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.
