The Paper Pitfall Trap

Autumn is around the bend.

In our yard, one tree says it all: the walnut. The black walnuts hang over the driveway and its falling yellow leaves litter the tomato vines. The crows are congregating. The air is crisp. Tomorrow we will take a hike into the woods and across the meadows to find more emerging changes.

Today, we have other plans.
The American Boy’s Handy Book begins the Autumn chapter in true hunt flavor with an armory of traps that any boy can fabricate from hand, using a pocket knife, hatchet and other readily available tools (which in our case means “adult helper”).

We start with The Paper Pitfall designed to safely capture mice.

Mice and rats are a non issue on our property, many thanks to the cats (who are skillful enough a catching hummingbirds). But we must persist. Field mice are exceedingly cute and to capture one alive for the boys to see would be charming. We must do.

This trap uses the very basic of supplies:

one earthenware jar or large wide-mouth vessel
a piece of writing paper
string, thread or a rubber band
a pocket knife
and a piece of cheese

First, take the piece of paper and cut a cross in the center. Fit the paper over the lid of the vessel, so that the cut cross sits in the center of the opening. Tightly fasten with string or a rubber band:

Take the trap out to the garage (or wherever you’ve seen droppings and piles of nutshells.) Using your pocket knife, string and cheese:

you set the trap at the site of evidence, suspending the cheese just above the jar, directly over the cut paper in the center of the jar.

In theory, if a mouse catches a whiff of the cheese, he will follow it, climbing up a platform to the top of the jar, where he must stand in order ot reach the cheese. When he reaches up and sets weight upon the cut paper, he will fall through the slits and drop into the vessel with the paper flying back into place for the NEXT mouse to fail.

We set two traps: one in the garage and one in the pumphouse. Next to each of these vessels is a structure the mouse can climb, in order to reach the cheese.
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We have checked them twice a day for two days but have yet to find a captive…