A Better Mousetrap
  
Living in a city with so many abandoned properties, like we now do here in New Orleans, means we all have mice.
We had mice in the city before but as people come to gut their homes after some twelve months or more, they disrupt the home of many peaceful rodents who have taken over in their absence. Lately, the cold weather has driven them to the next more comfortable place to live, namely, your house.
I have been fortunate enough to have learned of the Gempler’s reusable mousetrap almost immediately upon my return from a very wise caretaker, Jim Louis, who, by the way, has a new page dedicated to his comfortable confines in VA. Jim Louis left me with one or two Gempler’s as a parting gift. He’s a wise and practical man. I am continually grateful.
The beauty of the Gemplers mousetrap is its sensitivity. Those little mice you can’t seem to catch in the average balsa-wood disposable trap are doomed in the Gemplers. Mice can rarely steal the bait because the Gemplers contains a bait cup in which they must dig into to get the bait. Jim Louis taught me that the best bait is peanut butter. Of course he’s right about this, hands down. The other great thing about Gempler’s design is that they are heavy-duty reusable. The only bad thing about the Gemplers was that you could only order it online. Usually, the one trap will take only about four days to work. However, recently, after I had one particularly evil Xmas mouse who, upon arriving home from dinner one evening, sprang from some height above me and smacked me in the shoulder. Time to get medieval. I couldn’t get more Gemplers fast enough.
I went to Harry’s to see if I might make the foray into poisons, something I don’t want to do because there are cats in the vicinity. At Harry’s I found the D-CON version of the Gemplers. It varies in that it is housed in plastic and designed so you don’t have to touch anything close to the dead mouse. I was happy to find that they work just as good as the Gemplers. D-CON Version
Here is the link to the Gempler’s website which does offer a large size for actual rats. http://www.gemplers.com/pestmgmt/wildlifecontrol/rodent/RSNE1.html
Happy Killing !
Our particular xmas mouse had no interest in peanut butter..
He attacked our avocados on more than one occation.. so the very first nite that we baited the traps with avocado he was doomed…
Maybe we caught Speedy Gonzalez :-)
news you can use. one of the best posts of the new year. thank you.
A very timely post for sure, given that TBK and I are facing our own battle with at least one small but highly cute mouse in our kitchen. The furry little bastid has an affinity for pistolettes and leftover pizza crumbs — perching on his hindquarters to survey the best means of approach even as we have barely left the kitchen.
I’ve lately used a spring-loaded plastic thing that looks vaguely like a small Tyrannosaurus rex head. But while the large version worked well on rats at my mom’s house, I’ve yet to try to smaller mouse version in New Orleans. We’ll let you know how it works. The rats were all over a piece of Slim Jim as bait. I think I’ll try some Leidenheimer’s po’boy bread this time.
I’ve found that glue traps work well. I had a mouse problem with a couple of mice getting in and both were caught in a week.
Of course, the best solution is to find where they’re getting in and close it off.
*craig…try a little Blue Plate mynezz on that Leidenheimer’s po’boy bread next time.
if it works on termites..it’s gotta work on mice.
it’s all good, it’s all good. =D
How about the natural mouse trap? Get a cat, I have two and the critters will not come around my box under I-10
Buy the old cheap wooden ones 25 cents a piece. Place them on a sheet of newspaper and bait them with peanut butter.
When you catch the mouse. Fold up the newspaper and trap and throw the whole thing in the trash.
Or, you can put the baited trap inside a brown paper bag, then you don’t even have to look at the mouse.
The mice in my house loved all fresh produce… tomatoes, bananas, apples.. etc.