I built my bucket mouse trap last night. I used a 5 gallon Home Depot paint bucket, and chicken broth can, and coat hanger, a scrap of wood about 3 feet long, and a screw.
I bought a can of chicken broth at the grocery store. I drilled an 1/8 inch hole in the middle of one end of the can. I shoof the can, and managed to get most of the broth out. I temporarily covered the hole with tape. I drilled a 1/8 inch hole in the other side. I removed the tape, and got the rest of the broth out. I ran some water into the the can, shook it around, and rinsed the inside of the can. I removed the handle from the bucket. I took a piece of coat hanger, ran it through the holes in the can, and bent the ends over the edges of the bucket so that the can was positioned in the middle of the bucket. I wrapped a piece of raw bacon around the can, and secured it in place with some wire. I took the 3 foot long board that was about 3 inches wide, and screwed the screw in about 3 inches from the end. The board now is placed as a ramp up to the top of the bucket with the screw holding the board in place to the lip of the bucket. I filled the bucket with 4 inches of water.
Now the plan is the mice will go up the ran to investigate the bacon. They will jump to the can to get the bacon, and the can will roll, dumping them into the water to drown. This is a multi-catch type trap.
I set up the trap last night in a utility room where we have had mouse activity. I checked it this morning, and found no mice yet. I will give it some time. If it doesn’t work, the only thing I have invested was 50 cents for the can of chicken broth. The rest of the stuff I had lying around the house.
This morning I am running on my treadmill, when I head a loud noise in the other room. I went to check on it, and found my wife had knocked over the large 4-D cell Maglite I had by my nightstand. She had pulled out my nightstand for somereason. I asked what she was doing, and she said a bird had flown into the house. We have had this happen before. When have some phoebes that keep building a nest above the sliding glass door in the basement. And sometimes when we let the dog out, the bird is startled, and flies into the house.
The bird was now upstairs flying around the rafters and beams (We have cathedral ceilings in a post & beam house). We opened the upstairs sliding glass door, and were trying to herd the bird towards them. But the bird was handging out up high and not coming near the door which was lower. We chased the bird which was flying back and forth. We were clapping, and waving a broom. The bird seemed to be attracted to the areas that were lit. So I got a halogen flood light, and shined it at the door, and we turned off the other lights. This helped a little. The bird was at least staying on one side of the house. It was still dark out when this started, but dawn started to break. At one point the bird headed for a tall windows, and was flying up and down it, trying to get out. It then landed on the window sill. My wife grabbed a kitchen towel, and slowly went over to the bird. She carefully got the towel over the bird, and carried it outside, and released it.
Our house is surround by woods. We love our trees. But living out in a rural area surrounded by trees we get mice in our house. I have dealt with them in various ways.
Traditional mouse traps suck! Half the time the mouse gets the bait without tripping the mouse trap. Or they trip the mouse trap and get away the bait. Once in a rare while you actually catch a mouse.
I have some great plastic traps called The Better Mousetrap by Intruder Inc. This trap works really well. But it catches a single mouse at a time.
I have tried mouse poison. But the mice seem the empty the box of poison. I replace the box of poison, and they empty that. I assume they go off and die somewhere. I hate the idea of them going and dying inside my walls.
Well I read about a type of trap that uses a 5 gallon bucket, a coat hanger, a tin can, and a board. Well I went ahead and made one. I filled it up with water, and stuck it down in our basement utility room. I will try it out and see how it works. If it works well I will post plans here.
Not sure what the problem is. My wife took me outside, and showed me the rear deck. The middle of the deck collapsed. The deck was there when we bought the house, and needed to be re-stained. But overall it seemed to be in good shape. The deck is low to the ground, so the middle only fell like 10 inches. But it’s sagging down. I can’t see from above when happened. When it dries out, I will try to get under it and see if I can see what the damage is. If I can’t see from below, I may have to remove some of the deck planks, along the house, so I can see what happened. I am not sure how it was supported. Whether there was a post going into the ground that may have rotted. Or maybe there was a timber glued to the concrete foundation that pulled loose, and broke or rotted. It kind of sucks, but I am not too concerned. I am hoping it wasn’t anything like carpenter ants. We have them around our house.
It could have been weakened from some sort of damage, and the weight of the snow this winter caused it to collapse. It has been raining recently, so probably over the next couple weeks, I’ll get some dry weather and I will be able to investigate it the problem.
I got a free cordless phone (Uniden EXL8945), but I was told the battery would probably need to be replaced. I have previously found cheap replacement batteries on eBay. So that was the first place I went to look. Sure enough I found a lot of batteries. Some cheaper than others. I first filtered out all the batteries from Hong Kong. I don’t buy anything on eBay from Hong Kong with the exception of an occasional Jackie Chan movie that I can’t get in the USA. But among all of the replacement batteries, I found a few NiMH batteries. The auction descrptions said that these will work as replacements for the old technology NiCad batteries. They even listed my EXL8945 phone. Cool! NiMH have more storage capacity, and they don’t have the memory problems that the older NiCad batteries have. I didn’t think that NiMH batteries were compatible with the NiCad charger. But the auction description said they will work. So I will give them a shot. The NiMH weren’t any more expensive than the NiCad batteries. So I ordered a couple of them. I will try one of them in the EXL8945. If it works well, I may replace the NiCad in the other cordless phone I have, the EXL8900.