I recently wrote a post on How to Catch a Live Rat based on my friend Stephanie’s problem with having a rat in her house.  Stephanie took my advice and her and her husband built the 5 gallon bucket trap to specifications and it worked…until we found out that a rat can jump up to 3 feet high, even if they are in water.  As long as they can get their front paws out of the water they can jump out of the bucket.

The lesson learned here is that in order to catch a live rat, you’ll need to get a bigger bucket.  But, if you want to keep the original design, you can just add about 2.5 gallons of water, or half way to the top.  Now, this is going to cause the rat to drown, but you won’t have a rat problem anymore.  If you’re catching mice, then you won’t have this problem as they can’t jump as high.

There you go!  Happy rat or mouse hunting!