Here's a tip...use the tiniest amount of peanut butter that you can for bait. If you put a big glob on the trigger, they can lick it off and leave before tripping the wire. Also, the peanut butter acts like a glue, preventing the trigger from firing sometimes.
I have a black box trap by Victor, but it's not the one pictured in the link above. It works great and you never have to touch the working parts or even look at the dead mouse, if you're squeamish. You just hold the trap over a trash container and depress a lever which releases the dead mouse. Kind of like a Dyson vacuum. Hahahah.
Pretty slick. But the good, old fashioned wood traps are just as effective. They're just harder to bait without springing the trap and disposing of the mouse requires that you touch the icky parts.
I've tried the live traps for mice and had no luck. But I do use a wire Havahart live traps for bigger critters and have caught everything from chipmunks, to rats, to possums, to snapping turtles. I prefer a humane trap, but those must be monitored so that the animal doesn't suffer from dehydration or stress or heat or whatever. Otherwise, they are just as inhumane as glue traps (which I would never use).
