This 1862 mousetrap was a miniature cannon that blew mice to smithereens

Originally published at: This 1862 mousetrap was a miniature cannon that blew mice to smithereens | Boing Boing

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“I hates meeses, to pieces!”
Cartoon cat whose name I forget

I wonder if this was a one-off by someone was driven around the bend by a rodent infestation and started making contraptions that eliminated the vermin in the most over-the-top ways possible.

Like, a little tunnel leading to bait, fitted with electrodes hooked up to a giant capacitor which discharges when a treadle is stepped on.

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Top Cat!

image

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Almost as fun as squirrel catapults.

squirrel-slingshot

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No, Mr Jinks.

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That would suck in the middle of the night when mice tend to creep…

Also, not the only firearm mousetrap out there.

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Wow, I completely forgot Mr. Jinks. Thanks. Off to youtube!

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New ones aren’t so dramatic, but the basic concept is still around

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Hmm, 1862? Perhaps Tchaikovsky was inspired by this for the battle scene in The Nutcracker :wink:

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Puleeze `invent me an “insta-blaster” The little buggers often sift dirt over the trigger of each brand of trap… Somethin’ Anythin’ might improve the fail-after-fail of jaw-traps and assist composting in the tunnel.

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I have one of these in my barn. I thought it was a total failure until I started switching the bait around and found something our local mice like. Now it works a treat.

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Just don’t set up a critical mass of those traps.

172

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This is quick and painless in the most part.

In one of my barns, due to careless storage by a 4H kid, I had a rat infestation. Dozens of them. So the kid borrowed a friend’s bucket trap.

It has bait at one end of a roller, and whenever something puts weight on the middle of it, it spins and dumps the rat in the 30 gallon bucket, with 10 gallons or so of water in it.

The next morning, there were over 20 dead, drowned rats in it. Three days later, the rats were all gone.

That’s not a good way to die. That’s a device invented by someone who truly, deeply, madly hates rats. Effective, though.

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It’s expensive, but I’ve heard good things. Thanks for the testimonial! We currently have bait traps out, but I hate it because I don’t want to kill the local raptors.

I could swear that a year or so ago I saw other similar “kill for scavenger” traps that were battery powered instead of CO2, but I can’t find them now

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If you ever happen to be in Khorog, Tajikistan, be sure to check out the crossbow mousetrap in the local museum. For when you need your mice not simply blown away, but actually kebab’d.

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There’s a modern version which is designed to eliminate moles. My folks have a bad mole infestation and I’ve considered purchasing one for them:

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don’t catapult squirrels!
now feral chickens… i want to catapult them into the next county!

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I love a good physics joke!

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I quite sure it was not made in 1862, or was ever seriously intended to be used for rodent control. I think it’s a much more recent novelty item. Yes, Dixie Gun Works.

The video for that is impressive. I had to watch the video to understand how it works, though. Their own product shots are confusing in this regard. I wonder if there’s a version where you don’t have to handle the dead rodents quite so much? The commercial traps that office parks use, for example, store the victims in the box so they can be easily dumped out periodically (and so the office tenants don’t see how many rodents are in office parks)

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