There was a time that I used Pinterest far more than a person should.

Whenever I was hungry?

Go look at recipes and torture myself for some reason. (I may still do this)

Creating and cataloging weird ass pin boards full of stuff that I know, and my friends know, I will never... ever use had become an obsession.

My "Hobbies" board is something out of a crafter's nightmare. Yeah, I totally will have time for ANOTHER old lady hobby. Tatting? Lady, you haven't finished a knitting or cross stitch project in half a year. Get real.

There was a shameful phase I went through where I collected the oh-so-popular "Lifehacks".

"MAKE A CANNON OUT OF A RUBBER BAND AND GUN POWDER?! Well, slap my ass and call me McGyver! pins "

To its credit, lifehacks can sometimes be incredibly useful if you wade through the proverbial shit posts of weird things to do with glue guns.

(No, Kathy, those flip-flops crafted from hot glue sticks are not "so fetch". Your internet privileges have been revoked.)

But anyway, back to the point of the post-

Out of the... thousands of things that I probably pinned I've found ONE. ONE that I actually use.

And that is:

DOOOoo Dooo DOO DODO DOO DOOOoOOO

The soda bottle fly trap.

The first time I used this crazy idea was when I went on a camping trip to the springs with my mother about two years ago.

There was... so much nature. I mean there was nature IN MY NATURE and it was pretty much unbearable. Sweltering heat and being relentlessly bitten by horseflies that had found a literal smorgasbord of people to feed on was just too much. They were actually fighting with the mosquitoes for territory.

It was chaos, I tell you. Mayhem.

And then I remembered the trap and started to work cutting all of our coke bottle in half, inserting the top into them, removing the cap, and filling it with all manner of food scraps. I placed them all over the campsite and by the end of the day, they were full of buzzing little buggers.

Flash forward to today.

I had been hearing the scurrying of little mice feet around. It happens, sometimes nature comes indoors.

Well, they had taken a particular liking to my bag of Grain Waves chips. Seeing as they already chewed a HOLE THROUGH THE BAG and obviously enjoyed them... it seems that I had a perfect bait.

But I was lacking in traps. Preferably, a humane one. Because I am a big fucking softy for all animals. Even if they eat their way into my food and then poop in it.

Once again, like my pee funnel story, a coke bottle saves the day.

I tossed some grain waves in, taped the edges, and then all I had to do was sit back and wait!

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW! Isn't he cute?!

He and his little brother had been circling the trap for hours, chewing on it and trying to figure out how to get to the goods.

While I was getting some work done, I heard some particularly aggressive chewing. I looked over and noticed that one was on top and chewing like crazy attempting to get his little bro out because he had fallen into the chips and was unable to get back out.

To be honest, I felt kinda bad. But hopefully, his sibling will follow suit and go for a dip in the chips so he can join his brother in the great outdoors!

Buuuuut... Anyway.

Today I realized you could use the fly trap to catch mice.

I hope someone else on the chain finds this as useful as I did!

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