit of condensation and a somewhat damp mouse in the trap. I drilled 5 small holes on the top of the 4 Mice Cubes so that should make it a less drenching experience for the mice.

I let the mouse outside since I didn’t have time to drive out to a remote place to drop it off. I just set out four mouse traps this evening and with any luck they’ll be full by the morning. I’ll just throw the caught mice in a 5 gallon bucket and drive them out to the middle of nowhere miles from any human population and let them go.

Well this evening has been somewhat productive. I put out the four no-kill mousetraps, the Mice Cubes, by Pied Piper Inc or some-such and have picked up some adolescent mice in the traps. I put the mice in the 5 gallon pail with some bedding made from shredded paper towels and since mouse #1 decided to tip over the water dish I just put a really wet piece of paper towel in there and some cracker bits in there for them. I’ve been checking the traps every couple of hours and caught the first 2 mice in the first four hours but nothing on the last check. The mice seem to do okay in the 5 gallon pail together and everytime I check they’re just cuddled up next to each other as you can see in the picture below.

The mouse in the back is a little scared so its ears are back. When I opened the lid the mice were snuggled together and then the one in front got scared and started running around and the one in the back just hunkered back. The one in the front eventually ran back to the other one and I took a quick picture.

Mice Cube Success!

So for the record, that’s 8 lucky live mice trapped and 1 unfortunate dead mouse.

The best bait for mouse traps that I’ve found so far is the honey and peanut butter combined. I tried the peanut butter by itself , the creamy Jiff brand, first but with no response at all but when I switched to peanut butter with honey in the various traps that really seemed to get the mice’s attention. Hmm now -I- have a craving for a peanut butter and honey sandwich, those are pretty tasty.