How To Catch A Mouse (Alive)

A day after setting my homemade, live-release trap, I have released two mice into the wild (downtown Toronto). This trap was made with my own cunning ingenuity. It is an alternative to the other ones online, which generally require you to make a staircase out of objects (not possible in all nooks and crannies) and are best used when your mice are on a table (mine aren't). This trap took me about 15 minutes to make, mostly because I started with no gameplan. There are probably tons of improvements you can make on it.

Materials:

- roll of duct tape
- $10 wire mesh wastebasket like this one (I got mine at Canadian Tire, they also have them at office supply stores, like Staples, Home Depot, or Office Depot)
- thick, flat corrugated cardboard, plastic...ideally plastic, which is harder to chew
- any scraps to make mouse-friendly tunnels (thin cardboard, tubing)
- bait (peanut butter, seeds, chopped cookies, cereal, any dry sweet stuff)
- plastic grocery bag - the kind that makes loud crinkly noises

Procedure:

1. Line the entire inside of the wastebasket with duct tape, placing the strips of tape vertically (not in rings around the inside of the wastebasket). Make them smooth, so the mouse can't climb up. Each strip of tape should start 3 inches from the bottom, and end 2 inches from the top of the basket.

2. If you know where the mice travel, place the wastebasket where it will block a very important travel route. For example, my mice have taken up residence in my wardrobe, so I've opened the doors and placed the basket inside. Now they can't get into the wardrobe without climbing the wastebasket.

3. Block off "alternate routes" that the mice could use to avoid the wastebasket obstacle, using the cardboard or plastic. For example, opening the doors of my wardrobe creates triangular gaps which they could climb through without climbing the wastebasket. I've blocked them off with cardboard and tape. Remember: adult mice can squeeze through holes the size of a dime. Smaller mice, like mine, can squeeze through half that (I've seen it). Try to think strategically here.

4. In case the mice are hesitant to climb up the mesh (which they easily can), make a couple tunnels leading to the top of the wastebasket. Mice like tunnels. Increase your odds. I've used a piece of cereal box cardboard, taped into a tube. Actual tubing will only work if it's reasonably rough on the inside. I have no idea if this step is necessary.

Now that you've made tunnels, it's possible that a mouse will climb the tunnel, walk around the top rim of the wastebasket, and jump away from the wastebasket. Use more cardboard to make "blinders" on the top of the wastebasket, at 2 sides, so that it can either go back down the tunnel, or jump into the wastebasket.

5. Line the bottom of the wastebasket with a piece of the grocery bag. The noise from the mouse moving across it will help alert you that you caught one.

6. Cover the plastic with bait - not so much that the bait will fall out of the mesh, but enough that a mouse at ground level could easily smell it. I used Mini-Wheats cereal (frosted) crumbled, a bunch of chopped shortbread cookies, some globs of peanut butter, and some sunflower seeds. Make a real food paradise in there! Mice like sweet stuff.

Why is this brilliant?

A mouse has no choice (hopefully) but to climb a very easy-to-traverse wastebasket. It knows from sniffing the bottom 2 inches that inside the wastebasket is a lot of food. It climbs up, peers down, takes a couple tentative steps down the top 2 inches on the inside, and eventually falls. There it discovers that smooth tape is preventing it from climbing out. It can jump about 10 inches max, which isn't enough.

Now, how you want to get the mouse out of the wastebasket is up to you. I find it takes me under a minute to get one out while preserving the trap - I take a tall plastic container with a lid, corner the frightened, frenetic mouse (which practically corners itself) until it plops into the container, and then quickly put the lid on before it jumps out. It's a panicked and disoriented creature - it takes me two tries at the most and I have no eye-hand coordination.