This is Gwen Outen with the VOA Special English AgricultureReport.
Today we tell about a way to kill mice without spending a lot ofmoney. It is a simple but effective kind of mousetrap.
An agriculture expert in West Africa once wrote about a methodused by some local farmers. This expert in Mali said his gardenerset four traps with this method — and caught one hundred fifty micein just one night. The report appeared in a newsletter fromEducational Concerns for Hunger Development, or ECHO, anorganization in the United States.
The trap is easy to make. You need a twenty liter container thatis empty and uncovered. You can use a plastic or metal bucket. Dig ahole in the ground and place the container inside. The top should belevel with the surface of the ground.
Fill the container with water to within eight centimeters of thetop. Add small pieces of grain wastes. These should float on thewater. Also put some wastes on the ground near the trap.
During the night, mice will come out to eat the grain wastes.They will fall into the trap.
If you do not have a container, dig a hole about fortycentimeters wide and thirty centimeters deep. Spread hard clay orconcrete on the walls of the hole. This will prevent the water fromleaking away.
If you do not have enough grain to float on the water, you cantry another way. Stretch two pieces of cloth over the top of thecontainer or the hole in the ground. Leave a small opening where thepieces of cloth meet.
Put a little grain on the cloth. When mice walk onto the cloth toeat, they will slide through the opening and drown in the water.
At one time or another, most farmers have problems with mice.This is especially true of grain farmers. Mice eat a lot of grain.They also carry diseases. People can get sick from eating ortouching grain that mice have gotten into.
There are other ways that farmers can deal with these problems.One way is to use grain storage buildings specially designed to keepmice out. Another way is to use poisons to kill the mice. However,both of these methods can be costly.
Farmers must buy the materials to build the grain storagebuildings. Or they must buy the chemical poisons to kill the mice.But these poisons can also be dangerous to other living things –including the farmers who use them.
This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by BobBowen. This is Gwen Outen.