I had reset the mouse trap in the farm house basement and I thought I had it someplace the stupid squirrel would not find it. But he did. Trap was gone today when I went down there. Searched everywhere and it was only by dumb luck that I found it. There is a drain down there with no cover and the trap was jammed down in the bottom of it. Camera did not fire but I think the little S**t got a leg caught in the trap, chewed it up good, then went down the drain and lost the trap at the elbow. Now I have to find out where that drain goes. I assume to the sump, but in a 160 year old house?

if it s a small drain i would put a cement block over it so it covers the drain and that should take care of it

Poor old Yosemite Sam never had a chance.

Need to put a good "mouser" cat in the basement.

Exactly!

I got the trail cam on the drain tonight. We will see if anything come out of it. I tell you what, it took some kind of nerve to reach in and pull that trap out. I half expected the little buzz saw to come out with it and bite me.

The PO had two cats they let down there. They moved out and left me with the residue. I had to use a hose end sprayer with bleach to get the stank out it. So I am a little bit prejudiced about kitties in the basement. May have to happen though!

After my parents neighbors moved out and the barn and houses were demolished we inherited the rats. Some got in the basement and a few were very hard to catch. Final solution was a leghold trap(forget what number we used) covered with cracked corn.

Dave H - Want to catch the mouse, and NOT have the squirrel take the bait? Forget the snap-trap. Get yourself a GLASS soda-pop bottle, the old "no deposit-no return" type or the old Coca Cola style with the narrow neck. Crumble up a COOKIE and sluice it through the neck into the bottle. Wire the bottle in a horizontal position where the squirrel can't knock it to the floor (thereby breaking it) and yet it is someplace where the mouse will find it. Mice are gluttonous little buggers and are also very selfish (if they can help it, they won't leave anything behind for another mouse to get it) . The mouse will smell the Cookie, squeeze himself through the neck of the bottle, stuff his belly full and if there is any left he'll stuff his pouches full. Now he is too fat to get out of the bottle, he'll empty his pouches but he's still too fat to squeeze through the neck of the bottle. LOL - Bottled Mouse !

I know for a fact that THIS WORKS! - Back in the late 1970's I worked the Graveyard Shift at a Mining Heap Leach site in Goldfield, Nevada, and the mice would raid our lunch boxes, the little buggers would actually chew through our plastic lunch boxes to get at the contents. I got a couple dozen throwaway "no deposit-no return" soda-pop bottles, and the bottle caps from the soda machines around town, and a cheap package of cookies. I prepared the bottles as described above, and took them in to work with me. I placed the bottles inside the buildings and at strategic locations outside. In the morning before I got off Shift, I collected all the bottles, and there was a mouse in every bottle. Later, after punching a nail hole in the bottle-caps and pressing the caps back on the bottles, I made some signs saying: "Bottled Mouse" - $1.00 - "Think Ship-in-a-Bottle" , got a card table & a folding chair, and my bottled mice and set up shop on a street corner along the State Highway which ran through the middle of Town. I set my signs up where they could be seen by traffic coming from both directions, and set up my table with the bottles on it. - You wouldn't believe how many people stopped to see what I was selling, and most of them bought a bottle, and walked away scratching their heads trying to figure out how I stuffed a LIVE MOUSE into a bottle. -- (I DIDN'T - the mouse went in VOLUNTARILY!) but I'd joke with them that I did it the same way as you build a Ship-in-a-Bottle, you dismantle it and put it into the bottle a piece at a time and then reassemble it. LOL!

Doc

I think i have a couple of those bottles. I will see can i find em and give her a try!

Am I the only one who thought Bugs Bunny started most of the trouble. Most generally I rooted for Yosemite Sam.