How to Make a Box Mousetrap

People don't want mice in their home. Mice nibble your food, ruin upholstered furniture and leave unsanitary spoor wherever they've been. But, mice aren't being malicious. They're simply going where the food is. With this in mind, try skipping poison and traditional snap mousetraps and creating a humane box trap instead. Box traps allow you to free the mouse in an area away from your home, keeping your house pest-free and leaving the mouse to its business.

Plastic box with lid
Permanent marker
Utility knife
Building blocks
Playing cards
Food (cheese, peanut butter, crackers, etc.)

Instructions

- 1
  Remove the lid from your plastic box and draw a 4-inch circle in the center of the lid. Cut out the circle with a utility knife, working slowly to avoid injury. A box 10 inches or deeper should be large enough to trap 99% of mice.
- 2
  Snap the lid back into place and set the box along the baseboards of your kitchen floor, or on the floor of the room where the mouse visits. If the box is on the floor, rather than the counter or a table, the mouse will go to it first because it's the easiest source of food.
- 3
  Place blocks in a staircase formation at one side of the box. This makes it easy for the mouse to get up onto the box, especially if the box is deep.
- 4
  Place up to four playing cards around the edges of the hole, overlapping the corners in the center of the hole. The cards should be stable enough that they don't fall into the box on their own, but flimsy enough that they collapse with a sharp tap of your finger.
- 5
  Place some food, such as peanut butter, cheese or cereal, in the center of the card trap. When the mouse crawls on top of the box, the food will lure it to the center of the cards, causing the cards to collapse into the box and taking the mouse with them.

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