This.... is going to be unpopular and I apologize for it. My partner used to work out of town jobs where they spent 21 days away from home and one MAGICAL DAY in october (prime mouse season where we live) he was literally walking out the door for a 21 day stretch and he said- btw i saw some mice in the basement w my winter gear. And I was......upset. lol This was my first mouse in my HOME situation I had ever encountered.Whenever I had mice at work- I was always the person who brought live traps and drove the mice out to the country to set them free - anyhow, 3 weeks yeilded me 0 mice and bait stolen from traps only (dog kibble was supreme!!) When my partner was home he was like....since your fear is watching them suffer lets try - "kill vaults" its a type of "humane" kill trap that stops the the setter from having to SEE the mouse.... remnants...anyway kill vaults were fine (however as so much time had passed with my humane attempts we had....quite a mouse...challenge) kill vaults seemed like the perfect solution until one day - when I was re-upping our bait on the traps that hadn't been triggered - when the grocery bag that had 1 untriggered trap in it, began shaking off of my counter. I thought I was just losing my marbles (right now, this seems like a stretch but being home with the kids dealing with mice made it feel possible) the bag shook itself all the way onto the floor - still not convinced, i picked it up - and opened it up while it shook to see a very injured baby mouse inside which resulted in me throwing the trap screaming, I knew the baby mouse was going to die and I couldnt....cope with it so I ran outside screaming and threw the whole trap into the bin (my neighbors, the ones who are already not my biggest fans due to my affinity for feeding dumpster birdz were outside and as I screamed I said IM SO SORRY WE HAVE MICEEE and they rolled their eyes)..ANYHOW NEVER in my life did I think I would be a sticky trap person- until that fateful day. I called my dad bawling and he showed up with sticky traps much to my dismay and we caught no less than 15 mice from my basement in 2 weeks. He came and dealt with the traps daily because after my vault baby experience I.... couldn't. I didn't even go into my basement for over a year afterwards. We filled our potential entry sites with steel wool, and I set the terrible forbidden sticky traps every year in Sept and we have been mouse less ever since.