Say your prayers...

We keep a set of pantry shelves in the basement for those items that keep well and that we use frequently.  Because we tend to get mice in the house during the fall and winter, I set live catch traps with peanut butter, like this:

Usually, I have pretty good luck catching the mice and sentencing them to "transportation".  The get taken across the river where I figure they become part of the food chain - or not, depending on their luck and skill.  We do have a soft spot for rodents in this house as DS and DD have a pair of gerbils.  We also have some outdoor rodents that we're friendly with - I'll post more about them at a later date.  At any rate, we've had reasonable luck with this method.

Not of late, however.  Traps have been tripped with no mice in them.  Less than a 10% success rate catching the little buggers.  Finally, DW called me down to the basement one evening - LOUDLY.  The mice had been into all kinds of things on the shelf - from shredded sweetened coconut to powdered sugar.

What a mess.

Time to take on some more aggressive methods.

So, we've resorted to capital punishment for the mice.

Electric traps.

 

Basically, like the live traps, the mice are baited with peanut butter in the trap, walk in and get zapped.  These traps worked really, really well.

Mice, say your prayers.  

Fortunately, not all of the mice went into the electric traps - some of them who appeared to be less savvy were hitting the live traps and went on to be free-range mice.  You've got to admit - they're cute, but they're only cute because they're not in the house!