what happens when another mouse comes along? at least one could escape the trap if there is a heavier mouse in the bottom part. the big bucket trap with rotating bridge catches more and is just as humane.
What do you do with the mouse?
In collage I worked as a caretaker; and one of the buildings I worked once a week at had a mouse problem but insisted that I use humane traps (a very vegan, animal rights, radical left leaning bunch). I warned them that unless they check the traps daily the mice will die of thirst and starvation and showed them were the traps were.
Next week all the traps had mice corpses in them… I told them that it was much more humane if they died suddenly from a spring trap, and threw out the humane traps mice corpses and all.
Maybe the bottle could pivot down to another hole that leads to a different place and something like this:
Yes, let’s catch vermin and release them somewhere else so they can invade someone else’s house. What a dick move and illegal.
So instead of killing the mouse, since it’s such an invaluable, non-renewable resource, you taunt it over and over again with the promise of escape that’s denied at the last second.
A great “father son project”??? Well, I (a mum) had been planning on constructing one of these with my daughter, a mouse lover, but I guess now not. Sorry to be the PC police here, but seriously, "is “great project for parents and kids” so much freaking harder to write???
We tried humane traps once. We even took the poor fellas out to a nearby nature reserve to release them.
Then we found out that if you have one mouse in a trap, there are dozens of others hiding in the walls and floors.
We then moves onto a harsh prescription of poison pellets and just let them all die silently in their nests.
No quarter!
We had a humane trap for a while. Pretty sure the mice just kept coming back. Although the cat did start following mum when she was releasing them.
Then we forgot about checking for a while. One mouse chewed its way out. Fixed that with duct tape. next time we forgot the mouse didn’t manage to chew its way out. Had been there for quite a while before we found what was left of it.
I might give this design a try. I’ve made a couple of other DIY mouse traps*, and they just don’t work. Our rodents are too smart for them. I’ve watched what they do on webcam, and it’s like they took a class on avoiding traps!
I could set snap-traps out, and I have, but I only catch 1-2 mice, and then it’s like word spreads and they stay away until the next generation. In fact, after that I’ll see all my bait taken without triggering the trap, or the traps snapped with no mouse in it. I have to sink a screw or wire through the traps, or they’ll drag them back behind things and I don’t always find them.
*The spinning-bottle over a deep trashcan, and the one where you re-purpose a snap-trap to have a little screen close over the end of a tin can. Also tried placing snap-traps inside a narrow box so they can’t approach it from a safe side.
You release it somewhere else, unfamiliar to it, where it may not be able to find food or water, and may have to compete with other mice, so it can die slowly- but out of sight from you, so you can feel good since you didn’t kill it.
Yes. This is far from humane. Standard mousetrap usually breaks the spine for a quick clean kill.
Oh damnnn it’s the word police. Why do you seek about being offended about this stuff? No one’s getting smarmy about mother/daughter things, and it’s just as well. If you want to do this project with your daughter, don’t let some DIY Internet Fat Cat get you down with his oppressive single gendered narrowmindedness! Just do it.
I’m in a rural area and right now we have a mouse problem. Me and my cat just kill the little fuckers with equal levels of disdain, but I hadn’t quite gauged the mood of the room so I decided to play it safe. I should have gone in hard!!! Doh!!!
Edit: OK not quite equal levels of disdain. I set spring traps, and she tortures them mercilessly for hours before biting their heads off.
I take no delight in ending an innocent mouses life. My cat does. Who is the monster? (Who wants their cute chin rubbed!!)
Just kill the damn mice, OK? I work on a wildlife restoration project at my town’s best little remnant of the natural world, and am sick of seeing ex-Easter gifts (domesticated ducks & rabbits) clueless, terrified, but cognizant of their impending doom.
I doubt she “sought to become offended”. From the tone she was (quite rightfully) slightly offput. And given that her response was not particularly harsh, it seemed an eminently fair response that will likely remind the writer (and the readers) that our conventional assumptions could use some correction to bring them into the 21st century.
It is not. One sounds like a boy scouts manual, the other sounds , well, better.
I’m all for catch-and-release traps for mice, but… wouldn’t the mouse just chew through the plastic if left alone for more than a few minutes? That is kind of what rodents are good at, and the inward bulges at the bottom would give it something to wrap its teeth around.
