Pest control trick I mean 'hack'

[urbpan]

If you find your mousetraps in the morning stripped of the bait with no mouse caught, try hot gluing solid bait. Normally I use peanut butter, but invertebrates such as insects and slugs can clean off the bait pedal without setting the trap off. I read a paper suggesting that you hot glue an almond to the bait pedal--this has had some success, but ants and some other creatures can eat the almond. In this case there were mice eating duck pellets, so I hot glued a parrot pellet (basically the same ingredients, just bigger) to the traps. So far we've caught 3 mice this way.

Comments

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this explanation. Hot glue isn't a popular item in bodegas, but if anyone tells me the peanut butter isn't working, I will tell them to Gorilla-glue peanuts. They should be treating with liquid chemicals for the indoor insects, so I'm not worried about them.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

In-shell peanuts might work well, or dog kibble. Shelled peanuts might be too slick to stick to the glue.

[frith]

Hagen has a parrot feed which looks like small beads of many colours. Mice have been raiding the cockatoo's dish so I suspect it would make a good bait. I'm still waiting for a trap. Otherwise I don't bait the traps, I just place them at gaps and along walls where mice frequent. I catch a lot of mice. Rats are harder. When we had rats in the zebra/oryx barn (before rhinos moved in) I had to build barriers with something, hay/boxes/wood-shaving bags, and place traps in the gaps to catch the rats as they traveled through.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of building barriers to force the rats to use a certain path, then trapping the path. No need for bait.

[frith]

There is also a variation on the paddle in "Catchmaster" traps where the paddle doubles as a sticky trap. Sprinkle the sticky surface with parrot food and save yourself the whole hot glue dance.

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

that's a good idea :)