Tag Archives: funnel

Wait a second… that’s not a trap at all!

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I just realized that the second variation of my funnel/one-way-door mousetrap doesn’t really trap mice at all!

Since it is specifically designed to provide an avenue of escape to the mouse, there’s no trapping being done, and I may have just miserably failed the design challenge.  The challenge specifically states that the winning design is the one that first catches his mouse.

Plus, this particular design would require you to drill a 4cm hole and 4x 3mm holes in a door.  I’m guessing this is one of those “cure is worse than the disease” solutions.

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.