Some poor mouse got caught in a 155-year-old mouse trap on display at a museum in England and did not live to tell the tale.
The BBC reports that the mouse trap was known as a “perpetual mousetrap” that could work forever, and apparently has lived up to its name. Curators believe that the unfortunate mouse was chewing on the label attached to the trap, and then tried to get inside to chew part of the string. It then got trapped inside and was killed in the ensuing process.
Interestingly enough, though, the trap was designed so that it would catch mice alive. The trap is two boxes connected by a see saw mechanism that a mouse would drop down onto after climbing on the top. Once it does, its weight pushes the see saw so that it’s stuck in one of two chambers.
Perhaps this one was killed somehow during the trapping, or it starved to death after being trapped inside. This museum has hundreds of mouse traps on display and around 30,000 objects in the cabinets where the mouse trap was housed.
The museum has yet to decide whether to keep the mouse in the cage as part of the display, or to give it a proper burial.
