{"id":7483,"date":"2011-05-01T14:21:26","date_gmt":"2011-05-01T19:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/?p=7483"},"modified":"2012-02-03T02:02:07","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T07:02:07","slug":"the-empty-trashcan-rat-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/2011\/05\/01\/7483\/","title":{"rendered":"The Empty Trashcan Rat Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/nikolasschiller.com\/images\/rat_trap1_4-7-11.jpg\" title=\"Photograph of a gnawed hole in my trashcan\" alt=\"Photograph of a gnawed hole in my trashcan\"\/><\/div>\n<p>One night I was in my backyard and I heard the sound of a rat stuck inside one of the empty trashcans.  Every few moments the poor rat would try to jump out of the trashcan, but it couldn&#8217;t grasp the small hole at the top of the trashcan, and would land back at the bottom of the trashcan.  By morning it would die of exhaustion and\/or starvation.<\/p>\n<p>For a moment I thought this was the ultimate rat trap, but a week later I was saddened to see a different rat jump out of the can after some trash had been placed inside of it.  <em>The trap only worked if the trashcan was empty<\/em>.  To my dismay, a few nights later I a saw an even larger rat jump out of the <em>empty<\/em> trashcan and I realized that some type of <i>cage<\/i> would be needed to hold the rat within the trap.  <\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/nikolasschiller.com\/images\/rat_trap2_4_7_11.jpg\" title=\"Photograph of a gnawed hole in my trashcan\" alt=\"Photograph of a gnawed hole in my trashcan with the chicken wire cage\"\/><\/div>\n<p>Using some extra chicken wire and a little bit of string, I&#8217;ve caught 3 rats using this trap.  The trick is to keep the trash can empty of waste (decoy!) and leave the caging on top of the trashcan near the hole.  If I hear a rat inside the bin, I quickly put the cage on and tie it down.  Oh, rats! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One night I was in my backyard and I heard the sound of a rat stuck inside one of the empty trashcans. Every few moments the poor rat would try to jump out of the trashcan, but it couldn&#8217;t grasp the small hole at the top of the trashcan, and would land back at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[496,431],"tags":[5298,5299,5327,4016,1661,5297,1660,5325,5328,5296,5294,5295,5326,3438],"class_list":["post-7483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-photography","tag-animal","tag-chicken-wire","tag-critters","tag-food","tag-rat","tag-rat-trap","tag-rats","tag-rodent","tag-starvation","tag-trap","tag-trash","tag-trashcan","tag-vermin","tag-waste"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":625,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7483"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7587,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7483\/revisions\/7587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nikolasschiller.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}