Garden Notes

Outdoor mouse trap with convenient "highway of doom" baited with sunflower seeds

I have been using the Easy Outdoor Mouse Trap for a couple of years now with great success. I catch a lot of rodents, but since some of them have multiple litters each year, it is difficult to get ahead of the curve.

The bucket I use is about one foot tall, which is a good size. When my bucket is too small, the darn squirrels just scoop the sunflower seeds and eat them. When the bucket is really big, it takes a lot of sunflower seeds to cover up the water and since the seeds sink to the bottom in 2-3 days, you waste a lot of seed.

This year I tried “baiting” my water trap with sunflower seeds. Basically I lean a small piece of wood against a bucket filled about 2/3 full of water with sunflower seeds floating on top to hide the water. This makeshift ramp has a couple of screws on one end to help attach it more securely to the bucket. Then I sprinkle some seeds on the ground and place a few on the convenient rodent “highway to doom”. The rodents find the sunflower bait, run up the wooden ramp and dive into the water trap.

The sunflower bait has been a major improvement to the whole process and a lot more rodents have found their way into my trap. While I know it seems mean to drown mice and meadow voles, I think it is actually a more humane way to combat a large rodent population than by using poison.

Growing Cucumbers in Compost