wasilvers
Well-known member
As I was getting ready to put the boat away for the winter, I started cleaning the garage. The very first thing I noticed was a few mouse turds on a table. YUCK! I immediately recalled 20 posts on here about mice eating boat/engine wiring… that’s when I went on the warpath. Mice traps are great, but they only catch the dumb ones. Glue traps are great, but they don’t work well in the cold of my garage (Wisconsin) and mice get trained quickly on them. So I scoured the internet (youtube) enlisted the help of my seven year old son and built one of these.
[youtube]jezQKOl5q-w[/youtube]
Using the tools on hand (a used gatorade bottle, 5 gallon bucket, and an arrow) we built a mousetrap. There was a bump on the bottom of the bottle and I couldn’t drill a hole as the bit kept slipping off, so I turned to my son and said, “You want to shoot a hole in this bottle?” As any 7 year old, his eyes lit up and we got out the 22 air gun. One blast in the middle and we had a perfect little hole. That’s right, we’re redneck up here too. We put 4” of water in the bucket, some peanut butter on the bottle and set it in the garage that night. In the morning we had TWO mice! My son was ecstatic. However, I saw that there was peanut butter eaten on the bottle, so one or two must have learned how to balance. Dang mice
So that night I built another type.
Using a long soda can, I pierced two holes about in the middle, threaded some old wiring through the holes and tied it off to the bucket handles. I put a screw in the bucket for the can to rest on near the bucket side, and baited the end of the can with peanut butter. Theory is, once the mouse hits the far end, can tips, mouse can’t grab on to slippery can and falls in bucket. Simple as pie. I set that and caught another mouse… this time I had 1 dead mouse and lots of peanut butter left. To me, this means I caught the last one willing to venture out. Now, I can move the boat in and feel better about it. :wink:
[youtube]jezQKOl5q-w[/youtube]
Using the tools on hand (a used gatorade bottle, 5 gallon bucket, and an arrow) we built a mousetrap. There was a bump on the bottom of the bottle and I couldn’t drill a hole as the bit kept slipping off, so I turned to my son and said, “You want to shoot a hole in this bottle?” As any 7 year old, his eyes lit up and we got out the 22 air gun. One blast in the middle and we had a perfect little hole. That’s right, we’re redneck up here too. We put 4” of water in the bucket, some peanut butter on the bottle and set it in the garage that night. In the morning we had TWO mice! My son was ecstatic. However, I saw that there was peanut butter eaten on the bottle, so one or two must have learned how to balance. Dang mice
So that night I built another type.
Using a long soda can, I pierced two holes about in the middle, threaded some old wiring through the holes and tied it off to the bucket handles. I put a screw in the bucket for the can to rest on near the bucket side, and baited the end of the can with peanut butter. Theory is, once the mouse hits the far end, can tips, mouse can’t grab on to slippery can and falls in bucket. Simple as pie. I set that and caught another mouse… this time I had 1 dead mouse and lots of peanut butter left. To me, this means I caught the last one willing to venture out. Now, I can move the boat in and feel better about it. :wink: