Two comments
1: if you do trap and release -too close to your house they WILL return -if you take them too far they have no food stores built up or accessible OR they have no knowledge of safe hiding places and they will either starve or become someone's dinner. So no more humane than trapping and killing anyway
2: We live in an old house and used to count on a few mice starting in October. The year the railway tracks were removed the mice moved in in August. When they sat on the counter watching me wash supper dishes we got out the traps. Set trap, turn out light and go watch TV in the next room - snap! Dispose of body, re-set trap,repeat ... Caught for of the little suckers in 10 minutes! Caught 13 mice then just quit counting! Caught out ny the nose ...still alive rattling around an emptied drawer ... DH took him outside drawer and and let him freeze ... It was early November by then. Finally got ahead of them!
Then there was the year rats moved into the detached garage cause the neighbour didn't have chickens that year!
Then that spring we had a nest of garter snakes in the rock garden ....
Ain't living in the country grand?!

At the one room school, in 1953, I realized we had a mouse (or two) in the storage closet. So the next day I brought a trap. As soon as the children quieted down, and I was in the middle of first grade reading class. SNAP I sent one of the eight grade boys to take it outside and reset the trap. We went back to class. SNAP Got the second one. I think we got one more later in the day, and then no more.

Linda, I had the same thing happen to me. Except that I only figured out there was a mouse in my bed (courtesy of my very sweet, unselfish and sharing kitty) when in a fog of sleep I felt it run along side my leg.....without thinking I rolled away from it and promptly landed flat on the floor on my tummy, knocking the breath out of myself!

We have a bunch of chickens, potbelly pigs, goats, etc.... and the feed is stored in an old out building. My terrier loves to get into that "grain barn" and kill all of the mice it can find. His partner this year has been our kitten, they make quite a team.

When the local builder started clearing the desert behind our property we saw coyotes, up cklose and personal, for about a week as they feasted on the displaced critters. Fortunately, the coyotes have moved on now that all of the small animals have relocated.

REVENGE OF THE MOUSE! As I said before, I am deathly afraid of mice and rats, so I opted for the poison route. Well on his way out he got his revenge. Started hearing a sprinkler like noise in my bathroom. Called a plumber who showed me a piece of the tubing leading to the intake on my bathroom sink. It was full of little puncture marks where that little varmint had chewed the line. The war is at a standstill right now, hope the truce holds.

LOL Patchesnposies, what would we do without our kitties?

We live within just a few feet of a patch of woods. Before we got our cats, every time the weather would change, mice would come in the house.

Someone told me that if you put poison out for them, that the chemicals in the poison would keep them from stinking after they died. In other words, the mouse could be in the wall, but you'd never smell it. That sounded like a good plan, so we bought some poisonous baits.

Unfortunately, that person was misinformed, because the end of our hall REEKED of "dead mouse" for a couple of weeks. Gaak. But what REALLY changed my mind about the poison was when we found a dead mouse in the floor at the foot of our bed one morning. It was in horrible physical shape from the poison, and it was obvious that it had suffered for a long, long time. I felt terrible. :( I've never used them, but I've heard those sticky traps prolong suffering as well.

Mice don't even come into the house now that we have cats (I guess the mice smell them), but if we did need to get rid of any, we'd just use traditional mouse traps. At least those usually work instantly.

Moonrise: I think your right, its just that I live alone and I would have to empty the trap. Even the traps don't always do the job, sometimes its only a partial hit and the mouse suffers that way too. Believe me, I would prefer not to kill them at all. It was the chewed water hose and the plumbing bill that finally made me act.

I understand completely. :)

This sounds good, but in my neighborhood/development we have ground hogs, raccoons. squirrels, chipmunks and skunks. I would truly hate to attract any of them with a bucket and sunflower seeds - especially the skunks!

We'll stick with the snap traps.