Slightly OT- Improving the mousetrap?

It seems one of the disadvantages of using water from bath / washing machine is that the bloody mice get in from where the hose exits the house. One (at least) of the little buggers refuses to be beaten, cunning mongrel eats the bait off the mousetrap, craps, and scatters away unharmed!

What sort of current does it take to kill a mouse? And not knowing much of the anatomy specifics and resistance of a mouse body, what sort of voltage do you suppose would do the trick? :)

I thought a nice idea might be to use 240v, with just a smear of peanut butter on the active and a metal plate below connected to the neutral, only thing is I dont want to kill anyone or burn the place down (although that would get rid of the mice).

What about a flash circuit from an old camera? I know last time i got a kick from one of them it hurt like all get up and left a nice burn mark in my little finger :)

Food for thought, albeit a kind of impractical geekish way to go about killing a bloody rodent....

James

Reply to
James
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I solved the problem by building a mouse-catching gadget out of a coffee can, some rubber bands, bits of paper clips and a trigger circuit which discharges a big electrolytic cap into a solenoid to make it close. Then I put the mice into a mouse house I got at a pet shop. Some wild mice become very tame after a while when they're well fed, and they're pretty intelligent. I wonder how Leo would like the idea of an electronically-triggered mouse catcher as a project?

Bob

PS: No, it doesn't use a microcontroller. ;)

Reply to
Bob Parker

I was considering the solenoid idea triggered buy interupted IR beam cct, that way if the beam is aimed correctly the mouse doesn't have to be gnawing hard on the bait to trigger it, what differs is I'm not really too interested in keeping the mice live :)

James

P.S. I wasn't planning on going to the extent of using a micro either, seems like a waste, especially since I only have ATMega32s laying around at the moment

Reply to
James

Most pet shop mice seem to get cancer these days, maybe they have lab mice genetics that make em susceptible to it. You could breed yours with them to improve the breed.

Reply to
Mark Harriss

There are plenty of conventional possible solutions to the problem in your local supermarket. Poisons, devious plastic mousetraps, etc etc.

One of them should deal with your rodent(s) effectively. :)

Bob

Reply to
Bob Parker

just tie the bait on, I found that works OK

What sort of current does it take to kill a mouse? And not knowing much of the anatomy specifics and resistance of a mouse body, what sort of voltage do you suppose would do the trick? :)

I thought a nice idea might be to use 240v, with just a smear of peanut butter on the active and a metal plate below connected to the neutral, only thing is I dont want to kill anyone or burn the place down (although that would get rid of the mice).

What about a flash circuit from an old camera? I know last time i got a kick from one of them it hurt like all get up and left a nice burn mark in my little finger :)

Food for thought, albeit a kind of impractical geekish way to go about killing a bloody rodent....

James

Reply to
Frank

On Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:20:10 +1100, Bob Parker put finger to keyboard and composed:

I like the cheeseless mousetrap. It consists of a ramp with a razor blade at the top. The mouse climbs up the ramp, peers over the edge, and moves his head from side to side saying "where's the f***ing cheese!"

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
Reply to
Franc Zabkar

**I had the same problems. Modern mousetraps (rat traps) are crap. The spring lacks the power to crack their little necks and the trigger mechanism is not reliable. I resorted to baiting. It works very effectively. In fact, I found that snail baits worked VERY well. MUCH faster kill than regular rat baits. Trouble is, 'round here, I need to protect the native wild life from the baits.
--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
Reply to
Trevor Wilson

Well you could use a biological agent which employs chemically advanced technology to seek and eliminate the problem and it also disposes the collected mouse material as fuel as well, leaving behind a fertiliser that it then returns to the soil. This is refered to as symbiotic and helpful intigrated technology. Ogo.

Reply to
Ogo

You refer, I presume, to the tried and proven "Ball-bearing Mousekiller".

Reply to
L.A.T.

Don't you have grills over the outlets in the sink?

