Interesting, I never caught a chipmunk in a trap, though I once caught one with a towell.

Around here the chipmunks cause more damage than the mice.

 

Buy a bottle of oil of peppermint and a bag of cotton balls. a couple drops on a cotton ball and they will leave they hate oil of peppermint. on the other hand if you want to kill em an oil furnace transformer and i used two delta washer less brass balls and built a frame. put dog food between the balls and wait. when they close the gap zap 10 kv between the ears.

 

Someone who lived through World War 2 in England told me about a friend of his who had a rat problem back then when there were shortages of everything, but this was an ingenious guy who came up with two solutions that worked:

1 Fill a bucket half-full with water. Place an ordinary 12-inch ruler on the edge of the bucket and also on some pile of books or something, and put a piece of bait out on the end of the ruler. The rat crawls out along the ruler to get the goodie, the ruler tips in, and you have to deal with one drowned rat in the morning.

2 Get a piece of electrical cord and split the wires back for a couple of feet. Connect one wire to a metal plate, and let the other hang down over the plate with a piece of bait on it. Plug the contraption into a wall outlet (240 volts in Europe, remember). Deal with fried rodent in the morning.

Uh oh. Did that second idea break the rule here against mains-powered circuits? Well, those were desperate times.

 

Someone who lived through World War 2 in England told me about a friend of his who had a rat problem back then when there were shortages of everything, but this was an ingenious guy who came up with two solutions that worked:

1 Fill a bucket half-full with water. Place an ordinary 12-inch ruler on the edge of the bucket and also on some pile of books or something, and put a piece of bait out on the end of the ruler. The rat crawls out along the ruler to get the goodie, the ruler tips in, and you have to deal with one drowned rat in the morning.

2 Get a piece of electrical cord and split the wires back for a couple of feet. Connect one wire to a metal plate, and let the other hang down over the plate with a piece of bait on it. Plug the contraption into a wall outlet (240 volts in Europe, remember). Deal with fried rodent in the morning.

Uh oh. Did that second idea break the rule here against mains-powered circuits? Well, those were desperate times.

So, the choice is rata gazpacho or rata frita?

 

Around here the chipmunks cause more damage than the mice.

There's some good squirrel trap clips on youtube - a collender/bungee strap catapult with some bait, when a squirrel goes for the bait - cut the tie rope and watch the squirrel fly.

 

There's some good squirrel trap clips on youtube - a collender/bungee strap catapult with some bait, when a squirrel goes for the bait - cut the tie rope and watch the squirrel fly.

Ian,
That is the "Arial Burial" device from way back. Once the mouse's brains get scrambled you launch him into the bushes for an owl or snake to get for dinner...Also works really great for launching water balloons a couple hundred yards if you use bicycle inner tubes as the bands instead of bungee cords. We used to fill them with Dye and a bit of water and launch them down the beach. If nobody is around freeze the balloons before launch and they will go a long long long way, then melt...


Wheelchair Bob

 

Ian,
That is the "Arial Burial" device from way back. Once the mouse's brains get scrambled you launch him into the bushes for an owl or snake to get for dinner...Also works really great for launching water balloons a couple hundred yards if you use bicycle inner tubes as the bands instead of bungee cords. We used to fill them with Dye and a bit of water and launch them down the beach. If nobody is around freeze the balloons before launch and they will go a long long long way, then melt...


Wheelchair Bob

The bicycle inner tube between two washing line posts is perfect for launching windfall apples - aside from the random damage, it distributes the seeds and grows more apple trees.

 

it's not electronic, well unlell your into extream rat on rat canivor can survival or " rattus no nor vegicus no more " TRAP used on the co conut islands.
first dig a pit and place some ripe co conuts in there (or bait).
cover and wait till you have a pit pull of rats, then leave to devour each other as the only food sause after the coconuts are gone.
leave until you have 2 left then release them on opposite sides of the island.
now you have a natural enemy for rats. WIN WIN .
You could set up digital counter to count them (

 

I had bunch of ways of killing rats cause we had giant rats where I use to work... I was using a 5 gal bucket filled with water about half way And then put a skim coating of grass seed on top and the rats would fall in and drown..

 

I prefer a trap that will torture the rats for a while before killing them, any ideas?

Torture you say?

 

I had bunch of ways of killing rats cause we had giant rats where I use to work... I was using a 5 gal bucket filled with water about half way And then put a skim coating of grass seed on top and the rats would fall in and drown..

Torture you say?

