BOX-TRAP FOR CATCHING MANY ANIMALS AT ONE SETTING

Two nested doors that unlock only when the mouse pushes.

PatentUS 2,315,345

PatentedMarch 30, 1943

InventorHerman Mieth

OfLouisville, Kentucky

Patent drawing of a rectangular wire-mesh box trap with a sloping front wall showing a hinged double door mechanism (inner and outer wing-doors) with baffle plates and latches, plus a top plan view of the internal food container and cross-sections illustrating the doors in locked and open positions. — click to zoom

The mouse approaches food behind a sloping front wall fitted with an inner wing-door and an outer wing-door hinged together. Pushing the outer wing-door inward raises metal posts, which lift latch bars out of slots in fixed plates and free the inner wing-door. Both doors swing inward and the mouse passes into the trap. Gravity returns the doors to their closed position and the latches drop back into their slots, so the doors cannot be opened from the inside.

“I have welded the outside baffle-plates, 4d, 4d, to the outside of the sloping front wall, which stand out at right-angles thereto and set close enough to the wing-door 4b, to prevent a mouse or rat from edging in between the two wing-doors. An animal therefore, entering the box-trap, must enter by pushing the outside wing-door 4b inwardly.”— Herman Mieth, from the specification

And the world did not beat a path to his door.

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