Using everyday household objects like a clear drinking glass, metal springs, paper clips, and a metal nut, this “friendlier” mousetrap won’t kill off your rodent infestation, but instead will just provide an easy way for you to transport them outside. The designer’s intent is that you can re-use the objects after you catch the mouse. I think I would probably wash them a few hundred times first.
32 thoughts on “Non-lethal mousetraps show your fondness for rodents”
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I’ve caught a mouse or two in my day, most alive, and some even by hand. there is just no way that would hold a mouse for more than a second, without some sort of lid. I’ve seen em jump over a foot in the air to even escape being caught in bottles, a cup would just not work. So I guess it will be the mouse friendliest trap ever :P
That’s a gerbil.
I don’t think it is so much the effectiveness of each trap, it is that we don’t need to kill.
At least that is what I get out of it. The problem is that if you catch it and release it–it will come right back in. You’d have to drive far away, and then drop it off someplace. Mice are very good at finding where they have been before.
I have trapped them by putting some peanutbutter on a cracker (it smells fantastic to them, apparently) with a string leading down to just above the top of a 5 gallon bucket that has been cleaned. They get in, but they can’t get out. Costs nothing.
I have a friend who was live catching mice, was suspecting that they were coming back in (as every time they got food and water and a nice place to wait). To check it was reported that he was “tagging” the mice with felt tip markers. Then he could tell tha the blue mouse was coming back more than the pink mouse. Finally, just drove them out away from home to release them.
I like the idea of color coding vermin, in a safe (for the mouse) way.
Yeah, I’d clean the materials.. with fire.
Germs really freak me out.
That is without a doubt the most obtuse website design I’ve seen this month, perhaps this year. I couldn’t actually find anything about mousetraps, non-lethal or otherwise. There may very well be some mousetrap related content hidden in there somewhere, but I’d have to go on an easter egg hunt to find it.
My favoriet non-lethal method is to take a heavy-ish cereal bowl and a cheeto with peanut butter on it. Prop the bowl up in the middle with the cheeto and wait. There’s enough room for a mouse to get in, but once they start nibbling on the cheeto, it starts to weaken. Eventually it’ll collapse trapping the mouse under the bowl.
If you see that the bowl is down, slide a stiff piece of cardboard underneath so that you can pick up the bowl and mouse. At this point the mouse is probably freaked out, but they’re full of cheetos at this point so maybe they’re happy, I dunno.
You can put an empty jar under the edge of the bowl and start sliding the cardboard out from under it. The mouse will jump in the jar, and now you can take it far, far away to release it. My coworker has caught over 40 mice this way at work. At first he’d drop them off at a park halfway between work and home, but that started to become a hasle, so it take them to the bathroom and drown them…go figure.
Vermin are a sign of sloppy living habits, Poor choice in living quarters, and/or failure to maintain that living area.
They continually urinate as they move about, so think of that next time you ‘play’ with them. If their path runs over chromed/plated metal, the rust will poke through in short order.
A quick humane death to vermin. Dont make them suffer, but do not tolerate their presence where you eat/sleep/live.
Modify your life to where vermin are not attracted to you, and avoid the whole issue. You can outsmart a mouse/rat, rigggght?
Someone needs to post some plans for a high voltage mouse and rat trap so we can zap the little buggers for good. None of this faffing around catching them in glasses.
I spread some mouse poison but none of them having trouble yet, they know what kind of food that’s good for them. When I put all the groceries in wooden cabinet they managed to drill a hole through it. They wrecked the freezer, cause I am not in the mood to buy a new freezer or metal cabinet I gave up to their demand. I put leftover food in front of the house, and they seem to accept the ransom. They never entered the house since then
this guy is dreaming. catching mice in a non-lethal “humane” trap is an art. i do it very well and have adapted and improved upon a method i found online. my neighbours now use it with astonishing results. i will email anyone directions on how to fashion one if they are interested. it doesn’t cost anything to build. and having mice in your house is not a sign of sloppy habits. get over it, martha stewart. madame levy AT G Mail etc.
Why catch and release what are commonly known as vermin? Flush them down the toilet. They eat through your electric wires and get into your oven just to name two things they do. They aren’t pets.
This is a great idea! The conventional rat traps are no challenge for my Jack Russell Terriers. The glue-traps, while keeping the rat alive for further “fun”, have presented their own unique problems (ever try to remove a live rat, glued to the schnooze of a very excited dog?). My JRT’s are gonna love THIS! :)
JCC
DO NOT make a live trap for rodents.
All praise to the humane intention, but a live mouse turns almost any container into an instant cheapo germ-warfare pathogen aerosolizer. Rodents urinate and defecate constantly, especially when excited, and handling the trap spreads viruses freely. Currently, in the U.S., mice carry very bad diseases including hantavirus that has a predilection for killing healthy young adults and LCMV that just leaves you with serious neurologic deficits. People die of these things every year, and you don’t want your loved ones to have to clean you up.
The US CDC recommends snap traps that should be discarded promptly.
I don’t quite see how a live trap for rodents is any more dangerous in regard to germs/pathogens/virus than one which kills them. Particularly one which kills them over a period of time. Living or dead, I don’t want them in my pantry.
Mice are living beings. Nope, I don’t want them living in my house. This does not mean that I have to kill them by gluing them down and starving them to death. Or even giving them a quick “humane” flush. Maybe I’m just cursed with more imagination/empathy than those who think that there is a humane way to kill animals. Maybe I’m just squeamish, but I don’t really want to use a toilet that has flushed a mouse carrying bubonic plague…
If done with a modicum of sense, humane traps are not going to make anyone sick. Catch the mice, take them a mile or more away (not just to a different neighborhood, but away from people out in the country if you can manage that) and release them. Either they will set up housekeeping or they will provide valuable food for birds of prey like owls (some of whom are themselves endangered).
Precautions: do not handle them, they are wild animals. They are not likely to be happy as pets. And no matter what kind of trap you use, wear protective gear (thick gloves, say) because they will do what they can to escape.
Like other wildlife, they existed before people decided we wanted to live in permanent nests (usually warm & dry – we call them homes). Clever mice think this is a good idea but lack opposible thumbs and building materials. Being unable to build their own permanent nests they take every opportunity to move into our warm dry nests. Is it surprising that they’d rather live in our walls than in a snowbank?
Yes, they sometimes invade our space (so we call them vermin), but people have been altering or destroying natural habitat (including that of “vermin”) for centuries. Of course, people have also been wiping out whole other species either accidentally or because we’ve decided they’re inconvenient for centuries. Ever wonder what the “vermin” call us?
One more thing; mice don’t magically show up just because you’re a slob. I’m no more of a slob than I’ve been for the many decades of my adulthood, but for the first time I’m between cats, and voila– I have mousies. (Having experience of cats, I do not want to get a new cat until the mice are gone, and mice entrances are sealed.)
Fleas carry plague.
If your cat has fleas, and catches mice…
figure it out – your cat is just as likely to carry plague.
Rats, unlike mice, are very clean animals.
Your housecleaning skills have nothing to do with rodent infestations if you live in the country. They will use cardboard &/or fiberglass insulation to make nests, and will eat foam rubber, plastic insulation from wires, etc.
Catch and release just makes them someone else’s problem. If I saw someone release one in my neighborhood I’d follow them home, breed a few hundered mice, and release them in their front yard!