[fintstone]

If you always keep well baited traps set, that will solve your problems. It is awfully easy to only set them after you see activity (which is often long after they are there). I sometimes catch two a day (maybe ten in a week) and then it stops for a month or so. They leave a trail for their friends to follow. They never are there long enough to do any damage.

I live next to an eagle sanctuary and will not risk killing a bald eagle by poisoning mice...although I think most folks do use poison (rural farming area). The last couple of years, we have had a lot more of the large (nonpoisonous) snakes around the house and that reduced the population drastically. There are almost none in the summer now. When it first gets really cold out, we get a few...but they seem to get caught immediately.