When I first visited the Maker Faire grounds, I was puzzled by the fenced off collection of brightly painted pieces of welding. By Saturday afternoon, I realized that that the metal sculptures were all part of a human-scale version of the board game Mouse Trap, where players collect and assemble pieces to form a rodenticide machine Rube Goldberg could be proud of.

Mark Perez, the builder of the life size model, says it took him ten years to build the contraption. A successful run concludes with dropping a 4000 pound safe. The crane alone, which hoists the safe, took more than two years to build by hand. It cost Perez $1.75 per mile to haul everything from San Francisco on a 53-foot semi-truck.

I can't fathom why someone would do all this, but seeing the thing actually work was pretty amazing, if only for its sheer whimsy. Watch it for yourself in the video below (which also includes a one-woman-band that is the most fitting accompaniment I could imagine for this spectacle).