re: #16 stpaulbear

I will second the opinion on not putting out poison for mice if there are cats around. My cats have always been indoor cats, but there are lots of stray or roaming cats in my neighborhood. I came home from work one day to find a dead cat in my driveway. There was no sign of attack, so the only two reasons I could think of were that it fell off the edge of the roof onto the concrete driveway, or it ate a poisoned mouse. I never heard anything or saw any signs for missing cats in the neighborhood so it didn’t appear that it was anyone’s beloved pet. It actually pisses me off that people let their cats roam freely. At the time, I was trying to attract birds to my yard, and the cats were attracted by the birds.

My mother used these live trap devices in her apartment to catch mice … they were a square tube with a slight bend in the middle. You put bait like peanut butter or something at the closed end of the tube (it’s cover could snap off), then set it up to balance on the opposite end (leaving the peanut butter hanging a couple inches in the air).

The mice would enter such traps, start climbing the tube, the trap would overbalance from the mouse’s weight causing that end of the tube to drop, and trigger a door to close the entrance.

You could then take the mouse outside or whatnot.