Our cat "told" us first that we have mice in the dropped ceiling in August 2008. Then I encountered one in the laundry room. After receiving the mouse trap the catching of mice was a breeze. So far we caught 17 and our "mouse detector" tells us, we evicted them all. Peanut butter was the best bait, they have to lick it instead of grabbing it. You have to put the trap close to the wall so that the mouse feels save. They won't come out into the open. That was the best investment.

What a lifesaver! We have lots of little mice, or maybe they're little rats. The body if each is perhaps 2 inches long, with long tails. Anyway, we got two of these traps, and the first week we were averaging close to one catch per night per trap. Peanut butter seems to work great as bait.

Yes, they are tricky to set, but once you figure it out, it's not too bad. What's confusing is, that you need to line up two little pieces of bent metal wire so that one keeps the other from releasing. The tricky bit is that, when they're set correctly, the small rotating one is facing between 10 and 11 on the clock dial (or Northwest if you're thinking maps with North at the top.) The other trick is: make sure the bait isn't all to one side or the other of the bait tray. You want the tray to balance pretty well when the trap is set. Peanut butter is sticky and tends to stay in place.

Good luck, highly recommended!

I love animals, yes mice too and every so often we get field mice in the house, especially when the cold weather comes. I have 2 of these traps, if I see a mouse I set it and place it where I saw the mouse. I do not even use bait in the traps. Mice seem to use the same trail, like if I saw a mouse run across my kitchen near the wall, that's where I will set a trap. They run into it pretty fast and I have my husband bring the mouse to the fields not to far from my house. If you love animals then get this. I have only tried the one for mice but they are very very good.

These old traps are lousy. They haven't changed in design at all since I was a child 30-some years ago, and they were lousy then. The trap is difficult to set, being dependent on lining up three wire rods such that each is balanced against one above it. The trap has a hair-trigger that is so sensitive that you cannot set the trap before moving it. This presents a problem if your pests frequent and area that is hard to reach. If the animal checks out the trap by nudging it or walking on top of it (as did our rats), the trap will go off empty. It also relies on a silly triggering mechanism: the animal has to disturb a tray in the middle of the trap. A smart rat can pull food from this tray without setting off the trap (this also happened to us). If you already made the mistake of buying this trap, make sure and put some very sticky food in the tray.

After all of these years you would like that Have-a-Hart could have come up with at least a modest improvement of this design, but no such luck.

We bought this trap at a local hardware store, so it's conceivable it's an older model than the one Amazon is selling here, but it looks just like the picture. I saw the first evidence of a mouse about 10 days ago (some droppings on a kitchen shelf) and the next day I saw the mouse itself racing downstairs to the basement. After trying a plastic piece of junk, I found this one online, but didn't want to wait for it to be delivered. My husband set it (all my feminist inclinations go out the window when it comes to setting traps) so I can't report firsthand on how hard it was. He did say it was a bit tricky, as some of the other reviewers have noted.

I was somewhat stunned though, when he set it a second night and caught a second mouse. A week later, we've trapped six mice! We seem to have a family of them as some look half grown. (It isn't the same mouse coming in over and over because we took the hardware store clerk's advice to drive them several miles from our house -- in this case to the woods along a parkway on the other side of a highway. He also said smear peanut butter right on the trap, presumably as they can't just grab it and escape, though my husband says the doors should shut the second they set foot inside.)

Hopefully these mice will be able to live outdoors. Our climate is usually moderate, and they didn't seem freaked out by encountering grass and woods. They also didn't seem to be suffering in the trap -- a couple even hesitated to leave when the doors were first opened.

The person who mentioned droppings is right on. I suggest putting a sheet of old newspaper underneath, so you can just throw it out.

Now, can someone tell me how to spot the opening where they are getting into the house? If so, please add a comment!