Escaped!

[kevin_standlee]

Early this morning as I started work, I heard the sound of a mouse rattling the bars on the non-lethal trap. I picked up the trap and saw the mouse inside. I don't like going outside in the dark to let the mice out of the trip, and I know there was little chance of the mouse starving in the next couple of hours, so I waited until after sunrise. I opened the trap and there was no mouse inside, but there clearly had been one based on the state of the crackers with which I bait the trap. The clever little mouse must have figured out a way to open the one-way doors that lead into the trip. I guess if I hear a mouse again in the trip, I'll have to go take it away even if it means taking a flashlight with me.

Comments

[frith]

You will have to go a lot further than just outside when you release the mouse. Like most animals they will travel far to return to their home territory. Outside, the mouse will just follow the same scent trail to get back in that it used the first time. I've trapped mice (deer mice) and released them outside. At first I walked for about ten minutes into the forest prior to releasing the mouse, approximately 1,000 feet away from my house. By evening the mouse was back. Rinse and repeat the next day and again the mouse was back. No, I didn't mark the mice to be sure, that would require clipping a toe. Eventually I got on my bicycle and went a mile down the road before releasing the mouse. That worked.

The longer it takes to expatriate the mice, the stronger the scent trail and the more mice that will find their way in.

[kevin_standlee]

I've been taking them about 100 meters away from the house, across the road, and releasing them into the bushes along the railroad tracks. None of them have been re-trapped (that's why I photograph them when I release them). It's precisely because I don't want to let them go too close to the house that I don't like doing it in the dark.