Build a Better Mousetrap

My mother, as I may have already mentioned, feeds the birds on an industrial scale. She even has a specially constructed bunker outside the house for storing bird food, including a huge plastic tub to hold peanuts for the peanut feeder. The two mice who chewed their way into the tub must have thought they’d reached some sort of mouse heaven. Here were peanuts beyond their wildest dreams, and a lovely dark peaceful place in which to enjoy them…

The flaw in this plan, once the peanut level had dropped as the weeks wore on, must only have occurred to them after they had squeezed through their usual hole and into the tub. Whether it was because the level was now too low for them to jump out again, or that they were just too tubby to get back out the way they had come in, they were now stuck and had no option but to wait for rescue, undoubtedly getting heartily sick of peanuts in the process. Fortunately for the mice, my parents are kind hearted people and merely tipped them out into the garden to go and raid someone else’s stores. But if there’s anyone out there who wants an extremely humane mousetrap, I think this design might be a goer…