Getting rid of rodents like squirrels, mice, or groundhogs is a lot like digging a hole on the beach. No matter how much you remove, it’ll always fill back in. So, while [Super Valid Designs] could keep trapping and “removing” the mice in his chicken coop, more will always work their way back in. His theory is that removing them live from the chicken coop and placing them some distance away will be more effective, and with this semi-automated ski lift that traps them and carts them off, it might end up being less work too.
The build comes to us in roughly two parts. The first is the gondolas, which not only cart the mice down the hill to freedom but also double as the mousetrap themselves. They are placed in the chicken coop, and a trap door on the ceiling with bait causes the mice to fall inside. 3D printed with acrylic windows, they are a luxurious way for a mouse to travel. At the bottom, another trap door opens onto a pile of brush, releasing the mice. The second part is the lift, built hastily out of wood and other parts lying around. After much hiking up and down the hill, [Super Valid Designs] eventually got it working properly and reliably toting the mice and automatically releasing them at the bottom of the hill.
It’s a bit too early to tell if this method is more effective than more traditional methods of dealing with mice. But it was at least a fun way to deal with the problem while he also works on more effective methods of preventing the mice from getting into his buildings in the first place. There are some simpler catch-and-release mousetraps out there as well if a ski lift is out of the question for whatever reason.
Less work? no. Definately not.
Better at creating googletube click revenue?
Probably.
What’s funny (or maybe not so funny) is these days I can tell which projects are yt videos before I actually see that it’s a video. It’s a certain style of project that’s fundamentally designed to be entertainment. I’m kinda sad that diy culture has become so saturated with it. It’s not a good reference or inspiration for your own projects because the incentives are so wildly different.
Clap clap … i bet you are also the same asshat that does 65 in a 40 to make it to the same stop light 10 seconds sooner and acting like its a god damed accomplishment
Thanks for posting and no shit sherlock
Dear KDawg, that’s a strange reply? Although you might not agree to what Nathan has to say, Nathan does have some valid points here. I find it slightly awkward that you are able to deduct the driving style from a comment which does not necessarily needs to be true, because in some cases, going 65 instead of 40 might result in catching the light before it turns to red.
Regarding YouTube becoming a business model (of which I highly doubt it will be profitable) and leading to people making projects just for the views, keep in mind that although the reasons might not be serious, the impact it can have on a new generation of technicians can be big. Little kids that watch these videos might grow up with the idea that making stuff is fun which is something that should not be discarded. After all the alternative might be that that same audience might otherwise be watching “the best 10…” or “the greatest blalabla” or other people playing minecraft videos, at least now the learn about the world of making stuff. Which is a good thing in some way. Think about it.
Youtube doesn’t target these videos to kids. If you’ve been watching minecraft videos, it recommends endlessly more minecraft videos. It puts people into virtual silos and serves them exactly whatever appears to keep their attention by the personal profiling that Google has made on your behavior on the web.
oh… well in that case: “We’re all doomed! Doomed, I tell ye!”
Whenever I put youtube on autorun, after couple videos it starts repeating clips of (famous talk show host) or podcasts of (political faction members) complaining about (controversial person) – even though I’m not in (a country in the western hemisphere).
(some details redacted to avoid automatic moderation)
You have worms in your brain
I can respect this. Not gonna watch the video, but I can respect the effort and concept. I have found a few ridiculous solutions in my time.
I haven’t tried to monetize them, but I have generally had gainful employment that paid far more than any monetization would be. If I were a half generation younger, that might not be the case, which makes me a bit sad. But I’ll keep doing my thing, be happy a few hundred people watched a video of mine, or a few thousand read an instructable, and move on with life without getting nasty. Life is too short.
(Election season is upon us, and, to be kind, some of my neighbors are in a cognitive dissonance that has them vibrating at x-ray frequencies…. I am now in Halloween mode, which involves preparing for trick or treaters, maintining my parade and hayride equipment, and enjoying one of the few genuinely excellent “pumpkin” beers. Hipp-o-lantern)
Nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a woodchipper
250 feet is not enough distance, but your contraption is ultra-cool and I was very impressed you were weaving the cable like the professinal cable guys do.
Yup. You need you take them 1-2 miles away. All this does is give them a fun carnival ride.
But hey, maybe if they enjoy the ride enough, they’ll just keep riding and leave the chickens alone?
A trebuchet, then
My hens showed no mercy when a mouse entered their space, but they tolerated other birds sharing their food.
If you catch mice, you need to kill them. Transporting them a little ways away and dropping them on a brush pile doesn’t really stop them. They just come back inside. If you drop them far enough away that that can’t find their way back (ie several miles) you’re just helping spread disease.
Precisely. If you have a rodent infestation, even killing the ones you catch may still not solve the problem. So releasing them back few feet away, pointless.
