Electronic mouse trap

Hi Folks

Our daughter lives in an old tenement building and has mouse problems for over a year with little success at catching or killing the beasties. The 'mouse man' (professional pest expert) said that rodents are wise to almost all traditional design and form of traps, sticky sheets and poison as she has found out. I am thinking of a diy trap design on which the bait is hung from a hook positioned above a copper strip, the mouse acting as the switch by completing a circuit when it grabs the bait.

Any ideas about the requirements would be appreciated.

Get yourself a tom cat, job done...

Rentokil Advanced mouse trap, and a pea sized ball of peanut butter, works for me, I catch endless mice with this.

Is the intention to electrocute the mouse or trigger some solenoid or motor operated way of dispatching said mouse?

All you need is a shaving mirror and a saucer of whisky, Oh and a keen cat. The mouse drinks the whisky, then sees himself in the mirror as a huge mouse, and picks a fight with the nearest cat. Even the cat is happy having eaten a really tasty mouse.
On a slightly different tack, my friend installed a couple of ultrasonic mouse deterrents and has never had a problem since they were installed. This sort of thing:-
**LINK**
BobH

Spend a few minutes making this one. **LINK**

Emgee

I've found that the simple humane traps work more reliably than 'little nipper' although I have a large Longworth type trap used for everything from mice to gerbil recapture.

Rats, I used to use an extra-large spring trap or my air rifle, but for various reasons they are mostly absent now (cats help).

Neil

Ha Ha Ha that's ace !

JimmieS Remind her to switch off before removing corpses

Like it

I use an old fashioned trap, but put half a rolo on instead of cheese, they have to really tug at the sticky toffee, which reliably sets it off.

If you want to make something clever then a platform which gets depressed by the mass of the mouse triggering a microswitch would be easy, or even better an infra red light beam across a tunnel. You could have a revolving drum (think big bore revolver) and trap more than one

I like the trained mouse.

I have found chocolate works a treat as a bait. However your mice may be too street wise for simple country things like that.

I think a cat is the real answer.

JA

But then as the old children's song says then you'll need a dog to get rid of the cat and so on add nauseam

I also have a rat issue, Fenn Mk 6 traps and likewise an air rifle are effective!

JA

I think a cat is a great idea but no longer have one.

The bottle is baited with peanut cream/paste just below the neck.

Emgee

You can buy quite cheaply ultrasonic mouse repellers, we got from Aldi last year, plugged it in and the mice moved out.

And remember, the early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse eats the cheese.

Last year i switched on my ancient Ironworker ( like a Kingsland ) and there was an awful scream and thud thud thud ..Scared the crap out of me ! Switched it off as it had stalled the flywheel and the belt was slipping ...Gave it a few minutes wondering what the hell it was still thumping in the machine .....Shaking i opened the side , and there's 2 large cast gears , covered in grease ...and this rat has gone head first through the pinion and the gear jamming it up ..It must have been eating grease when i started it .

This may seem a strange one, I had mice in my workshop in the Barracks in Dortmund. I got an empty oil drum about 2 foot tall and 15 inches dia. I placed it at the end of the bench and at night before I left I placed a ruler over the edge of the desk and put a small bit of cake on the end of the ruler. In the morning I had on average 2 mice in the bin plus the ruler, this went on for a while until I did not catch any more for a week or two.

Disposal was by toilet flushing! At Leica the girls would leave their choccy snacks in their desk drawers and sure enough the mice would find them. I set out a half dozen humane traps and baited with choccy or apple pieces. Sure enough I caught the mice and the easy way was to flush them.

Clive