Clever mouse, or paranoid human?

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About the old fashioned consumer mousetraps- wood with metal moving parts.

Are some mice so deft that they can lick the bait off of said traps without springing the traps?

Caught a mouse that lived in my stove with one trap. But when I set a second trap the bait (drops of peanut butter) vanishes from the traps each night I set it on the same spot on the stove top, but the traps are never sprung.

The first one that I killed may have been the only one, and the problem is solved. But the fact that (what looks like) droppings still appear, and the fact that the bait vanishes from the trap makes me think that the bastards learned from their friend's tragic mistake and are somehow foiling me! And are still living in the stove. Curses!

I did see it on the news where mice have become very wise to the old fashion mousetraps.

Sometimes mice can be very delicate when taking the bait on traps... so delicate they don't trigger them. You need to set the traps as hair trigger as possible to increase the odds of catching the mouse. What can help is to put the trap inside a narrow box on its side, forcing the mouse to walk over the mechanism to reach a tasty morsel of cheese or peanut butter on the trap. It can also help if you fix the bait to the trap with a little tape so it is more difficult for the mouse to just lick or nibble the bait. The more effort the mouse has to make to get to and remove the bait the better. Having said that the bait still needs to be visible and smell attractive to the mouse, so don't cover it up too much.

Interesting.

Thank you both.

I've had them take the bait and not spring the trap.I used to tie cat food to the mechanism.I switched to a havahart live trap because I felt bad about killing them.

Although it was about rats, I heard that if you let them take food easily initially, they will start relaxing and get trapped quite easily. I wonder if the same applies to mice. I think they are pretty much the same, aren't they? Mice are just smaller.

I know killing them feels really bad but you wouldn't want to let them multiply in your house. They can be very annoying and unhygienic. I once had to kill them at an early stage. One got caught by a trap and I used a mop to squash one myself. It felt sickening when I could feel the mouse crack under the mop. Luckily I didn't see any after that.

What TallyMan says makes sense.

I also have seen some device that emits a high frequency sound that deters small creatures like mice.

Cats are pretty efficient mouse catchers, and very entertaining to watch as well.

Lump hammers are also a very useful tool in rodent control.

Mmmm,tasty.

^^She could have cooked it first^^

^ I prefer to eat white mice... made of chocolate.

I'm under the impression that autistics would never kill any animals, including mice. Where did I get that from?

Just for the record,that was a prekilled mouse.Guinea pigs were just too damm fattening.