Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Efficient, Long Lasting, Humane, September 26, 2007
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.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
great trap, February 9, 2008
(NOTE: this product rates a 5 if modified as suggested below. Without the simple modification, it can become lethal to the mice.)
________________
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
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe it works for squirrels, but not for mice, May 2, 2008
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).
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