Tag Archives: butter

How to test a ridiculous idea

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Cathal Garvey posted his recommendations as to how those without mice can test their designs.  He suggests:

*Think* like the mouse, *be* the mouse!
Alternatively, leave one outside in the country or garden, and await your furry, diseased reward!

But how do you test a one way door/mouse funnel mousetrap if you don’t want to invite mice into your house?  I suppose a box with two such funnels installed with a bit of peanut butter inside.  If you wake up and find no mice or peanut butter – it either worked perfectly1 or it failed miserably2 !  If the mouse is stuck inside…  well I guess it kinda succeeded.

  1. as in the mouse left via the second one-way-exit [↩]
  2. as in the mouse left the wrong way out the first one-way-exit, just to be a rodent jerk [↩]

Self-emptying mouse funnel mousetrap

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I’ve spent WAAAAY too much time thinking about this problem.  Here’s my new idea:

The hope is that a mouse inside your house will walk out the hole in the door to get to the peanut butter on the other side of the funnel.  Once inside the box with all of the peanut butter consumed the mouse can either (a) try to struggle past the pointy bits back into the house or (b) slip outside through the second funnel.

Cheater cheater pumpkin eater

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Some might consider it cheating to enter a mouse trap that is probably 95% not printed in the Mouse Get! challenge.  I disagree.

If your mouse trap requires anykind of bait/lure, then it’s not really 100% printed, is it? And, if it is 100% printed chances are a mouse isn’t going to be that interested.  My point is that once you deviate from a 100% printed mouse trap, we’re just quibbling about percentages. 1

Some use cheese to trap mice.  I’ve found peanut butter to be far more effective.  To extend the above thought further, if you’re using peanut butter (or cheese) – just how much can you use in the trap?  If you’re using a lot of peanut butter, why not the whole jar’s worth?  If you’re using an entire jar of peanut butter, why waste the jar itself?  Chances are you were going to throw the empty peanut butter jar away anyhow.

This isn’t so much cheating as it is…  recycling/repurposing. 2

  1. There’s an old joke attributed to both George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill that is rather on point… [↩]
  2. This brings to mind slippery slope arguments and the “If you give a mouse a cookie” book. [↩]

Peanut Butter Jar Mousetrap Insert

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Peanut Butter Jar Mousetrap Insert

Peanut Butter Jar Mousetrap Insert

Here’s my entry in the Mouse Get! Challenge from Cathal Garvey.  I call it the “Peanut Butter Jar Mousetrap Insert.”

The idea is pretty simple.  Mice probably like peanut butter enough to squeeze into a small opening for a chance to eat it.  If the opening is difficult to wedge back open they might not be able to get back out.

So, buy a jar of peanut butter, eat most of it, leave some peanut butter at the bottom, cut out most of the top from the lid, print the “Peanut Butter Jar Mousetrap Insert“, put the insert with the pointy bits going inside, close the lid, prop it up somewhere so it doesn’t roll away, and wait for your peanut butter covered mouse!