Catching a mouse with your bare hands is not a great method of getting rid of a mouse infestation. Sadly neither are snap traps, humane capture traps, glue traps or any kind of trap you can think of. Trapping mice is like trying to capture butterflies without a net. There are far too many in your home, they reproduce too rapidly and they are hiding and nesting in the walls themselves. They know you, and have for almost 70 thousand years and know what snap traps are and that they are dangerous. They may not be smart but they do have instincts and those instincts will make it impossible for you to get rid of them using domestic methods. Mice came here from Europe where they began infesting human homes in the stone age when humans first became an agrarian culture. This is when they settled, stopped being nomadic and started building a home, farming and had more objects and food than they could carry on their backs. This was also when humans began storing food in large amounts. This started attracting rodents. Mice learned quickly how to find their way into human homes and even into places like grain storage. They would feast on our food and then leave behind dangerous feces that could kill an ancient human who ate the food that was infected by it. This resulted in a war that has been happening for tens of thousands of years between mice and men. A war over food. Ancient methods of killing mice were plentiful, from water traps made of buckets, ramps and rollers, snap traps made of metal and wood and capture traps made of all kinds of things.
This eventually led to the modern method of killing mice: poison. Knowing that mice were after food and only food humans started to make food for them that was intentionally made to kill them. The first attempt at killing them was with heavy metals like arsenic. This continued with all kinds of poisons from poisonous plants like nightshade to modern poisons like long-acting anticoagulants, cholecalciferol, bromethalin, and phosphides. The most effective method is long-acting anticoagulants. This and bromethalin are the most common poisons used by modern pest control technicians and are the preference of the ministry of the environment of Ontario which licenses pest control technicians. They are grouped in a simple term called Rodenticide. Rodenticide is most often an anticoagulant chemical that acts on limiting vitamin k production. This vitamin is what keeps our blood from coagulating and thickening in our veins. Because mice are capable of going for up to three years without drinking water only a small amount of this chemical is needed. The effect is slow and causes them to first feel sick and dehydrated. They will either return to their nest and go to sleep or leave the house in search of water. When they die their body desiccates. This means it loses all moister and with it, all smell and bacteria making it safe for the mouse to die in the walls of a house that humans live in.
