The Miniature Barn Mouse Trap & Some Very Smart Rats: Mousetrap Monday

today for mousetrap Monday we're gonna do something I really enjoy doing and that is building and testing out a mousetrap based off a patent drawing it's hard to believe but over the years there have been almost 5,000 patents for mousetraps in my free time I enjoy going to the US Patent website and doing a patent search and recently I discovered a fun and clever idea for catching mice it's a trap that almost looks like a small doll house or a barn and it uses a snap trap as a trigger but it's not a kill trap it's a live catch trap it was first patented on December 31st 1996 and it was invented by John Flynn er of Lafayette Louisiana and the patent drawings are detailed enough to make a really good working model so I'm going to take a piece of plywood to the workshop and start cutting there's many different components and they all have to fit together it's going to be fun testing out this idea to see if it works I just cut the last board for our trap which in total required making 13 pieces including a roof top bottom sides a back door and a sliding front door and in the middle a shelf to hold our trigger system now we also need hardware for the trap which includes ice screws and hinges I did make one modification instead of having a solid piece of wood for the front I replaced it with clear plastic that way we can see the animal enter set off the trap and we can see when we caught something I'm gonna attach all the pieces with wood glue so everything fits together just like this our traps much more complete the roof is on a hinge we have a trigger system with a sliding door but before I show you how it works I want to improve the appearance so I'm gonna spray-paint it to look like a barn here's what our trap looks like when it's all complete and put together it's painted red we have a roof on it that's on hinges it folds up and down if we turn it to the back you can see the hinges for the roof the access door can pull the pin that's where we put the bait now if we turn it to the front can see where the animal enters they'll go in when that's open and when they set off will come slamming down on the back of the trap there's on either side to fit the door it slides up and down but a major problem is it's pretty loose if we catch a rat it might be able to lift the door and escape to fix that problem we attach a rubber band right here it almost acts like a slingshot when set off the door comes down much quicker and it holds it down so nothing can lift it up and get out the trap has two separate chambers a bottom chamber and an upper chamber the animal enters the bottom chamber through the door in the front trying to get the bait at the back of the trap right here but before it can it has to step on a pedal the pedal is attached by a string to the trigger system on the upper chamber trap you can see how that goes up and down we'll go ahead and set the rat trap now the other key component is attached to the bar we have a pin that fits in the door when you pull that come slamming down we'll set that again now when the rat trap goes off you'll pull the pin forward and the door will close to see if our trap works we're going to test it out with our pet mice go on inside well that didn't take long that trigger is very sensitive I can't wait to see if we can catch wild mice or rats in the barn let's go set up the motion cameras and see what happens when I went to go check the trap we caught a mouse but I had some trouble on the first night when I set the trap I left the barn and within 30 seconds the weight of the pedal caused a trap to go off and the door closed so all night long mice and rats came by trying to get inside but they couldn't know on the second night I reset the trap but I smashed my hand that's one problem with this is it's kind of difficult with the weight there on the pedal but I was able to get it set and it didn't take long to catch this mouse it was feeding eating the bait right there another mouse came by scared it and it jumped on the pedal it worked perfectly and later a squirrel came by checking things out the doors kind of small I don't know if we could catch a squirrel but maybe we can catch a rat now this is not a deer mouse a native species this is a non-native invasive House Mouse so I'm not gonna let him go instead I'm going to humanely dispatch it and feed it to wild animals but I'm gonna reset the trap one more time in the barn to see if we can catch a rat so let's go set up the motion cameras and see what happens [Music] well that was a bummer I was really hoping to catch a rat in the barn and even though there's a ton of rats and I left the trap for several nights we didn't get one the peanut butter and sunflower seeds wasn't enough to draw men all the way to the back some of the younger rats went half way I thought we were gonna get them but these rats are so cautious I've been trapping in that barn for a long time and any rat that goes near a trap has