Box-and-Stick Trap

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A deadfall trap is a type of trap used by a Hunter-Trapper. It consists of a heavy rock or log with one side propped up with a stick, with food or other bait underneath, used to trap and crush small animals. A cord is tied to the stick so that the rock or log falls when the animal takes the bait or when the trapper pulls the cord.

A box-and-stick trap is a hollow variant of the deadfall trap used for live trapping, where a cage replaces the crushing weight.

As with the Bear Trap or Mouse Trap, sometimes this works, but sometimes it catches the wrong thing.

Examples of Box-and-Stick Trap include:

Web Comics

• A couple in Cyanide & Happiness:
  • Kris depicts catching a rabbit with a propped-up top hat and a carrot as a rite of passage for magicians in #1274.
  • Inverted in #2696 by Rob. A box-and-stick trap is set over a slice of pie on a plate. "Hey! Free box!" and then he slips on the pie and impales himself on the stick.
  • In #4450 by Rob, a worm serves as bait to catch an "early bird" to cook and eat.

Web Original

• #13 of Cracked.com's Photoplasty 18 Things You Never Noticed in Famous Pictures (Part 2) takes Kevin Carter's Pulitzer-winning photo of a vulture stalking a crouching Sudanese child and adds a ray of hope by having the child bait a vulture into a box-and-stick trap with an ACME brand cage. A kid's gotta eat somehow.
• Easy Money by Glenn Jones (#9 here) - a trap for tooth fairies. Also, Restocking ( #10 here), with a hat instead of a box.

Western Animation

• In Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies:
  • Elmer Fudd has used a box-and-stick trap on occasion to try to catch Bugs Bunny. In A Wild Hare, Elmer ends up catching a skunk instead. In Hare Remover, Bugs sees Elmer's trap for the first time, remembering that Bugs's grandfather had described them before, and plays along by getting trapped.
  • Wile E. Coyote has tried (and failed) to use deadfall traps to catch the Road Runner.
• In the Stop Motion animated SpongeBob SquarePants Christmas Special It's a SpongeBob Christmas!, Patrick sets up this type of trap for Santa Claus baited with a Christmas cookie to make it Christmas every day. He falls for it himself.

Other

• "Ghost Trap" T-shirt — with a cardboard Pac-Man as bait under a Ghostbusters ghost trap.
• Google's Noto Emoji, Apple's emoji set, and Samsung's emoji set render the mousetrap emoji 🪤 (U+1FAA4) as a box-and-stick trap over Cartoon Cheese. WhatsApp, OpenMoji, and Emojipedia render it as a spring-loaded kill trap. JoyPixels and Twitter's Twemoji started with a kill trap before following the phone makers with the (presumably more politically correct) box trap.

Real Life

• Wikipedia describes figure-four and Paiute deadfall traps.
• A dog breeder sells pyramid-shaped box-and-stick rabbit traps.