How to Make a Mousetrap at Home

Make your own mousetrap at home.

If you have a mouse pest in your home, a mousetrap is necessary to get rid of it. Store-bought traps are available at grocery and home improvement stores. However, these traps use chemicals to kill the rodents, springs to break their necks or glues to trap them so that you can throw them in the trash. Making your own mousetrap gives you the option of catching and releasing the mouse or of disposing of the mouse lethally. Also, homemade traps are reusable and can be made with things you probably have laying around your house.

Things You'll Need

• 2 liter bottle
• Utility knife
• Tape
• Playground sand
• Cheese
• Kitchen oil
• Paper towel
• Books
• Bamboo skewer
• Toothpick
• Peanut butter
• Cookie sheet
• Baking dish

Instructions

Plastic Bottle

1. Cut off the top 1/3 of a clean plastic 2 liter bottle using a utility knife. Remove the lid and discard it. Invert the top 1/3 of the bottle so that it looks like a funnel. Insert the bottom of the funnel into the opening of the bottom 2/3 of the bottle. Tape it in place to secure it.

2. Pour 1 cup of playground sand into the inverted top of the bottle so that it flows into the base of the bottle. This will act as a weight to keep the bottle from tipping over. Also drop two to three pieces of cheese through the mouth of the bottle. This is your bait and will rest upon the sand in the bottle.

3. Grease the inverted top of the bottle with any type of kitchen oil, such as vegetable oil or olive oil. Pour some oil on a paper towel and rub the inside of the inverted top.

4. Set the bottle on the floor where you have observed a mouse or in an area you suspect the mice are. Stack up enough books next to the bottle so that they are close to the same height. The mouse will climb to the top of the books to get to the bait inside. The oil will make the inside of the bottle slick so the mouse will easily fall inside the bottle and become trapped.

5. Take the bottle outside with the mouse in it. Remove the tape and the top of the bottle and lay it on its side so the mouse can escape.

Dish Trap

1. Soak a long bamboo skewer in water for 10 to 15 minutes. The water will make the skewer more pliable. Once it is done soaking, bend the skewer at a 90 degree angle a quarter of the way down from one of the ends. If the skewer breaks during bending, discard it and try again with a new skewer. Strengthen the bend by using tape to attach a toothpick to the skewer. Position it so it runs between the short and long ends of the skewer, across the bend.

2. Apply a teaspoon of peanut butter or a piece of cheese to the skewer at the end of the long section. This is the trap's bait.

3. Place a cookie sheet that has a lip on it where you want to set up your trap. Place the tip of the short end of the skewer on the cookie sheet and the bait section of the skewer pointing toward the center of the cookie sheet.

4. Turn an 8-inch-by-13-inch baking dish upside down and rest one of the 8-inch edges on the skewer. It may take a little balancing to get it there, but the dish should rest on the short end of the skewer so that it is propped up with the bait on the inside of the dish. The skewer will look as if you turned a number seven on its side with the leg of the seven in the air. The mouse will enter the trap to get the bait. When the skewer is moved, the baking sheet will drop, trapping the mouse.

5. Take the trap outside and lift the baking dish to allow the mouse to escape.

Tips & Warnings

• If you prefer a lethal approach, lace the bait with rat poison to kill the mouse after it eats the bait.

References

• Steve Smith's Humane Mousetrap: Build Your Trap
• PlanetGreen: How to Build a Humane Mousetrap