RUN AWAY RUN AWAY

 

Around here the chipmunks cause more damage than the mice.

THERE LOVELY WHEN YOU WISIT THE STATES, BUT YOU DON'T REALISE JUST HOW SMART AND DAMAGING THE LITTLE BUGGERS ARE.

 

The bicycle inner tube between two washing line posts is perfect for launching windfall apples - aside from the random damage, it distributes the seeds and grows more apple trees.

I WISH IT WERE THAT EASY. THE SEEDS WONT PRODUCE THE SAME APPLES AS YOU WOULD NEED THE SAME PARANTS THEY CAME FROM TO GET THE SAME APPLESS. MOST APPLES ARE GRAFTED THESE DAYS TO A FASTER GROWING ROOT STOCK). OOPS, THE PADDLE OF REBUKE.
YOU COULD ALLWAYS FIT AN ELECTRONUIC COUNTER TO IT


SORRY THIS IS WRITTEN IN CRAYON, BUT WERE NOT ALLOWED SHARP OBJECTS HERE

 

Just set up a vacuum with a canister to hold the captured securely away from the other curiosity seekers. Use an infrared LED and a photo receptor so that when one passes a TEE in the line and then breaks the beam the vacuum comes on for 20 seconds and sucks the little bugger out of the tube and into the canister where his friends are partying and waiting for new arrivals. Oh, and use smooth piping. No ribbed pipes that they can grip onto.

 

The mouse or rat enters the tunnel trap, passes the tee and reaches the bate just beyond the IR Beam and Sensor. The beam is broken and the vacuum runs for 10 to 20 seconds. The vermin tries to run out of the tunnel only to get sucked into the canister. The high vent is for natural air flow. You don't want the smell of death permeating back through the tunnel trap.

[edit] lost my TUNNEL TRAP label. It's the entrance to the whole shebang.

 

Be careful about killing rats.

Some people like them and breed them as pets like in the movie "Willard":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_(1971_film)

 

My first marriage, we had two pet rats. The kids loved them, the wife liked them a little. I was interested learning about them. But now, they're just rats. Part of the food chain (not MY food chain). Personally, I would opt for catch and release but that's because I don't like killing living things. Except mosquitos, flies, SOME spiders and the European Paper Wasp. Haven't seen a cockroach in a good 25 years, so I suppose I'd probably put them on the list too, but since they're not a nuisance they don't make the short list.

 

I have invented a rat destroyer that avoids the scent marking problem, and is able to kill another rat in less than 30 seconds. I designed it to be used in warehouses in countries where people starve because rats eat the grain. The device is called a"Ratapult". It is non-toxic and non-shocking, the only real hazard is rats exiting at very high speeds. It is slightly similar to the ratvac described earlier, except that it uses compressed air. It consists of a tunnel section 2 to 3 inches inside diameter, a few feet long. One end is open, the other end has a "tee" fitting with a light, a bait pouch, and a small air supply to send the scent of the bait out toward the entrance. The light is to simulate the "other end of the tunnel." At the far end of the Tee is a solenoid valve connected to an air tank directly. Just before the Tee is a photo-electric sensor switch. A rat enters the tube seeking the bait, but upon crossing the light beam the solenoid valve opens for a few seconds, and the rat is propelled backwards out of the tube at about 100 feet per second. Across the aisle is a container with a sharp blade in the rat's path so that the rat develops a split personality. This collection point is far enough away from the trap to not be associated with it. Because of the fast exit and the powerful air blast no warning smell is left behind. The small air flow and the refill of the air tank come from a remote air compressor. This invention is royalty free to be produced by any who would choose to produce it. But please market it as "The Ratapult".

 

 

I lived in a house that had a recurring mouse problem (it would disappear every time a fox took up residence under the porch had a litter and spend a few months raising them). This could get really bad at times. Sadly, my dog was really good at catching them, but she always let them go -- usually to then immediately catch them again. She thought of them as nothing more than self-propelled tennis balls.

I would set out traps (the usual snap traps) and could get several a day and in high traffic areas I would place several traps within a few inches of each other and would often find all of them full the next morning. I occasionally had traps that disappeared as a mouse carried it off and, upon finding it and dumping out the decomposing carcass, would immediately set the trap and I never noticed any decrease in effectiveness.

One time, coming home after being gone for two weeks, I had a particularly bad problem and caught five mice in a single trap during one evening.

So I'm not too sure how much I accept that other mice will avoid traps that have recently caught other mice. Maybe we just had defective mice.