You would probably be better served by trying to find the holes where the mouse enters your house. Or leave out some bait.

BTW, what the advertisers say about the rodents crawling away to die is a bunch of crap. The mouse dies under the floorboards and rots there, causing a stink so bad that you can't go into the room for a couple of weeks.

Reply to
dmm

bunch of crap.

that you

It deepends on the moisture content of the area. We once cleaned out a dead cat that would revive the odorous content whenever it rained. It took an electrician to "find" the reason for the smell when he went to rewire the house and drew their attention to the source of the smell, having experienced this problem a few times during the course of his job.

They paid him a small bonus.

Reply to
Jonno

Unless you want to turn rodent elimination into a hobby in itself, forget the technical approach. The only type of real mousetrap that works is those octagonal ones with four holes. Get one (even though nowadays they are chinese plastic instead of SouthAussie wood).

Reply to
rebel

I made a mouse electrocution device some years ago. Imagine, if you will, a spare SC electronic ignition module driving a car coil with HT connected to several pointed electrodes 100mm above a horizontal 50 mm metal disc. The metal disc is attached to a long and very lightly spring loaded balsa wood lever so any disturbance like a mouse hopping onto the disc causes the other end of the lever to withdraw a tab from between an IR led/diode pair. This triggers a 555 timer for 10 seconds which sets off a second 555 oscillator running at around 100Hz which drives the ignition module. Whole thing was powered from the 12V workshop car battery. The lever and tab device was to keep the artificial lightning bolt away from the trigger electronics.

My then 8 year old neighbour was very interested in the blue sparks and ozone smell and was an eager assistant in my trial runs using several cherry tomatos. I wanted to ensure that 10 seconds of lightning at who knows how many kV would not cause an organic bag of moist material to explode and scatter itself all over the kitchen. It didn't. The tomatos just warmed up a little.

Did it work? Yes it did, over several nights of operation. However, the trap had to be reset after each victim and the disc and base needed to be thoroughly washed, though not because of mouse blood and guts. The corpses looked unmarked and peaceful. Mice have acute senses and won't go near a trap that smells of death. It was a pain getting my jury rigged spring loaded lever reset just right. Something did go wrong eventually and my

555's and transistors were fried by EHT.

The 8 year old cried when he saw the first victim, a pretty little champagne coloured beast with a black face. (My mice seemed to have a large admixture of petshop mouse genes). All I could say was "welcome to adulthood" where you often have to do things you'd rather not do. I was, however, encouraged to see that the kids addiction to mindlessly violent video shoot-em-ups hadn't blunted his sensibilities.

After that I resorted to the biological control agent mentioned in another reply. (Meow).

Peter H

Reply to
Peter Howard

Living in the bush and suffering periodic mouse infestations, I concur re the smell - but you get used to it in the house after a few days, and after a week or two it aint too bad

But my biggest problem is the little buggers that invade my 4Runners ventilation fan - somehow they get in there, though I can't figger out how, and when I turn the air conditioner on the fan goes clunk clunk clunk (for a long while) as their little heads get banged around. Then in a day or so whenever the fan runs the car is filled with the stench of dead and decaying mouse, and that lasts for weeks and weeks.

David

dmm wrote:

bunch of crap.

that you

Reply to
quietguy

smell - but

aint too bad

ventilation fan -

air

little heads get

with the stench

I know what you mean. Once a rodent died of apparently natural causes in the cavity between the walls. We never did work out where the appalling stench was coming from, until much later when a builder discovered the remains while doing other work.

Cheers Bob (bleat)

Reply to
Bob Parker

smell - but

aint too bad

ventilation fan -

air

little heads get

with the stench

A cousin in his uni days had a veewee beetle, and one (mouse) managed to get into the heating duct that (from memory) has outlets either side of the rear seat, at floor level. Bugger never escaped, and the smell was even worse if you had occasion to use the heater on a cold day/night.

Reply to
budgie

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