It is finally starting to get chilly out!!!!!! Can you tell that it is my favorite time of year…but really, I do love almost everything about the fall season. The only part about Autumn that I absolutely hate, and cannot stand because it gives me the willies, is that it is also the time of year when the critters (bugs and mice) think that they are welcome guests in a home and try to move right in.
Please keep in mind, as you are reading this post that I don’t do product reviews very often, but sometimes I come across a product that I just cannot live without (life-changing products are few and very far between) and that is when I have to share it with all of my readers.
You see, I buy every single product that I have ever reviewed, myself. This ensures that you guys are getting a completely unbiased opinion (I never do paid reviews) so that you will get the honest to goodness true way that I feel about something…
Yes, I know that I could make way more money doing paid reviews…but at what cost? I don’t want to lead my readers astray just to make myself a couple more bucks…it just doesn’t seem very ethical.
I’m going to be hopping off that soap box, lol, and will jump right into what I have to say about this new product, well it’s new to me anyway, and tell you guys why I won’t ever be going back to the regular old-school mouse traps for my pest control needs.
*Please note that this post is a little gory between pictures and my story telling so if you have a weak stomach please skip to another one of my posts… everyone else, buckle up and get ready for a laugh or two.*
Oh before I begin on the actual review part of this post, I have to tell you guys a nasty/hilarious story about something crazy that happened when I used these Jawz mouse traps in my little barn/workshop.
The week before last I set one of these mouse traps, loaded with peanut butter, in my workshop and came back to check it the next day when I was doing something else in my workshop.
Sure enough there was dead mouse in it and I made myself a mental note to come back and take care of it the next morning when I had a couple of free minutes.
Looking back now, I probably should not have told my kids what I was going to go do, take care of a dead mouse in a trap, because they all followed me out there and wanted to see.
So, when we get out there we can’t see anything…we see the trap that had clearly been snapped shut…but there was nothing in it…and the kids were telling me that I must have been crazy because there was not a mouse in there…
Well, upon further inspection, I looked down and saw some whiskers sticking out of the trap. When I looked even closer I could see that there was an entire dead mouse head in there but its body was nowhere to be found.
Which freaked me out even more because the only hole big enough to get into the barn was in the ceiling, part of the loft area, and I didn’t think that anything could fit through there… but obviously I was wrong and my pest problem seemed to be much larger than I first suspected.
My thoughts started churning trying to figure out what could have done that and how it was able to get through that little hole in the workshop.
I may be more than a little embarrassed to openly admit that for a moment I wondered if some sort of canabalistic ROUS had made its way into my barn to eat the corpse of my poor dead mouse…lol.
Later, when I was telling the story to the guy I was dating at the time, he simply stated (straight faced) that it was a cat.
So much for my ROUS theory…insert sheepish grin here. Lol, he explained that if a cat can fit its head through a hole then it can get the rest of its body through, and that makes so much more sense.
Hee hee, silly me. Oh well, my theory makes for a much more interesting story time so I just had to add it.
That experience ended up being a good giggle, one of those times that the situation was absolutely hilarious, but I was also trying not to dry heave as I was trying to eject a dead mouse head from the mouse trap…
I’m gagging just thinking about it…and it also kinda makes me wish there was a man in the house to take care of that kind of thing, but I’m being patient waiting for God to put a good man in my path…it could take years, so it’s a good thing that these Jawz mouse traps are so easy to use.
You know that something is a good product when your dad, a very experienced farmer, gives you some of these “new” Jawz Mouse Traps as a gift.
My dad had used these traps and thought that they were great so he gave me some a couple of years ago. I haven’t had a rodent problem since then, until I moved to my cottage, so I’m sure glad that I still had these traps hanging out in my shed.
Now I’m going to show you guys some close ups of the traps and show you how to set them and also how simple it is to remove a mouse from them…aka, the real reason that I will never be going back to the traditional kind of mouse traps.
