I’m in the midst of digging through “Early English Books Online” (EEBO) to download research items for this pesky wee paper I have to write. I keep getting sidetracked – trapped, if you will – by woodworking things.
Case in point: a fascinating book on, among other things, angling, that shows how to make various and sundrie [sic] traps from wood: “A booke of fishing with hooke & line, and of all other instruments thereunto belonging. Another of sundrie engines and trappes to take polcats, buzards, rattes, mice and all other kindes of vermine & beasts whatsoeuer, most profitable for all warriners, and such as delight in this kinde of sport and pastime,” by Leonard Mascall.
These look downright medieval…but they’re actually early modern – or at least the book is: 1590.
Rude Mechanicals Press Blog 
That one on the left looks like it caught a real nice ice cream cone.
I thought it was a carrot.
I read this just after discovering that the mice have managed to steal the bait out of the electric trap. They seem to be using the cave crickets as shock troops. I need to up my game, so thanks for the tip!
EEBO is such a great resource (and source of distraction) – I’ve spent many a happy day trawling for source material on EEBO. In fact thanks to EEBO, and now residing in a safe corner of my hard drive, there is a folder of the key primary material for my doctoral thesis, just waiting until I have the time to start my PhD (a tentative title: Historiography as metaphor: portrayals of radical evangelism in English Civil War propaganda).
The mouse traps are a much better find however.