Mr and Mrs Von Trapp

Here is another Mouse story.
Several people aren’t happy with the idea of putting down poison for these little rodents, and insist on using humane traps.
A friend of mine did just that, and purchased a box trap at a cost of some £15 (about $23).
The instructions said to use peanut butter or chocolate, so as she didn’t like peanut butter and never bought it, she decided to tempt her quarry with a chocolate digestive biscuit.
She carefully set her trap and went to bed.

There were no takers for a few days, but one morning, she was thrilled to see that the trap had been sprung, and carefully carried the box outside.
She didn’t want to kill the mouse or run the risk of it coming back inside, so thought she’d take the box down to the local woods to set it free.
She picked her spot, and gingerly undid the catch.
Using a stick, she tipped the trap on its side and carefully lifted the door.
Nothing came out, so she took courage, bravely picking the box up and shook it.
And successfully released a small amount of chocolate digestive crumbs into the wild.

On a similar theme, I was not happy at the prospect of Hubby shooting these cute little mice playing at the bottom of the garden. However, it was harvest time, so they had been evicted from the corn field and had their eyes on a new des res. OURS!
Somewhat grudgingly, he agreed that we could use a humane trap, and he would dispose of any caught.
From a design found on the internet, we actually made our traps (one each) out of scraps of wood, some chicken wire and a couple of tent pegs.
Our bait was lard and bird seed.

The idea is that Mousey comes along and can see the food through the wire.
The only way in is through the hole in the top, which is actually attached to a wire tunnel reaching almost to the bottom of the trap. Mousey can go in, but cannot get out as he can’t climb under the tunnel to go up again.
The first morning, we had a mouse in the trap….. the one I’d made.
Hubby dispatched it, and got rid of the corpse by pulling out the tent peg held in place against the ‘hinged’ end by two screw-in eye bolts.
At least Mousey died quickly with a full tummy.

The second morning, we had mice in each trap, one in Hubby’s, 2 in mine.
By day five,  my trap had caught 11, Hubby’s trap 6, and one day I had a triple catch to Hubby’s nil!
Eventually mice stopped coming into our garden, and we left the traps on the shed roof until we needed them again.
We couldn’t believe it when we discovered a young mouse in one of the traps a few weeks later.
That made it a nice round dozen.