If you ask any professional mouse removal specialist, they’ll probably tell you to avoid using glue traps in a residential building to get rid of mice. In almost all cases, using them causes more damage and rising removal/repair costs, and it’s also a very long process to go through … to still have a mouse infestation at the end of it.

If you’re going to use glue traps to get rid of mice, here are 10 important things you’ll need to remember:

1 - Use them around the edges of the room.

Glue traps yield the best results when they are placed at the spots where floors meet the walls. Mice don't like to run across the middle of the room — they are more likely to be spotted by humans and caught by cats. The walls and baseboards provide some sort of protection and often allow the rodent to move around undetected.

2 - The more you use, the more you’ll catch.

You can’t just put one glue trap down on the floor and expect it to get rid of every mouse in your house. Just like you can’t just use one rat or mouse trap and hope it catches the entire nest of them. Rodent removal requires not just constant monitoring, but also constant ‘maintenance’.

Glue traps will need to be used in multiple places — all the places you have seen mice or mouse activity. The more you need, the more you’ll need to pay out.

3 - Glue traps need to be changed regularly.

If you have a dead mouse on a trap, you’ll need to dispose of the entire thing. It is very unlikely that you’ll get a double-hitter, unless you’re very lucky. If one rodent spots that another rodent has died on the glue trap, there’s a high chance it’ll scamper off and avoid that area, perhaps even warning other members of the group about the hazard. It won’t hop on to the glue trap to experience the same sad and awful ending.

The more glue traps you use, the more you’ll need to buy to replace them. The more mice you catch, the more frequently you’ll need to replace them. The more frequently you need to replace them, and the more of them that you need to buy to protect the building, the higher the costs will rise. We’ve been called to cases where property owners have already spent THOUSANDS of dollars on DIY rodent removal, over many months. We charged them less than five hundred dollars and got the job done within a week.

4 - Glue traps need to be moved regularly.

Not catching mice might be the cheaper option, but it’s also the worst outcome. When you're not catching mice but still seeing signs of mouse activity (droppings, chewed marks, etc.), the mice are avoiding your traps. They're basically laughing at you, running around your home, eating your food and refusing to be caught.

If your glue traps don't work within a couple of nights (mice are mostly nocturnal), it's time to move them around. Look for other places that display mouse activity and use them there instead.

5 - Glue traps need to be checked regularly.

If you’re using glue traps in the attic, be prepared to check them multiple times per day. Once or twice might not be enough, especially if you have a pretty big infestation going on up there. Glue traps that already have mice attached to them will not trap other mice (as previously mentioned), so you'll need to be really ‘on the ball’ when it comes to removing and disposing of ‘used’ ones and replacing them with newer, cleaner ones.

6 - Glue traps don’t kill the mice.

Of course, when you do find yourself with a ‘used’ glue trap on your hands, you’re likely to learn that glue traps don’t actually kill the rodent. It might maim or seriously injure them, and if left long enough, could cause the death of your furry new friend, but it very rarely instantly kills them like a snap trap would do.

You’ll need to kill the mouse yourself, before then disposing of the carcass and strip, and replacing the strip with a new one. (If it caught a mouse there before, there’s a good chance it’ll do the same again — it’s a good mouse-trapping spot.)

7 - Glue traps are not humane.

Glue strips or traps for mice are DEFINITELY not humane. There is very little humane about them, in fact. If they do cause death to the pest, it’s a long and very slow one, and probably a very painful one, too. In the time that it takes that mouse to die, it’ll be warning other mice with its screams and moans, some of which you might be unlucky enough to hear. If you have a cat or other pests living in the local area, they’ll be attracted to the sound of a pained mouse. It's just a long and sorry chain of events that shouldn't take place. The glue trap method of removal for mice is one of the least humane methods of them all.

8 - Mice learn from the experiences of other mice.

In fact, the same can be said for rats. We often assume these animals are just dumb animals, but their intelligence has astounded scientific brains over the years, and continues to do so. It would appear that these rodents learn more and understand more than we give them credit for.

One thing that rodents have been shown to do, especially as more traps and lethal methods are used in the quest of rodent-free homes and establishments, is learn to avoid the stuff that kills them.

In the case of poison, millions of rats and a few mice have started to develop an immunity of sorts to rodenticide — typical rodent poison.

In the case of live cage traps, rats and mice have learned to avoid a trap once they have already been trapped-and-released once or twice before. We call these rodents “trap-shy” or “trap-smart”.

If a mouse sees that another mouse has been caught up in a glue trap, it will know not to make the same mistake. The more that mouse sees and learns of the removal methods that fail, the more it knows to avoid them. In turn, the longer it will take you to find an approach that proves successful.

9 - Glue traps are not going to work fast enough if you have a big infestation.

If you have a large number of mice on the property, glue traps might be enough — they might not work fast enough to keep breeding down, and then kill off the entire population. You might not change them in time, or buy enough of them, and all the while those glue traps are not doing the job they're meant to do, you’ll have a bunch of new baby mice on your hands that you didn't have before. That's the problem with failed mouse removal attempts — they lead to MORE mice, not less!

10 - Glue traps are not recommended by professional rodent removal experts.

As well as poison, glue traps is just one of those approaches to a rodent-free home or building that many experts, including ourselves, wouldn't put on the table. It’s not a humane approach, and we don’t condone the needless suffering of animals, for any cause. There are quicker, cleaner, and much more humane approaches you can take to mouse removal, and simply using snap-traps is going to be more successful, especially in the long run.