The term mousetrap generally denotes a device for catching rodents. The term has been used in various other contexts such as in games and website techniques.

Device

A baited and primed mousetrap.

A mousetrap is a device used for trapping small rodents, especially mice. It was invented by Hiram Maxim (who also invented the Maxim Gun). The device is classically portrayed as a simple device, having a heavily springloaded bar and a trip to release it. Typically, cheese is placed on the trip as bait, which does not work as most mice don't like it; they will however take other foods such as bread or meat. Peanut butter is also quite effective. The spring-loaded bar rapidly swings down upon something touching the trip, usually a mouse. The design is such that the mouse's neck or spinal cord will be broken, or its ribs crushed, by the force of the bar.

This is not the only type of "mousetrap", however. There are many traps which catch the mouse alive whereupon it can be released into the wild.

Strychnine-soaked grain pellets were a common substitute for mousetraps for some time; however, they are rarely used due to the toxicity of the chemical.

The device is used proverbially in the statement "If you build a better mousetrap, someone will build a better mouse," which means that no matter how good one is at stopping events such as robberies, cracking or other such conduct (or catching those who engage in it), someone is bound to find a way around it.

Mousetraps are also common in physical hurt comedy, and in this case are used when people sit on them or get fingers caught in them.

Patents

• US661068 -- Mousetrap
• US883611 -- Rat bell

Games

In American football, the mousetrap is a play in which a defensive opponent is able to go over the scrimmage line into the backfield. The player is then blocked off as the offensive team's runner goes through the place the lineman vacated.

Board

Mouse Trap is a board game in which players build a complicated mousetrap to beat their opponents.

Video

Mouse Trap is a video game in which a mouse avoids cats in a maze.

Internet technique

Mousetrapping is also a technique used by some websites (usually pornographic websites) to keep visitors from leaving their website, either by launching an endless series of pop-up ads or by re-launching their website in a window that cannot be closed (sometimes this window runs like a stand-alone application, and the taskbar and the browser's menu become inaccessible). Many websites that do this also employ browser hijackers to reset the user's default homepage.

Theater

The Mouse-trap is the fictional "play within a play" in William Shakespeare's Hamlet. "Hamlet: The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

The Mousetrap is the title of a play by Agatha Christie, which has run continuously in London's West End for decades.