Simple, Humane PVC Mousetrap

We’ve covered the clever and easy-to-make humane mouse traps of Chris Notap before. Chris loves engineering these traps. Former Make: editor-in-chief and Boing Boing founder, Mark Frauenfelder has dubbed Chris a “recreational trapper.”

For the trap featured in this video, Chris used little more than some pieces of PVC piping, misc hardware, paper clips, a ball point pen, and a chunk of wood. In the video’s description, he gives a pretty good summary of the trap and how it works.

Another of my best and easiest homemade humane mouse traps! The 5th in a series! Easy to build, easy to bait, easy to release, and best of all, it’s humane and there are no springs or levers to wind up or load! The mouse or vole cannot escape or chew his way out of this mouse trap. Mice are not harmed in any way during capture. As a matter of fact, the mouse or vole remains very calm since there is no snapping latches to scare it! Mice can be released calmly and easily without fear of getting bitten even by the most “fearful of mice” person!! Simple operation makes this DIY homemade vole mouse trap fun to build and adjust for easy trapping, and best of all, easy release. Just use a dab of peanut butter to bait the trap. It’s the best do-it-yourself homemade humane live release trap you’ll find! A few common items is all you’ll need. I’ll be building a humane squirrel trap next so you can capture and release squirrels easily, too, so subscribe and don’t miss my upcoming “DIY humane squirrel trap… I also have a “DIY humane rat trap” coming soon!

Some people in the comments have pointed out that the mouse could likely chew its way out if the PVC, but I suspect that’d take a long time and you would want to release the rodent ASAP anyway.