by Mushroom

Created on: June 03, 2008   Last Updated: January 14, 2012

While the cat's away, let's kill Mickey.  One of my earliest childhood memories was of a pet cat which sat outside our farm house door that morning. When the door opened the cat rushed in to the house with a dead mouse firmly gripped in its mouth. The cat ran under the dinning table and sat down before it began to eat its breakfast. Gripping the mouse's body with its claws it then bit its head off and began chewing noisily as its teeth began crushing and crunching the mouse's skull. But this gory scene was compensated by the cat's enjoyment of it delicious meal as it licked its lips before beginning its deep purr to show its contentment. A cat will sit for hours and in all weather conditions by a mouse's hole awaiting it's ideal opportune moment to pounce on its prey, hence a cat's favourite meal is a mouse. A cat can kill rats and can sometimes eat them too but only if it's very hungry.

If you have mice in your house and you want to get rid of these rodents the solution is to buy yourself a cat. However for many people this is not possible, and so the snap trap comes into prey. The snap trap was invented by John Mast of Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1895. There is an art to setting a snap trap, and just as importantly it's the bait you use that will determine the outcome of your experiments. For years people here in England used cheese or bread as bait to lure the mouses head under the killer bar of the snap trap. But although they may have had some success many mice stole an easy meal for themselves.

The answer to the bait problem are peanuts but they must be "dry roast peanuts" which are hard enough to be forced on to the cheese pedal without breaking. Hence this very dicey game of Russian roulette the mouse will have to play trying to steal its free take-a-way. When the snap trap is set the trigger bar will sit on top of the killer bar, the end of which fits into the eye of the cheese pedal, but this must be set so it rests at the very end of the cheese pedal's eye. This is a very delicate and dangerous operation if you are to prime the snap trap properly. The way to complete this task is to grip the primed snap trap holding your thumb over the trigger bar before feeding it through the eye of the cheese pedal.

The dry roast peanut ploy is not 100% foolproof but it's a very effective bait. If you throw the dead mice out into your garden you will become very popular with the local cat population.

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