I can attest to how convenient these traps are. They pose no danger to
the user, as the older "spring-snap" type did.
http://www.victorpest.com/store/rodent-control/M130
They are easy to bait and catch a lot of mice. If you put peanut butter
on the trigger you can catch several mice before you have to re-bait the
trap. You can cleanly open the trap (without touching the mouse)and drop
the little bugger in the toilet for flushing.

Occasionally the trap will only grab the mouse and not kill it. This is
awkward. I solve it by dropping the trap and mouse into a bucket of
water. When you pick the (trap/live mouse) up you have to be sure you
don't open the trap and let the little bugger get away. The whole thing
sinks and drowns the mouse. Not the best scenario, but it works.

HTH,
EJ in NJ

Lee B wrote:

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.

These two are better than the Looney Tune ones, that I never got very
good at setting, let alone then sitting them down without tripping them,
however they don't meet all of your requirements.

http://www.victorpest.com/store/rodent-control/M130
They are very easy to set, and do the job. Unfortunately, you do need to
reset and rebait them, but I just use something like a tongue depressor
or wooden coffee stirrer (and a jar of peanut butter devoted to that
purpose only!). And they are very easy to empty, but you do have to do
it manually.

Same with this one - http://www.d-conproducts.com/traps/ultra-set.html.
It's even easier to empty, and it's covered so you don't even have to
see the mouse. (I actually got pretty good at emptying it into a plastic
bag without actually looking, LOL).

OTOH, if I had another mouse invasion (like I had a few years ago from
some nearby construction), I'd definitely try the battery op one someone
else mentioned.