Oh, please note that every single picture in this post is a clickable link that will take you directly to this product (the Jawz Mouse Traps) on Amazon.
If you choose to buy through that link, your cost remains the same, but I receive a small commission for that and every single item in your shopping cart, so thank you in advance if you decide to purchase through my links.
What the Jawz Mouse Traps look like up close. It looks pretty harmless until you set it.
That’s when you see just how different this little trap is from a traditional mouse trap. While I’m showing you guys the traps I am also going to show you how to use them as well.
Setting the Jawz Mouse trap is simple. If your trap is sitting the same direction as mine in the picture, you just apply pressure, to that top piece of plastic, to the left.
Then you push it down until you hear it click. That click indicates that it is set and all ready to bait.
So, if you’re looking closely, here is where you will see the biggest difference with these new mouse traps.
They have these thick jaws (hence their name) that snap shut on the mouse and it kills it dead.
I’ve noticed that sometimes when you use a traditional mouse trap the mouse sometimes squiggles its way out…so the jaws on the new traps making for a quick death are definitley the way to go.
I imagine that the inventor of this product either got their idea from the way an alligator snaps, or from historical booby traps like the ones in ancient egypt…or you know, just from some of the stuff that you’d see in an Indiana Jones movie either way it’s a nasty, but also a very effective way to solve your rodent problem.
Baiting the traps is simple. All that you have to do is hold down that plastic piece on the left, so that it doesn’t snap your finger…
Then you place the bait in the center little cup thingy.
I did use a little too much peanut butter this time around but it still works so long as it is not weighing it down too much…the weight of the mouse is what snaps it shut.
Next I want to show you guys how to release, or rather, eject a mouse from one of these Jawz Mouse Traps.
This one was set in my barn/workshop area and it was a pretty large mouse. I was actually surprised that the trap was able to handle a mouse this big…but it worked like a charm.
I took the mouse over to my dumpster and got ready to drop him in… if you make your own compost, you may be able to add your mice to the mix, but I would look that up and see if that’s a good idea first.
Anyway, all that you do is use that same motion that you used to set the trap, and push the top piece of plastic to the side and down.
Sorry for the gore, but this one is to show you guys that once you get the trap open you just have to wiggle your hand a little bit and the mouse drops right out…there is absolutely no fighting with a big metal clamp (like the traditional traps) and it just drops right into the garbage can.
I hate how hard that traditional traps are to use, so very much that if I were to go back to using them they would be a one-time-use type of thing and I would be dropping the whole trap in the trash…I know it’s wasteful but me and dead mouse carcasses just don’t mix.
I have another story about this particular mouse… which prompts me to tell you guys that if you are putting the traps out when it is warmer temps, you need to make sure that you are checking them daily.
I had forgotten to check the traps for a day and when I went to take care of this mouse it was already starting to decompose and had maggots…gag!
I’m only telling you this to spare you how nasty it can be if you go too long in checking your traps.
Just remember that the warmer that it is in the area that you are setting your mouse traps, the more frequently you need to check them because higher temps make them decompose faster…and I don’t want you to have to deal with a maggoty mess like I did.
You will run into that same problem no matter what style of mouse trap that you use, so keep that in mind, it had nothing to do with these particular mouse traps.
It’s really absurdly simple to use these mouse traps and I really will never go back to using any other kind.
When I first saw them I was thinking “how could a plastic trap be strong enough to kill a decent sized mouse” but they have far more than surpassed my expectations and made my life so much easier.
One last caution that I will give is that you do need to be a little more careful with where you are setting the Jawz Mouse Traps than you are for the traditional kind of trap, at least if you have kids around.
The old traps just snap and it hurts for a minute, but I imagine that these more heavy duty traps would draw blood and be a little bit more traumatic if a child got their hand stuck in one.
That’s all that I have to share with you all today. I LOVE these new mouse traps and I can’t even tell you how big of a help they have been both indoors and outdoors.
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*Please note that this post was originally shared on this website on September 25th 2018, and has since been updated to improve user experience.