I know it could catch a mouse, but would it be better.
I was watching an episode of All In The Family and Archie is having a war with a mouse Edith has named “Marvin.”
Archie is walking around with a spring type trap that clearly is a rat trap. The thing about the size, (if not bigger) than his entire hand.
I was thinking just of the logistics. If you put a piece of cheese or peanut butter or whatever, on a rat trap, wouldn’t it be less likely to kill a mouse? Couldn’t it give the mouse, which is much smaller, more time and space to jump away. And I imagine the mouse is so light it might not set it off.
I had a mouse once and the darn thing sat on the mouse trap and ate the peanut butter without setting it off
a rat trap would not likely trigger from a mouse. a rat trap spring is strong and so is the pressure to release the trigger. a mouse could probably dance on it and not trigger it.
rat traps are also a greater hazard to people when they get caught by it. a mouse trap is just a little soreness, not the larger injury of a rat trap.
a mouse trap needs to be clean, uncorroded and just set to trip. you can set it too tight to trip easy.
I don’t know about a spring trap but I have a couple of snap traps for rats in my garage. These are big scary things with teeth that might very well break your toes if you stepped on one with bare feet or sandals and I’ve caught several mice in them with no problems.
Yeah, in theory, the spring traps I think you’re talking about would give the mouse more time, but you have to remember two things, they’re still VERY fast and the mouse doesn’t know that it set it off. It’s not that the mouse goes in thinking it has to grab the bait and get out of the way.
And a tip from my Orkin guy. When I mentioned that I picked up some traps the first thing he said was “Let me guess, it ate the peanut butter and didn’t set off the trap” yup that’s exactly what happened. He suggested that I use a snickers bar and stick in on the trigger. This way they’ll have to do a bit of work to pull it off and they’re more likely to trip it.
also the traps are sized to snap the neck when the mouth is on the trigger. a rat rap would get a mouse on the tail if it ever tripped.
a correct on anchoring the bait to the trigger. peanut butter may work on a mouse trap if you used some dried as a chuck wedged on the trigger or use fresh chunky and wedge a peanut chunk under.
