I had a a mouse problem once, and someone gave me a device that allegedly made the kind of noise described above--The person who gave it to me believed that it worked--

I tend to think that the fact that I captured twenty two of the creatures in my ingeneous plastic wastebasket trap, and then plugged every hole in my apartment with steel wool was the deciding factor--

The ingeneous plastic wastebasket was not my idea, exactly--it just happened to be underneath the pipe which mice used for access to my domicile. Serendipitously, it was too deep for a mouse to jump out of--A bit of peanut butter(a food which I do not generally eat), made the wastebasket an even more appealing destination.

Day after day, this device continued to capture and retain mice--a testiment to the fact that they are creatures of drearily predictable habit. This is probably why we don't like to have them around much.