So I guess my last post was a little obtuse. Here’s the clarity. Some time over the past couple of weeks a family of mice had taken up residence in our kitchen. Most likely somewhere underneath our lower cabinets as that’s where we’d occasionally catch sight of a disappearing tail. It wasn’t so bad at first. We’d stumble across a nibbled-on potato or a few out-of-way droppings. But lately they seemed to be becoming bolder and were obviously were having little mouse parties with all the neighborhood mice on our counter tops and in our pantry. They were gnawing into bags of food and started to show themselves during daylight.
The last straw broke when Mary walked into the kitchen one afternoon and found a mouse looking up at her on top of the stove. He scampered off into the stove and probably later had a good laugh with his buddies. Mary promptly purchased enough mousetraps to qualify as a genocide and the next morning we found three of those buggers snapped off. Mary seemed almost giddy as she unloaded the corpses into a plastic grocery bag, but I felt bad for the little guys and sat up listening for the snaps on night two. *Snap* Twice, I raced into the kitchen to find a struggling mouse. And twice I scooped up the whole trap and let the mouse go outside. They each hopped off a bit off kilter, but hopefully that beat slowly suffocating to death. Or maybe now they’ll just suffer longer, dying slowly of internal injuries.
So you see, the morbidity of the story is actually expressing a respect for the mouse livelihood. Fight on rodents, fight on!
If you want to be humane about it, try setting out some Sherman traps instead. That’s what we use at our office when we start seeing mouse signs. Then for fun you can set then up in your yard and see what kind of wildlife you have around.
Poison would work best. Then you wouldn’t have to see them suffer, as they’d crawl off to die alone somewhere (but unfortunately usually within smelling distance of the kitchen).
I’m brought back to the days at 711 Ethel prior to Johnny Horsecakes.
Mice munching on food in our cabinets and my failed attempts to smote them with a large kitchen knife.
Felton was lucky he never ran into good ole’ Johnny (RIP). That cat would catch a mouse, break it’s back, and then use it as a play toy for what must have seemed like an eternity before tearing it to pieces in the same way your dogs rip apart your old shoes. And Andy Weaver would be there to document the whole episode with a cheap digital camera.
We feed our dogs $40 bags of dog food, I don’t think we’re going to risk poisoning them now. Other than that though, it’s true suffering doesn’t exist if you don’t see it.
Yeah Malone, that blind stabbing with a kitchen knife might be the most ineffective method I’ve ever seen in a mouse eradication attempt. On the plus side though it didn’t cost any money.