Recently we discovered we had a mouse on-board in the hold, so mousetraps were set, they were supposed to be prebaited, whatever that means, I thought they didn’t need baiting and assumed there must have been some sort of odour already built into the trap. Well after a number of days without any sign of said mouse I decided to bait the traps. We had been told that chocolate was a good bait, so I bought some Cadbury’s chocolate buttons.
The reason for this is they are small, small enough to sit on the trap trigger plate, and because of their shape, with a curve to the upper edge very difficult to pick up, as anyone who has tried to pick one up off a table, for example, has discovered.
Traps set overnight, and the next morning low and behold both chocolate buttons had gone! How this mouse managed to pick both buttons off the trap trigger plate without triggering either of them is beyond me, a very resourceful mouse. This obviously needed another approach. Now the trap trigger plates are made of yellow plastic with small holes of different shapes and sizes in each as can be seen below.
My next ploy was to cut up a chocolate button and force these pieces into the holes in the trigger plate, some actually started to melt with my finger temperature which helped to shape the chocolate either side of the plate.
Success, one mouse safely dispensed this morning. Mind you it had managed to remove every piece of chocolate from both traps before succumbing! Incredible, but at the end of the day not as devious as me!
Keith.
3 comments:
Perhaps the trigger plate needed too much weight on it to spring the trap. It might be worth seeing just how near the end of the long release arm you can get the trigger plate without it springing. You might want to wear gloves!
Oh, and there may be more than one mouse...
If you and Jo decide to eat the chocolate buttons instead, try using sultanas, easier to fit in the holes and more difficult to get out by the mouse, sultanas are our tried and tested bait, and usually in the store cupboard. Caroline
The buttons have worked well, I reset the traps last night and nothing this morning so hopefully it was the only mouse on-board.
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