Last night, I was driving home, on a phone call, when I pulled into the garage. I happened to see a lone mouse, sitting on top of a case of paper towels out there. I hung up, got out of the car, slowly walked out of the garage and around to the front door, walked through the house, grabbed a net, opened the garage door, net in hand, hoping I could catch and release, but as soon as the net was coming down, the mouse ran under the car. I slid the net under the car, toward the mouse, and it ran out of the open garage door. Yay! But, of course, it must've found something interesting in there earlier, so I assume we're bound to see it again. A year or two ago, we had rats outside and I bought the Owltra electronic rat trap, figuring I'd cover it somehow to keep it from getting wet, but a neighbor's cat seems to have eliminated the rats before I got a chance to see it up, so I never used it. But last night, I grabbed it, loaded it up with a dab of peanut butter and batteries, and read the instructions to see how to place it. The instructions said to place it with the opening facing away from the wall, but that left me scratching my head since that seems like it would put the trap *perpendicular* to the wall, not parallel to it. I posted a question about that here and some kind folks replied, but after looking at the *mouse* version of this trap, I think I understand why I was confused (and why the folks who answered might have been confused about my confusion :) - The *mouse* trap has its opening on the *side*, so placing the *mouse* trap parallel to the wall allows one to place the trap with -- as the instructions guide -- the opening facing away from the wall. Easy peasy. - However, the *rat* trap has its opening on the *end*, so that item in the *mouse-version* instructions doesn't make sense (or didn't to me). I believe that the optimal placement for both styles of traps is to put the trap parallel to the wall. (I assume the mouse-trap instructions were written for someone who might think that the side opening should face the wall.) I'm not a fan of killing animals, but also don't want pests living in our house/garage, so I hope that 1) I never see them again OR 2) that this trap humanely and quickly dispatches them. I just ordered two of the mouse-version traps because we're dealing with a mouse, not a rat, and I think that having a couple placement options for the mouse/mice is good. I'll circle back if my rating changes, but I think that losing one star for misleading (or at least confusing) instructions when it comes to placement is not unreasonable.
