How to Make a No Kill Mouse Trap, Take 2

I made a mouse trap using a pivoting soft drink bottle and I caught 6 mice in 6 days. Pretty good! I realized that I probably had quite a good colony and would need more than one mouse a night to get rid of them. So I went back to Mr.YouTube and found another model. There are countless variations of this mousetrap, here is mine.

I also found that there is a whole class of people out there completely obsessed with building a better mouse trap.

How does it work?

The principle is simple. A mouse follows the peanut butter trail up a ramp, steps into a nice dark tunnel and a small board, which is carefully balanced, pivots down from the weight of the mouse, and dumps the mouse into a large bucket and pivots back up once the mouse is off the board.

The trap is then ready for the next mouse.

Here is the trap on it's side. The flap that is normally on the bottom is open, and covered with peanut butter.

The flap is hinged using 2 little nails, you can see one sticking out. I hot glued them to the outside so they would not work themselves loose.

Here is a view of the flap almost closed. There are some nuts hot glued to the bottom of the flap so that the short side of the flap is balanced with the long side. There is a little piece of wood that prevents the flap from going over too far. This allows the mouse to go onto the flap and nothing will happen until he walks out, past the pivot point, then towards the end. The flap will then pivot open and hopefully slide the mouse into the bucket.

Here I'm holding the trap right side up and the flap has closed. The weights just keep the flap closed when no one is walking on it. I might have to add more weight, I'll see how it works.

Here the trap is upright and I'm pushing the trap door open with my thumb. When I let go, it closes and hopefully stops any mouse from jumping out. They are great jumpers these mice. You can see the overhangs of the side of the tunnel. These help position the trap on the bucket.

I'm using a 5 gallon pail. The trap fits snugly over it and the ramp to bring the mouse to the opening is screwed onto the side of the bucket.

I cut 2 semi-circular pieces to fit the opening of the bucket and stop the mouse from jumping out. Finally I used my hand saw and cut little grooves onto the ramp so it's not too slippery. I smeared a path of peanut butter up the ramp and into the trap and put a good glob towards the end of the board. All I have to do is wait now and see how my traps do overnight.

3 Days later and I've only caught 2 mice in the bucket. The bait inside is not eaten either so that means the mice are not going in. Maybe they are afraid or maybe the ramp is too steep. I'll leave it for a few more days to see if they get used to it. The bottle trap has caught a mouse every night. 10 in 10 days.