How to catch a live mouse

A couple weeks ago I (notice I didn't say we) woke up to the sound of a mouse in our garbage can munching on pop corn from a bag my husband threw away. (There were only a few kernels in that bag sitting in the garbage can on my side of the bed.) I lay there thinking Mark will hear it and then he will take care of it, I knew better then to wake him up, but surely he will hear the noise this mouse is making. After what seems like hours (probably minutes) the noise stops. I fall back asleep but not a very sound sleep because I know there is an unwanted visitor in our house, in our room. One of the first things I do in the morning is empty the garbage and vacuum our floor (which I hadn't realized how much pop corn was not making it to my children's mouths). The next night our unwanted visitor was back to finish off the pop corn. It jumped into our tall garbage can which was now empty (before the pop corn was laying on top of other stuff, so easy to get into and out). Immediately it knew it's mistake and tried to jump out to no avail, of course this wakes me up and I lay there listening once more and hope Mark wakes up this time. Well, lo and behold he wakes up, listens for a second and falls back asleep, a deep sleep I might add ( that man can sleep through anything). I try to sleep but how can a person sleep through a critter trapped and wanting loose so bad. I kept thinking about throwing my bathrobe on and taking that mouse in the garbage can to a field far far away (3 or 4 miles) but I try to sleep and also hear my husband snoring away next to me. Finally, the alarm turns off (Mark hits the snooze about every 10 minutes for an hour and then turns it off) and Mark gets up puts his robe on and takes the garbage can outside to let the mouse go. When he comes back in I ask "which way was it heading?" I'm thinking that it would be right back in our house as soon as the door was closed. Mark tells me it went toward the blue spruce, which is away from the house. Oh, just a ploy to make us think it is not coming back. So there you have it, a way to catch a live mouse, just have a plan on what to do with it once you catch it.

Another kitty update: Our Tigger is back to normal it seems. Never quite figured out what was wrong. Hopefully we won't be going through that again anytime soon.

Added March 17: About a week and a half ago I was up in my room looking for something when I kept hearing a strange noise. I just kept on with what I was doing and went to throw something in the garbage and was surprised to see that the noise was the mouse in the garbage can, again. I tell ya this trap works! (Forget that it was probably the same mouse.) I had a hard time with the thought of killing it so I grabbed the garbage can and drove about 5-8 miles down the road and let it go in a field. They are called field mice, right? On the ride back home I pictured it running next to me trying to make it back before I did.

Do mice have short memories or what?