If I was cynical, which I am, I’d say the whole exercise is to clickbait some Youtube likes rather than genuinely attempt to tackle a rodent problem.
not all mice carry disease. the virus are low risk
Even a healthy mouse spreads disease by getting into food stores. That creates avenues for other sickness.
And they pee and poop everywhere which also destroys everything.
I live near to a field/woods so it’s impossible to keep them out of the house. And I hate having to vacuum their poop out of to walls more than I hate killing them ..
Those chickens must be very well fed, very placid, or both.
When mice get in to my chicken coop the chickens sprint to them and peck violently through their skulls. They’re dead in about five seconds flat. After a couple of years there were no more mice.
The brief time I had chickens it was the same .. they even managed to kill a baby fox that way
I love invention, but is there a need here? I have a backyard chicken coop and here’s the thing… Chickens love to catch mice and it’s a fight over who actually gets to eat it.
Oh, this is DEFINITELY not about “need”.
Perhaps a need for whimsy
This is a ‘content creation’ video targeted at makers or similar.
It’s not about making a good thing.
It is purely for the entertainment of someone with some knowledge of making things.
Use a bucket with dry ice on the bottom as trap, and dump it near an owl nest. Or start raising pet snakes.
A deep enough bucket with a ramp outside the bucket suffices as a mouse trap. The mice can get in the bucket, but cannot either jump or climb out.
They can definitely jump out of an empty 5 gal. bucket. You need a few inches of water – or the aforementioned CO2.
Pneumatic tube.
Being downhill, it doesn’t even have to be pneumatic. Just a slippery tube would accomplish the same, with the single trapdoor as the only moving part.
Though like mentioned, rats and mice are probably smart enough that “go to the coop, eat some, take the bus home” becomes their daily commute.
i suspect the other end of this thing will have a cat infestation problem.
Ha ha !!! I had the same thought :)
A cardboard box and a helium-filled balloon. You just let them go into the air, and that’s it.
That might get expensive pretty fast, go for the much cheaper hydrogen. Although, what goes up will come down, I’m not sure what the terminal velocity of a cardboard box will be. In other words, the mice might survive this and will end up a many miles away cause all sorts of different problems over there.
Terminal velocity for a mouse is lower than a velocity that would be terminal. ie a mouse can drop from basically any height and will probably be fine.
NOW that would be an interesting topic to make a research video ….
Fun, but let’s be honest: they just wanted to build a gondola.
1. moving the mice still doesn’t solve the vacuum problem (while killing them does, at least temporarily)
2. a sliding down and pulling it up mechanism would have been way simpler
And yeah, clearly a Youtube video.
Mice can survive at their terminal velocity from any height. I’d go with air cannon launches.
Not as much fun as this engineering project, but still potentially as lucrative on youtube:
Just get cats. Not only, will they catch and kill mice, just having them around will scare off other mice and rats.
You don’t need to invent a better mousetrap, nature has already evolved one.
Yeah, but then you’re infested with a cat. Some of us might almost prefer the mice.
I’ve watched the video after reading the blog and the comments. In a way the comments are right. The project is more complicated than it needs to be, and the video is filmed to please a certain type of audience. But when was that ever a problem? Do projects because you like them, not because they are useful, and publish for your own niche. In this case the slightly goofy engineering videos some people like a lot.
One part I disagree with in the comments is the need for exterminating these animals with all means necessary. The whole premise of the video is that the author doesn’t want to, even if the solution is likely not going to work. While I don’t go as far as never eating meat, but if there are alternatives, and it doesn’t serve a purpose, then I believe we should let animals live their lives.
It’s not about hacking, it’s not about building or making, solving interesting problems or illustrating scientific thinking, or any of that. It’s just about going through the motions to capture attention and show people advertisements. Why would you want to watch some vacuous junk like that?
And for the other point, why would you want other people to be trapped by vapid clickbait?
You’re paying for it – roughly $40-50 per year per average person, by the amount of unnecessary extra cost that Youtube’s ad revenue adds to the economy.
Btw. If you want to cause the least harm and cost to others while watching pointless youtube videos, assuming you must, you should VPN yourself to India or Pakistan.
That’s because Google charges the advertisers, and thereby you, ~95% less for views coming from outside of the target markets of the western advertisers, who pay most of youtube’s revenue.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2025/08/youtube-cpm-rates-in-2025-how-location.html
A catapult would produce even more “content” and probably have fewer moving parts.
Was thinking that, too, simple trebuchet would accomplish the same, but HOA may have different ideas/opinions. Maybe that’s why the expensive luxury quiet ride was created, to avoid the intermittent airborne vermin fallout explanations.
Though, if I’d be cooking up a solution it would include aiming at unoccupied spaces, maybe nearest parking lot’s quadrant normally not frequented by cars. I suspect it is falcons who regularly use paved lots for game pacification whilst being bitten, so there.
mouseapult
I think “ratapult” has more zing, whether or not it’s technically accurate.
In that situazion a zipline with a motor and a second cable, would have bene a loro easier.. but i release my mice at least 5km from home