Ridding house mice.

We've been having a bit of a mouse problem. We now believe some of Indy's (our dog) psychotic behavior may be triggered from mice within our home, perhaps from their squeaks. We got rid of our 22 pound cat, Marbles, a while back (thanks for taking him, Keene!), largely because he introduced as many wild animals (both dead and alive) as any domestic mice he might have caught. :-)

While shopping for anti-mouse paraphernalia yesterday, I had Peter describe how he would design a "better mousetrap", and as luck would have it someone already had. So I obviously had to buy it [Victor Tin Cat repeating mouse trap, $16.]. Peter's idea was a trap with one-way doors. We placed this all-metal trap (with some peanut butter as an attractant, apparently optional) under our oven last night and caught two mice! Amelia and I had seen one under there this past week during a frantic morning chase, and I had only expected a single mouse. I guess we saw only the tip of the iceburg.

Once you live-trap mice, what do you do with them? We decided to release these two mice several miles from our home, but I recognize that this transporting thing may get old. Let me know if you have any better ideas, please.

Also, I got another live trap [Tomcat Multiple Catch Mouse Trap, $16], this one all-plastic, that sweeps mice into a chamber with a clear plastic cover. This is the type one must wind up, so in some ways not as elegant as Peter's passive one-way entry design.

The third type of trap I bought is more cruel. It's sticky paper [Tomcat glue boards, 2 small boards for $3] , and apparently the trap basically suffocates because as a stuck mouse attempts to escape, the glue gets over its face. It's non-poisonous, so that's a plus. I haven't tried this one yet. I guess when you catch mice with this trap, you put the mouse and stick paper in the trash.

The last product I bought to help address our mice problem was some mouse poison [Just One Bite pellets, $1/small bag]. When bought in the form of pellets within a sealed paper bag, one can lay out the bags and they will be opened by any hungry mice around giving one feedback on whether there are any mice around. Apparently the ingestion of the poison results in mice getting thirsty before it kills them. The idea is that the soon-to-expire poisoned mouse will go find water, and one hopes that they try doing this by heading outside and not by crawling up within the walls. Since it's winter now, I'll try this one at our lawn tractor in our shed. In the spring/ summer, we may try this indoors. However, our basement is perhaps too wet to make this a good solution for use within the house, especially considering our concern for our kids and dog.