Customer Reviews

Havahart 1020 Live Animal Two-Door Mouse Cage Trap

5 star:		(81)
4 star:		(33)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(42)

 

 

About 15 years ago, our apartment building began having occassional mouse problems, with my own apartment receiving 2 or 3 visits from a stray little fellow each year. I was truly appalled to see some of the more modern solutions in the stores -- I'd always had a problem with the idea of the traditional spring traps and poisons, but the houses containing sticky-bottomed floors seemed unduly cruel. I don't want to kill the little SOBs, let alone torture them; I just don't want them as roommates.

The Havahart live trap is a good, humane, cost effective solution to it all. The mechanism is a simple bait-table connected to a set of two thick and sturdy exterior wires which -- on a new trap -- trips very easily (a bit of delicate, deft handling of the exterior wires is needed to get the trap to not spring closed during setup -- those with large fingers will have a difficult time with it I would think). Following capture and release, a good cleaning in a bucket of bleach, well rinsed, and the trap is ready to go again.

For the more romatically inclined, there's a good feeling to be had in preparing a Wine & Cheese Platter (actually, I use toilet tissue and peanut butter) in my attempts to be a good host to the occasional visit from Mr. Mouse. The trap works well enough that normally I see no evidence of a mouse in my kitchen prior to him appearing in the trap -- over the years, I've come to regard the visitors less as disease-ridden destructive vermin, and more as a cute if unkempt old friend who gives me a good excuse to swab the kitchen in bleach.

I normally replace traps every five or six years, and not because they break or become non-functional-- Over time, the trap tends to get a funky dark tarnished patina which is simply too unattractive to my eye. With reasonable care, these traps can be a one-time purchase which need no replacement.

Aesthetic loss aside, after a year or so of use, it helps to oil the moving parts of the trap -- without this, it's possible for the mouse to enter the trap, steal the bait, and leave without tripping the mechanism. Be careful also of too heavy-handed handling of the trap when cleaning -- although sturdy enough, the walls of the cage can be bent with a bit of pressure, which will prevent easy movement of the doors and bait-table.

This is, to my mind, one of those superior products which one always returns to. Whoever crafted the phrase "build a better mousetrap" never saw one of these. It's cheap, it's permanent, it works.

UPDATE: 10/13/11

Many of the reviews for this product justifiably criticise the hair-trigger action of this trap, and the difficulty in setting it up without having it spring.

Since I wrote this review, my workaround for the problem has been to wrap a small swatch of transparent scotch tape around either of the external trip-wires (connecting to either the bait table, or to the bent wire leading to the door). The objective is to make one of the two thin trip-wires slightly thicker so the they can balance more comfortably on each other. I generally don't need to continue this after the trap has some use/cleaning/light banging around or is otherwise not new from the box.

Hope this helps.

(NOTE: this product rates a 5 if modified as suggested below. Without the simple modification, it can become lethal to the mice.)

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I am catching a mouse a day in our school. We name the mice like hurricanes, and we have gone thru the alphabet twice in 6 months! (We collect the mice in a hamster cage and release each Friday, using a DEEP painter's bucket and toilet paper cores for transfer, in case you're interested).

I love this thing (actually I bought two).

I had to make one minor modification - the lower edge of the trap door is very sharp - the mice try to push under and cut their noses - I added a piece of clear tape across the lower edge of each trap door to cover the edge and -- SHAZAM--, its now perfect.

Advice for the novice - when you release the mice (far from home or into a DEEP bucket), hold the door closest to you closed - the first time I unlocked both doors and the mouse instinctively ran out the upper door and up my arm. LOL

The Havahart 1020 is advertised here as a Mouse and Rat trap. This incorrectly suggests that this trap is large enough to trap rats. As the written instructions for the product clearly state, this is a mouse trap and the next larger size (1025) is a rat trap. My rats are happy to crawl in, reach all the way to the back of the cage (in one-door mode) and eat the bait and wriggle out again because they are large enough to keep the door propped open the entire time. This trap is not useful for trapping rats. This product (1020) is a MOUSE trap, NOT a rat trap. My rat trapping is thus delayed in waiting for what turns out to be an inappropriate trap.

