Havahart 0745 Extra Small 1-Door Humane Catch and Release Live Animal Trap for Squirrels, Chipmunks, Rats, Weasels, and Small Animals

The media could not be loaded. The size is good for big rats, always bigger in your mind than they really are. The trigger mechanism is surprisingly simple and effective for big and small rodents. There are no weak links like springs; all parts are metal construction except for a bendable clip to lock the trap door.I put the device along the outside wall of the house, using a small spoonful of peanut butter in a tiny plastic cup as a bait. The first night I got a small mouse. The second day I rested, figuring out what to do with it. The 3rd night I got a big rat, the one I wanted to catch. That's an impressive 100% success rate. There were no false triggers. I am glad that I got this trap with a 6 to 7 inches opening. I'm sure the small ones with 1.5 to 2 inches openings will be too small for the rat.It had been decades since the previous owner got rid of all the rodents quietly before we moved in. Maybe the climate has changed or there is something to do with the drought orders; they came back. I'm sure the house perimeter is secure because if there were any tiny breaches, the ant would have gotten in and overwhelmed us. Ants are always helpful because they always leave a long trail to tell you how they got in. The rodents must have come in from the roof. Indeed, I had one who fell from the central heating air intake duct, knocked off the screen that I duct taped onto the duct opening, died inside the central heating "room" and turned into a flat piece of dried mummy.Along with poison and spring traps, I ordered this one because we have frequent visitors in the yard, mostly hares that I don't want to harm. After I caught the first mouse on the first deployment, I began researching what to do with it. I am surprised that the poisons are not an instant kill so there's no point to feed to the mouse I already caught. A slow painful death is not what I wanted in return for possibly dealing with their corpse rotting deep inside my loft. And if they die outside they are threats to the wildlife; the poison I got were classified as 2nd generation.When I was a kid I saw a guy carrying a trap like this trying to drown his catch in a barrel of water by the curb. He thought it would be quick and easy but the rat refused to die. It became a tug of war; bystanders gathered to give him suggestions to end his predicament. Probably he wouldn't risk leaving his trap in the water and lost it. He also wouldn't want to take everything to where he came from when the rat was still alive. The scene didn't cause trauma inside me but I never forget about it.For the same reason, I won't use the spring loaded death traps because I don't want to deal with the aftermath. To my surprise, I don't even know how these traps work before I ordered 6 of them. I never see how they catch rodents and I want to stay that way.From my research, I can deal with prisoner number one in many ways. But the most humane way to ME is likely the CO2 gas chamber. This is close to my initial thoughts of throwing it a piece of poison and dropping it into the trash bin seconds after. At the end, I decided not to deal with death after all.Now the research starts to be entertaining here and elsewhere. Some feel sorry for not keeping the rodents well fed before they have time to release them. A person went political, accusing liberals of not solving the problem and dumping the problem to other communities! A person claimed that she tried increasing distances and found that 5 miles is the distance that rodents do not come back to her house. I wonder if she food stained the rodents or she attached GPS tracking devices to them. Some research shows that the rodents will likely die if they are relocated even for 100 yards. Maybe that's the alternative fact you will need if you are caught releasing rodents near someone else properties.After driving a few hours in the most remote part of the county, I picked a site that is about an 8 miles from my home. There are no homes along the road for miles on both directions. There are quiet roadside stops that I can carry out the release discreetly without being seen as creepy or illegal dumping. The scenery is good; I can always claim that is what I stop for.Since the car trunk is where I put food after a grocery trip, I first put the trap into a cardboard box. Then I put the cardboard box into a large trash bag and tied it up securely. I do the same after the release. When I return home I rinse the trap with a high-pressure hose and throw away everything else in the collection bin. And since cardboard box of the right size is not easy to come by, I brought a plastic tote for prisoner number two. I preferred an air-tight tote but couldn't find the right size. I improved the tote that I got with a left-over weather seal just in case.I didn't think that there is anything worth thinking about the release but I was wrong. In some youtube videos, you can see that mice are so fast that they can detect the trigger, feel that something is wrong, rush out of the trap like flying before the trap door is closed. In the middle of a gravel pavement, prisoner number one flew out of the trap, immediately made a u-turn passed me, and rushed toward the shade under the car. I do not know of its fate but if it got into the underside of the car, it could not have survived the return trip with 8 miles of winding country road at a speed limit of 65 mph. I released prisoner number two under the shade, with the sun and the car behind us. In contrast to number one, I had to bang the cage with the trap door to encourage this big guy to get out.

