My grandfather gave me a broken mousetrap for christmas and it's one of the best presents I've ever received
The underside, and the text of the really excellent letter he sent with it:
December 2023Dear Edda:
The tool attached is an innovative design for a mouse trap. Found at your Great Grandparents home in Loomis one summer when we were visiting and when your mother was still very young. I was searching for some old tools myself to bring back home and use or just to admire and remember those who had used them in the past. So we have that interest in common, tool collecting.
This humble wooden and wired thing works. (Note the alliteration.) Although I have not used it frequently, I admire its function.
On a later trip to Loomis while going back to North Carolina we stopped to camp one night in a beautiful park in Nevada high up in the mountains. I think it was in a quaking aspen grove. This time we were not taking home tools but several crates of plums and other fruit. On the next day we were eating the plums while driving along in our station wagon (I think it was a 1968 Chevy) and noticed that some looked bird pecked. I could not believe your Great Grandfather Al Larsen would have packed blemished fruit for us and concluded we must have picked up a critter while pitching camp.
When we finally arrived in Charlotte, NC even more fruit had been "bird pecked" and we still had a critter hidden someplace under the seats of the car. Luckily we had an innovative solution to the problem. I found it, baited it with some fine morsels of California plum and within minutes (almost) the problem was solved. I don't know if it will work with lesser plum bait sold in a market in Cleveland, but you may have occasion to try it.
Unfortunately one side of the trap is damaged and the paperclip repair I made some time past does not work. But there are three operating springs you can load.
There are all sorts of tools in the world: mechanical, mental, amusing and maybe even magical. Whatever tools you accumulate, old or new, I trust you will use them wisely with wonderful results. Lots of love and Merry Christmas,
Grandpa