Mouse problems
If stories of mouse death or mouse suffering disturbs you don't read the following.I came home this weekend after a quick 24hr trip to NC, to find one dead mouse in the kitchen. I was happy because that little bastard has been difficult to catch. Sadly, he might not be the only one. So I'll still be watching the kitchen entryway, where I have occasionally spotted him or his family members scampering across.
I have a contract with a pest control company. They come out and have bait stations in the rear and front of the house as well as various spots inside. They also have glue traps around and about, and the glue traps so far have been my best bet. The thing with the traps is that they have to be in the right spot and somewhat unnoticeable to the mice, because the mice are smart.
I have seen mice go out of their way, to avoid the glue trap. I have noticed them change course from scampering along the baseboard to expose themselves to open space just to avoid the trap along their path. How do they know to avoid the glue trap? I have no clue. Anyway with steel wool, masking tape and a hidden glue trap I managed to capture this one. I hope the rest ate poison.
Labels: pests
posted by Mari @ 26.11.07
9 Comments:
You should try a cruelty-free mousetrap...
http://www.seabrightlabs.com/
mouse.htm
- dc girl
Sorry but I'm not taking a pro-life stance when it comes to the mice. Besides, the mice I have have zero interest in what I left in the snap traps, so the likihood they'd bother with the capture trap is nil. I had to use stealth just to capture the last one. The glue trap had to blend in so they wouldn't notice it.
I won't know till the next exterminator visit if they are even interested the bait stations.
Thou shalt not kill.
Ugh, Elizabethan English.
I'm not a vegetarian or vegan, and I tend to favor a traditionalist interpretation when it comes to scripture. So though it may be a sufficient statement for those in your usual circle, I find the one sentence statement lacking.
This reminds me of when I was looking for Christian arguments for being vegetarian, at that time found little substance*. The worse was a site that just had a bunch of bible quotes with little interpretation, that when you bothered to read the whole chapter, was taken out of context.
So, please feel free to try again, flex those persuasion muscles. Just a note, I already know that mice dying in my walls stink. Lucky me, I already went through the experience several times and survived and most of my walls are no longer hallow. Yay insulation!
* a better argument for it comes as a part of a regimen of fasting.
Maybe in your next life you will come back as a mouse.
~Maggie~
What's the point, if according to that philosophical strain's tradition I'm just going to wind up dying again, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.... you get the idea.
I'm not going to try to convince you all that conventional pest control is a good thing. However for me, it is what works, under the conditions I have to deal with. I'm thankful I don't have rats. Hopefully the alley cats are taking care that dirty work, and for them I will turn a blind eye to their rodent torture techniques.
Oh, and Momma, the savvy trap avoiding alley cat seems to be alive and well. She is very good at avoiding the spay & neuter roundups.
Kill the mice. Use whatever means you have to. They carry beasties with them.
Seriously people, you HAVE to stop anthropomorphizing vermin. We do NOT live in a Disney cartoon.
When I was ten years old, I woke up early one Sunday morning and saw that my mom had left some pots soaking in dishwater from the night before. I decided to finish washing them for her. (Bullwinkle wasn't on for another hour, so I had some time to kill...) We had a window over the sink that was a bit open and I saw a leaf (or something...cue ominous music) that had blown in, at the bottom of the kinda murky water at the bottom of the basin. We didn't have a disposal on that part of the sink and I didn't want it to clog the drain, so I reached into the dirty dish water to fish it out before releasing the drain...I grabbed the drowned mouse, and instinctively flung it - hard - away from me. With quite the blood-curdling scream to accompany the gesture. Woke up the household, let me tell ya. My mom cleaned up the cabinet where the mouse hit and "smeared" from impact. All fairly traumatic and gross.
Kill 'em any way you have to. Though I don't recommend the drowning method.
It is you or the mice. And the bible does NOT say "kill." It talks of "murder," if you read a correct translation. So if people are going to quote something, at least get it right. (I wanted to add "...for God's sake" but it seemed a little too on point.)
You say vermin, I say an animal. And I like animals. All I can say is, Karma sucks. :)
mayor fenty
Ok, I'm closing this thread. I put the disclaimer on to avoid just this type of unproductive comment conversation.
Since it is my blog I get the final comment on this post.
Sadly, American public discourse is lousy. I acknowledge there are persons out there who are opposed or are uncomfortable with killing rodents. I don't seek to change their minds. I respect them enough not to think a flippant little catch phrase will change what might be an essential belief or outlook. This post was more for like minded folks who see mice running around your kitchen as a problem where mouse death is part of the solution.
So next time, when I write 'don't read X, if X disturbs you' and X disturbs you, don't read it, 'cause it will disturb you.
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