Originally published at: Effective no-kill rat trap | Boing Boing
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And here I’ve been dropping off my trapped victims in a park a few miles from my house. I always send them off with well wishes and a belly full of bread with peanut butter. I kind of like your solution.
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When I was a kid I tried to make a “catch em alive” trap after something described in a magazine (Popular Science, maybe?) where you just built a cage onto a regular rat trap, the door attached to the snapper. Problem: the snapping action of the rat trap was so powerful it would sometimes catapult the animal, killing or dazing it, and for a larger animal it was like some kind of medieval torture device that would trap their head, maybe even asphyxiate them.
Dark days for a boy of 10.
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When we had some mouse issues in the house my daughter insisted on using a no-kill trap. OK, fine, let’s try it out. Little creeps managed to get in and out of the trap with the bait so Mickey and Minnie got to meet Mr. Snap Trap instead. (Didn’t feel great about it but at least it wasn’t poison.)
The rat that got in the garage on the other hand … don’t want to go after that with anything smaller than .40 caliber. Otherwise I’d just hurt it and that would piss it off even more.
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I’m juxtaposing this with the previous post: “You’ve vexed me for the last time, neighbor - feel the wrath of my attack-rodent!”
Of course, the thing is, re-locating wild animals like rodents tends to be illegal and a bad idea, in part because in unfamiliar environments they’re unlikely to survive (they don’t know where the food sources are, you’re putting them into the territory of other animals, etc.), so instead of the quick death of a trap, they slowly starve. With rodents, you’re best off finding something like a raptor rehabilitation center that needs live food. (Assuming you can find one that takes random rodents - there’s always the possibility a rodent has ingested poison, in which case it can’t even be used as food.)
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trap looks like it would work well, but its too big to drown them in a bucket afterwards.
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The no-kill trap sounds great until you read this:
or this oldies but goody on Mumbai’s rat killers:
Yeah, might want to think this through. Ok, this trap works, and now you have an extremely pissed-off, adrenalized rat imprisoned in your mesh cage. Now what?
I have no love for my four-legged brethren. But an instant and near-painless death is my preferred way of dealing with them.
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Not great for cities. If you boss doesn’t live close, I guess you could release the rats there.
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I caught squirrels in my mom’s crawlspaces with one of these. When you get to the release point, just aim your squirrel launcher, open the gate, and he’ll do the rest.
We accidentally caught a bird in one of these things. So be sure to check on them often. Like everyday.
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It right there in the name, bud.
We accidentally caught a squirrel in one of these things. There was blood all over the cage where it had tried to get out and cut itself on that sharpish part where you put the bait. We stopped using it after that.
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Got it,
Thanks, but my name is kill-em-for-sure-after-you-trap-em.
I recently thought I had a racoon burrow under my deck so I borrowed trail camera. Once I discovered I had a 10+ inch (body only) rat I began to question what the heck I was going to do if it was just angry and stuck in a trap…
Probably would have needed a .4…
Thankfully a coyote solved my problem for me.
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God damn it Frauenfelder, that is the last straw. As if living next door to your nuthouse is not enough now I find out it is you filling my house with mice and rats. I’ll see you in court.
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My father had one of these on the farm way back when in Wales - except it was used to catch the rats humanely…
…then the whole unit was dropped into an outside bathtub (we use old bathtubs as water troughs for sheep) and drowned them. So much for humanely dispatched.
In some jurisdictions it’s illegal to transport wild animals. This issue came up when my dad was catching racoons near his garden and dropping them off two towns over, which could mean he was speeding the spread of rabies. And rats? I’m a live and let live person but I have my limits.
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