At one time, we had a feline roaming around our house. He died in 2012 after 18 years on this planet and killing innumerable things around the yard. Birds, chipmunks, mice, moles, rabbits and shrews were all on his menu. Squirrels, not so much. Suffice it to say that upon his departure, all the aforementioned creatures were allowed to proliferate. Enter me. I returned to the house in PA after spending 12 years in FL. Seeing as I'm older and have reached the point in my life where growing a garden is not only acceptable, it is rather common, I decided to determine if I had a green thumb. The garden I made isn't large by any standard, but I've spent a fair amount of time and money into rock removal and improving the quality of the dirt. So much that it makes more sense to go to the farmer's market, but that's unrelated to this review.I start the plants in pots and transfer them when the last frost is gone, which in NEPA is roughly the end of May. The past two years I planted corn. Along the way I’ve learned a few things about planting that are useless to most people. The first year I planted a little corn, but it was scattered in the garden. When I got ears of corn that were half formed, I investigated and learned that the reason they’re planted close to each other is that they germinate one another. I was confident that I would be more successful the following year, which was 2014. Come May 2014, I proudly planted 30 corn stalks after they had grown a bit. Nice, even rows, almost like a professional. Fast forward a day or two and imagine my horror when I went to check on them and several stalks, I’m talking 10 or more of them, were laying on the dirt next to a perfectly dug up circular area. Hmmm. What was going on? It turns out that even though there is a small stalk and they’re large enough to transplant, the corn kernel remains on the end until it finally disintegrates. Enter the chipmunks that had proliferated over the past 2 years since our cat’s death. They sniffed out this little sweet nugget, dug them out of the ground, ate it and left the remnants for me. They didn’t even care about the ‘critter ridder’ that I had liberally sprayed around the garden’s perimeter. This was almost a spiteful act on their behalf. I thought a bit about them and how at first they were somewhat cute to watch as they frolicked in the yard and in a wood pile. Now, I seriously wanted to exterminate them. I thought that no matter what I did now, I would have half ears of corn again. Sure enough that happened.Now we’re in 2015 and I’m a year wiser. At least I’d like to think so. I scoured the vault of intellectual wealth known as the internet for ways to rid these now annoying rodents from my property. One way had me luring them with sunflower seeds into a bucket filled with water. Heck, I could shoot them and put them out of their misery more quickly. I do have a heart, you know. And as fate would have it, I found traps made by Havahart. How cute. I decided on this size to capture chipmunks, and I’m glad I did. I found that it was difficult to get the trap to trip when it was new. You basically are supporting the weight of the gate on a small bar against a bar coming from the platform where you place your lure. The concept is to have the critter step on the platform, which is like a seesaw in that it’s mounted on a rotational axis through its center. The critter steps on the platform, the platform rotates, the bars separate and the door closes. Easy, right? Well, it’s a bit more difficult as chipmunks don’t weigh much and it’s hard for them to move the platform. I performed some minor mods, which included sanding any high spots where the two small round bars touch each other. I spread out the eyes on the two bolts that hold the platform in place. A small screwdriver is enough to do that. I also added some penetrating oil to that area, too. I also make sure that everything is clean and that things are moving as freely as the last time I set it. Seeing as it’s made of metal, it can be affected by being outside and the waste the critters leave behind. Last but not least, I always set the trap such that it’s tripped when the critter steps on the platform and not when it gets to the backside. And always have as little metal to metal contact from those two small bars as possible. It’s hard to explain, but you’ll see what I mean should you purchase this item.These minor improvements and techniques have enabled me to catch 20 chipmunks so far. I think I’ve had this trap for a little over a month, and I don’t even set it every day. The most effective lure I’ve used are black walnuts. We have a tree in our yard and cracked a few last year. I suppose any nut would work, but believe it or not, peanut butter didn’t seem to work. Anyway, I’ve relocated all of them with the exception of one that had died in the trap. There were two in the trap at the same time, and while I have no idea how they got in there at the same time, either there was a territorial fight or it was just his time. I take them half a mile away, open the door and they scurry off into the wilderness. Since there is no scent trail to follow back to my house and they're not ‘homing’ chipmunks, I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon. That’s not to say that others won’t take their place.

Have used this for the last year and it's still in good condition.Had to add a finer mesh screen around plate end because the red squirrels could reach thru cage and scrap off bait triggering the trap with them on the outside. Peanut butter works best.For birders, small birds don't trigger trap but I still check in case a larger one get interest.For the exasperated, BB can be used thru the cage to dispatch.