It's quite a shame that I have to write this review- I have many Havahart traps and have used them for many years. I've always found them to be well constructed, durable, and reliable traps.

I recently ordered a number of new Havahart traps to augment some older ones between a few years and a decade old. I was stunned to find the traps non-functional - they were welded out of square. They also reeked of machine oil and were greasy to the touch. Finally, I found them to be made of a much weaker metal- although they appear to be the same gauge steel, even the slightest touch deforms the trigger wires.

I finally took a look at the box and found that they are now "Made in China" (contrary to the description on the website which states that they're made in the USA, as they were for so many years).

I am extremely dissatisfied, and will be sending the traps back to Amazon for a refund. I'm also greatly disappointed that a great trap made by a great company has been turned to garbage, probably just to make a few extra cents.

We love this trap. We've used it for years, and it was a fantastic investment. (Much cheaper than a hundred snap traps!) It's a little tricky to prop the metal where it bends, and if you set it "hard" it apparently doesn't release the hinge -- we have lost mice that took the bait but didn't spring the doors. But lordie we've caught many. We usually leave just one door open. I like that it is roomy and airy enough for the caught mouse to finish their final meal and wait for me to release them, rather than being stressed in a tiny plastic chamber. Bait tip: best stuff we've found is pine nuts, which they adore.

We purchased this human trap to try to capture a mouse we had seen lurking in the yard/porch/crawl space. We loaded it exactly as directed (which is very very very difficult, partly from unclear instructions and partly because it is easy for human fingers to spring the trap).

And we gave the mouse free snacks for a week. The bait--no matter what we put in--always got eaten, but the mouse never sprung the trap.

Maybe it would work for a heavier animal, but the little field mice seem to be just too small to spring the trap. We had, however, EXCELLENT results with a different humane trap shaped like a little green house (although those results included finding out the mouse had a friend...or five).

Very effective - often even works without bait if you put it in the right location. Because the critters can see through it like a tunnel, they are much less afraid to go inside. The only drawback is that you can only catch one at a time, so you may need multiple traps.

I accidentally ordered a size too small when trying to catch this rat in my kitchen. (This is really for a large mouse or baby rat.)

However, it was a small rat in my kitchen, so I thought it might work anyway. Then, after about a month of not catching the little bastard, I worried that the rat might have grown too big for the trap and it wouldn't work anyore.

Two days ago-- eureka! Finally that little bastard ran right into the trap. I took him on a walk down to the river, next to an amusement park, because I figured he'd have lots of foot and water there.

You're supposed to let the rat go at least a mile away from your house or they'll find their way back.

The upshot is that you need to be patient-- don't expect it to work for at least a month, because rats are a lot more wary than mice. You need to let it sit there, baited and open, for at least a month before htey get used enough to seeing it so they'll lose their fear.

Also, set it flush against the wall. They like to run along walls, and throught tunnels, so you HAVE to buy the 2-door trap so it looks like a tunnel. Believe, me, I've tried the one door trap and that was useless.

Works great catching mice. No bloody or gruesome mess like with the traditional traps or screaming mice on the glue traps. No guilt with killing the little buggers, either. Plus the kids like to look at them before they're released. Downsides: somewhat tricky to set and occasionally trips for no reason. It took me a few tries (and swear words) to get the hang of setting it. Now it's no problem. Only other negative is the mouse poop falls out and onto the floor. But pretty minor issue, really. All in all, a really well designed product that does exactly what it's supposed to.

We purchased this Havahart trap along with another type of trap called the Tin Cat. We had been using tiny single plastic humane traps that we purchased at OSH. The Havahart, although I found the instructions a little vague, has worked the best. It's a little hard to set if you're using bait that moves (we use cat food nuggets) as you have to set the trap so that the food holder is level, then reach your hand in to set the bait there without touching and setting off the trap. But once you get it in there, this trap works really well. And the mouse has enough room that if you don't grab it immediately, he can move around freely. The Tin Cat trap, on the other hand, did not catch anything!