A Canadian Boffin: A Better Mousetrap

A Better Mousetrap · May 10, 2005

When I decided to go back and finish my degree, a drastic downsizing of my cost of living was needed. So, I moved in to an old rental house on Nanaimo street in East Vancouver with some friends.

Little did I suspect that our bulldozer-bait home was also home to, as one roomate had it, “the vermin”. AKA, mice. Nothing seemed to help the problem, because they came in from the empty lot next door. We fell to periodic trap-setting. If we lapsed about setting the traps for a few weeks, the population exploded.

But those little wooden traps don’t work all that well, because the small mice in particular aren’t heavy enough to set them off. We tried live tip-traps (gross and cruel if you forget to check them every day), debated poison – then one evening, while procrastinating about an assignment, I made this:

This “Mouse Elimination Device” uses a simple interruptable beam from an infra-red LED, and a photo-transistor detector, between the two black posts. Sensitivity is adjustable, and there is an audio buzzer included so we could leave it set for weeks at a time without checking it for little corpses.

As you can see from the photo above, it worked well. If I remember right the total was around 27 kills and one wounding for this model. While dealing with one infestation, in a single hour-and-a-bit run on a Sunday night, I reset the thing 7 times. Every ten minutes, like clockwork. Hardly had time to sit down and crack a textbook before I heard the snap and buzzing, tossed the body, marked the tally on the fridge, and reset it.

Brains spattered across the peanut butter didn’t seem to dissuade them one bit. Learning by example seems a bit beyond them.

I learned quite a lot though. For example, when renting in East Van, you get what you pay for.

* * *

Hi Art

Your frequency of thinking and myself regarding the glider project is arbitarily same. So i would like to get some advice from you. Trust me there is no money/buisiness behind this. I need your help. pls reply to my email:

rayerthegreat@yahoo.co.uk
even if u r not interested pls send a acknowledgement.

bye
SAM
— SAM Franks Sep 26, 02:06 PM #
That’s funny.

I also just started back to school. I’m living in a ‘lovely’ apartment (hole in the roof, rat, mouse, and roach infestations) in west philedelphia.

I woke up one morning, groggy, opened the fridge, and two mice jumped/fell out of the top shelf. They had managed to claw a hole through the seal at the bottom of the fridge. Initially I tried plugging the hole. That worked for a day. A never ending supply of food proved too tempting for any physical barrier. I tried strategically placing the traps (they had long since smartened up to baited traps). That worked for awhile. But they just became more skilled at skirting the traps. I began drawing up plans for a uC based trap. I couldn’t decide on a method of killing. I needed something that would be able to cover the entire bottom of the door. I started thinking about a pellet gun or something like that.

Then the remnants of a hurricane blow through town (this was last fall). It started raining in my kitchen. I about an hour I caught about 5 gallons of water in buckets and whatnot. (And I was catching less than half of the total water coming in). The water ended up killing my old fridge. After a while of drinking warm beer the land lord got me a less old fridge. Mouse-in-the-fridge problem solved.

Anyways, love your projects. Truly inspirational.

WJ
— WJ Oct 13, 06:16 PM #
Hey, that’s great. Now for the ‘auto eject’ and self reset upgrade, and I think you’ll have women beating a path to you door.

Cheers
— Alec May 1, 12:51 AM #

A Canadian Boffin

It's not quite flying, closer to falling with style.

A Better Mousetrap · May 10, 2005