kill or non-kill trap for a mouse?

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Get a non kill trap and then give it to a cat

I live in the tropics. We don't actually have mice. But rats are ubiquitous. What are we supposed to do?

I'd definitely get a no-kill trap. Mice are too cute to kill. I'm the type of person that catches spiders in the house and lets them go outside. I have an issue with killing things, except stuff like mosquitoes and centipedes. Those can go to h*ll.

My mouse trap has 4 paws. I never see him with live prey but if I did I would not intervene, he is a cat. Nature intended for him to kill mice.

we hardly get any mice or rats around here, our main scourge is insects. even those are rare, and the huge crane flies and moths we see fluttering and scuttling about were let in via the back door, which my parents leave open all way while we are all out of the house (so the doggie can go to the bathroom outside-we don't have a doggie door), and for quite a while at night. i have no qualms with killing pest insects.

they do appear once in a while, and we don't have really an organized strategy for defeating them when they show up. glue traps are effective, but when i was a kid i had a hamster that got stuck in one. he survived, but it was awful trying to get the glue off him. i'm a bit sensitive to rodent death for that reason, and i've been keeping them since i was 7. but eh, i have to make a distinction.

i'd prefer an effective quick killing spring, over glue, over ineffective spring trap that leaves it paralyzed and bleeding, yet still alive, if only barely, faintly kicking.

once in a blue moon, we get gophers..

spiders are found almost invariably in the sink and tub, down to the septics they go.

VEGAN

That says it all

In the past, I have killed them. Any club like object will probably do.

Cats that know how to hunt are amazingly good at keeping them away.

Killing them yourself or having a hunter-killer mousing cat can be quite messy in a Sam Peckinpah kind of way, so best to avoid it if you are going to be upset by that sort of thing.

there was a particularly spoopy incident this january when i was visiting my grandparents in mexico and we found a nest of mice in the back of the house, under some tiles. we lifted up the tile and the nest "exploded" and all the adult mice went scurrying everywhere to hide behind old water heaters, boxes. we didn't manage to nab one but they left behind all their young, squirming and writhing.

over the summer when we were gone my dog killed a bird and dragged it inside the kitchen, my uncle found the murder scene with rivers of ants, had to bleach the floor.

I lived in the tropics for many years in a little wood shack. I nearly freaked out when I first saw the rats walking along the wires just after sunset. Everyone in my big yard had a dog or two for security, and said the dogs would kill a cat if I got one... but no, they all ignored her. And quickly the rats were gone... and the bats from the attic too.

Kill traps, all the way. In my experience, the best ones are the modified Victor traps with the "cheese." NEVER failed. They've gotten hard to find these days, so I've switched to a classic metal strip trigger with a little peanut butter. SUCKS.

Story time: Recently I became aware of a mouse running around, and I've dealt with enough mice to know their habits within our house. So I put the only trap I had available (the bad ones) in the usual spots. Nothing. The mouse eventually falls into our bathtub. OK, no big deal. I'll drop a trap in. The mouse crawled over the trigger at least three times. The mouse even FELL on the trigger. NOTHING. AAAAAGH!! !! ! OK… I covered the mouse with a box with the trap inside. I think it just took a nap or something, but suicide apparently was not an option--or the trap is just that bad. So I ended up catching the mouse with an empty coffee can and dumping the poor thing into the toilet. I really hated going there. About an hour later I took the family out to a movie, during which the mouse FINALLY drowned.

If you ever catch one live, I'm afraid drowning is the best hands-free approach. Our toilet is one of those that only has a tiny little pool of water in the very bottom, so I had to fill 1/4 of the bowl with water. Mice are good swimmers and COULD possibly jump out of the water if it's too high. It's the smooth surface and the lip of the bowl that keeps them trapped, and they can't swim forever. The trouble with just flushing them is they probably CAN swim just enough to get through the septic or sewer system and can likely find their way back into your home. I hate killing animals, even mice, but they are too destructive to just live with. If you find them, you HAVE to kill them.

I also find that using a coumarin variant is HIGHLY effective. Ask your exterminator for Talon-G. They'll tear into that stuff so hard you'll think they had rabies or something. It takes about a week to build up in their bodies, during which they're probably taking some back to a nest and feeding babies. At that point, they get really thirsty and start looking for a water source. Once they start drinking water, the coumarin hits them like a Varon-T disruptor.

I think if you are going to trap the mouse in a no-kill trap, you should buy something big enough to hold the mice you catch, an enclosure of some kind, and let them live in your home as your pets. You might have to try to figure out which are boys or girls and separate them, so you will need two places, one for each sex, or you will end up with oodles of mice.

The reason I suggest this, is, if you trap the mouse and let it go "in the woods," it will simply wander off after you free it until it finds someone else's house and if everyone frees their mice like this, whomever lives in that woods or near it will be forced to deal with everyone else's mouse woes and it's hardly fair to them, is it?

Mice are always going to run until they find a house to live in. They are only happy when they live with humans.

For some reason, people believe, oh this little mouse will be so glad when I free him into the wilderness but that's not how mice think. They see that as a very depressing, dismal scenario. They would love nothing more than to stay in your house, with you, forever and ever. Mice will put up with cats, dogs, noise, traps, and all sorts of nuisances just to be close to the humans and their kitchens which is what mice love and will do anything to be near. That's devotion so reward it by keeping mouse in the house with you.

What? Encourage sexual repression? Nah, let 'em breed, and breed often.

The reason I'd encourage that is your pet boa constrictor will eventually get lonely. So it's always a good idea to keep a few mouse babies around to keep your boa company.

Only trouble is they keep disappearing after that. No idea where they go, but we have no shortage of mice so it never really concerns us all that much.

The other weird thing is…I don't remember the last time I fed the boa. *shrug* Eh, he seems happy enough.

If you really need to kill it, could you find no other way than let the mouse drown for an hour? This is extreme cruelty, if you kill an animal make sure it is dead quickly. Even crushing it with your foot is more humane, at least it'll die instantly.
Even better, set it free near some bushes and it'll just run away (and probably get eaten by a magpie or raven). Mice don't have much lifespan anyway and the amount of mice is not determined by how many you kill, but whether food or water is available in your home. Water is especially important, don't give them access or they will keep coming.

At least you could bring it to a butcher and fetch a hefty price for it. I think you could eat for well over a year from one horse if you freeze the meat.

Cats are a natural solution, but after watching a cat play with a mouse I would prefer it to have an instant death instead.

We DON'T make food/water available. That's not why they want in our house. It's usually during the winter. The Southern US has cold, WET winters--rain, not snow. It's the cold and water flooding their natural habitat that pushes them indoors.

Drowning is cruel, I admit. I don't like it either. Crushing the thing makes sense, except there's too much risk of the thing getting away. I considered closing it up in a half-pint jar and suffocating it, but I can't stand physically handling the thing any longer than necessary. At least drowning happens quickly once its energy is expended.

And you can't release them into the wild. They're good at finding their way back. It could get eaten, sure, but mice also instinctively hide themselves well enough they could make it back to the house without getting caught. If you catch them, you have to kill them if you want them gone. Kill traps first, poison second, and any means necessary beyond that.