A more modern pooter

Some time ago, I created this blog entry on pooters, and later, I also did a Youtube clip for the National Library of Australia. That showed in careful detail, how to make a pooter.

Unfortunately, both of those are about the design that you can see on the right,  which uses a 35 mm film canister, and those canisters are now hard to get.

Some little while back, I sat down and considered the pooter (also called an inhalator). It has a tube that insects and other small animals are drawn up in, a chamber they are held in, and another tube, with a filter, which the user sucks in on.

Don't forget the filter!

And so, the design above was born.

Making it is easy: here on the right is what you need. The only thing missing is the drill, because the bottle lid was already drilled when I took this shot.  It is essential that you do the drilling on a piece of scrap board, not on the best dining table, and adult supervision is important.

By the way, you can click on most of these pics to embiggen them.


Now here is a set of shots that show the process of assembly:


The thing that is missing here is how I tape a small square of cloth over the end of the sucking tube (the longer one), holding it in place with wrapped-around sticky tape.


Just one thing: the plastic tubing: you can buy it from an aquarium shop, but I got my last lot from Bunnings (if you are outside Oz, that's a large hardware chain.) Oh, and you need a drill that makes a hole that is a tight fit.


All you have to do after that is put the cap on, and start catching animals.

Now here, just to finish up, are a couple of shots that I took after a praying mantis laid eggs near my screen door. The eggs hatched, and I scooped them up for these photos before dispersing them. You need to do that, because otherwise, they will eat each other!  You will notice that in the first shot, while it was recent, I used the older-style pooter.  I have lots of them, you see, because I have been making them since about 1992.