On Dec 21, 4:50*pm, trader-of-some-jacks
wrote:
As seems to be the case most winters, we have mouse droppings starting
to pop up (or is it plop down?) in our basement.

Some judicious mouse trap use always stops the problem. *But I'm
getting old and tired of the "standard" traps - baiting them, making
sure to not set them off myself, emptying the gross dead mice from
them, repeating...

(By "standard" I'm talking about the kind seen in Looney Tunes and
other cartoons - bait with cheese or peanut butter, and a piece of
metal snaps onto the mouse and kills it.)

What's a "better" mouse trap? *By that I mean one that might kill
multiple mice without rebaiting, and that's easy to clean and reuse.

Not so fond of the bait traps that feed them poisoned food, as they
force me to figure out where the dead critters are. *I'd rather
confine my looking for carcass hunting to where the trap(s) are.

I use "the bucket method." Just get a 5 gallon plastic pail. Drill
two 3/8" holes near the top of the bucket (about 1/2" down from the
top edge). Make sure the holes are directly across the bucket from
each other so you can stick a 1/4" dowl rod straight through. the
dowl rod should be about an inch or so longer than the diameter of the
bucket. Then get an empty plastic peanut butter jar with lid and
drill 5/16" holes at the center of the bottom of the jar and through
the center of the lid. Slide dowl through one of the holes in the
side of the bucket, then through the empty peanut butter jar and then
through the other hole in the side of the bucket. You should be able
to spin the jar around the rod. Put about 4 inches of water in the
bucket. Smear cheap peanut butter over the surfaces of the jar.
Place the bucket near a wall where you suspect mice might be
traveling. Get a narrow (2" wide x 1 " thick) board about 2 or 3 feet
long. Lay flatways one end on the floor and the other resting on the
top edge of the bucket near where one end of the rod is sticking out
of the side of the bucket. By next morning you should have a mouse,
or even several mice floating dead in the bucket. Get a small minnow
net and scoop the dead mice out of the bucket and dispose of in manner
of your choice. There probably should still be enough smeard peanut
butter still left on the jar for several more nights depending on how
many mice you might have living with you. No need to refresh the
peanut butter, old moldy stuff works just as good. Once a week or so
or maybe longer you might have to change water in the bucket. If you
aren't going to be checking the bucket each day, no problem. Just
change the water more often. Good luck!
Steve