A Better Mouse Trap

Caution! This post is not P E T A friendly.

When I was visiting my mother in the Gila (pronounced HEE-la) wilderness in New Mexico, we learned that almost everyone was having trouble with rodents.

Mom trapped one in the kitchen, then bought more traps at The Walmarts. When she and my brother went to get a load of hay, however, they stumbled across this ingenious trap that worked beautifully for one rancher.

Here's what it looks like:

Take a 5 gallon bucket and run a wire from one end to the other, stringing a soda can along the wire. Fill the bucket half-way with water. Put peanut butter on the can, and leave some kind of ramp leading up to the top of the bucket.

Mouse smells peanut butter.
Mouse runs up the ramp.
Mouse jumps onto can to eat peanut butter.
Can spins, plopping mouse into the water.
Mouse swims . . . until it can't swim anymore . . . then it stops swimming. For good.


We were so eager to try this, but we didn't have true 5 gallon buckets.

With a true 5 gallon bucket, this works incredibly well.

Ask Mom!




**Note: I feel the need to make a clarification from my last two posts. Jeff was my step-dad, and not the one who visited here at Christmas. Still, he was in my life from the time I was three years old. When he married my Mom, I began to refer to him as Dad.