already been killed off so I think I'm creating a group of super rats the ones that are passing on their genes are very cautious towards anything new over the years I've encountered some extremely smart rats one was even smart enough to set off a snap trap with a stick I'm gonna come back and eat all the bait on the pedal so I found that mice are easy to catch by rats they can be very difficult now I don't know if many people know this but rats also love to eat mice I left the mouse we caught in front of the trap and in no time at all a rat grabbed it and took it away so rats definitely aren't vegetarians they will eat me grain whatever they can get for a food supply now for question and answer time since everyone's stuck at home right now I thought I'd answer more questions than usual I know collectable items have value but even my favorite things I can't see paying more than a certain amount for them this question refers to something I mentioned in my last video where I explained that I spend about $10,000 a year or more emmaus traps that seems like a crazy amount of money who would waste that much money on mousetraps well when you have a youtube channel devoted to reviewing mousetraps you can do that then most of that expense is bent on very rare antique one-of-a-kind mousetraps they don't come up for sale very often collectors will pay a huge amount of money for mousetraps and about half the time the price goes higher than I want to spend and there have been times where I've paid over a thousand dollars for mousetraps my collections right over here on a shelf you should do a mousetrap collection video so here's just a small sample this shelf here this is some of my best stuff these mouse traps are very expensive for example I just picked up this one it's called the faultless rat trap pretty unique there's only 43 of these known they sell between 4 five hundred dollars so I'm excited to test it out might be a future video now if you want to see a video of my mousetrap collection I have over a thousand mousetraps and I couldn't show you everything but I might show you some of the best stuff okay next question you use rubber gloves this time how come I'm happy to see it I was just wondering what change I've been getting this common a lot after years of posting videos where I handle dead mice and rats with my bare hands recently I started wearing gloves clothes are actually really hard to find right now they're disappearing off the shelves with face masks any kind of personal protection because this virus is such a scary thing it's really shut down the whole world we've had to stay at home my kids can't go to school so I thought it'd be wise to be more careful about diseases you get from animals so I'm going to wash my hands more and wear gloves next question hello mr. woods I have a question why don't you show the pictures of the mouse rat squirrel chipmunk molesville and gopher at the end of your video anymore well thanks for the question Kevin I didn't even know if people had noticed in the past few videos I've left those out it's been my standard inning for over a year but recently life's been so crazy with this virus works been extra busy the kids are home all the time and we have a new baby so to get these YouTube videos done a new video every Monday at noon I've been happening to stay up late on weekends oftentimes on Sunday night in the wee hours of the morning I'm editing and filming and when I get to the very end of the video there's just a few extra minutes to include those pictures and if I'm too tired I'll just start uploading it now recently I've been uploading in 4k and I live in a very rural area with slow internet it takes so long my last video was 10 minutes long and it took almost 14 hours to upload so I'm really feeling the time crunch and I'm trying to get ahead okay end a question and answer time in my next video I'm really excited to feature all these 3d printed mouse traps I'm going to show you them and then test them out in the bar and side by side to do a competition and see which one's work best recently a YouTube viewer printed them for me that was pretty close I went to his house the last day before we were quarantined and supposed to stay at home so a 3d printed mouse traps next Monday at noon thank you so much for watching for all the subscribers if you haven't subscribed please consider clicking the button right here I posted almost 600 videos on YouTube and currently I'm posting a new video every Monday so if you want to see the best videos on how to catch mice rats squirrels chipmunks moles voles and Gophers stay tuned

Channel: Shawn Woods

Views: 424,820

Keywords: Shawn Woods, Mouse Trap, Mousetrap Monday, Pest Control, How to catch a mouse, mousetrap review, mouse trap bucket, mouse trap quicksand, mouse trap commercial, mouse trap bottle, big mouse trap, victor mouse trap, rat trap bucket, antique mouse trap, vintage mouse trap, rare mouse trap

Id: swWk4l2azJI

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020