I'm going to try to rig some sort of trap using a 5-gallon bucket and another using a gallon-size wide-mouth jar.

The monkey wrench I suspect might get thrown into the mix would be a feline one.   I can just picture the meeses falling for my traps and ending up at the bottom of a bucket or jar in the middle of the night -- and then Grisabella taking this caged-beast phenomenon as some sort of new cat toy I've provided for her, playing with it, and in the process setting the meeses free.   Now the meeses might regret it if she freed them only to then have them as a snack. But, as cats do love to play with their food, they might also escape again -- with or without serious injuries.

Genie

PS

As for the poison and snap traps, not good ideas for my situation even if I could accept the cruelty involved.   (I can accept the cruelty of a cat killing the mouse if she does it quickly and then eats the critter, but I also don't want her just tormenting and torturing the poor critters.)   If a mouse gets away and then dies, say, inside my walls, I have to put up with the dead mouse smell for maybe weeks.   And if a poisoned mouse should be eaten my my cat or some other neighborhood cat or dog, that would be bad.   The snap traps pose a risk of catching my cat's paws or my own fingers -- not to mention the prospect of a very slow, painful death for a mouse that didn't get snapped properly (and maybe just got a foot caught).

We have some wooded areas a mile or two from where I live, where I think I could release meese and they'd maybe be happier than in my pantry.