A few weeks ago, a mouse was spotted in my house. I found him cute and thought he might make a nice pet. Rosa, on the other hand, felt entirely different about it however. Whereas I was deciding on cute mouse names she decided his name was "dead." My side took a decided loss after a dreadful experience of it keeping her standing on the couch for an extended period of time. Of course she decided it MUST go. By the time I had returned to the house, mouse traps were in place.
We had fought about this earlier. I was very much opposed to the conventional breaking the neck types of traps. I had heard of a nice trap that they walked into, and it closed behind them and you never even saw them. But Rosa decided that it would be the glue trap that was purchased. To this day I do not understand for the life of me why A: they would make this trap and B: why anyone would buy it. The trap is designed to attract the mouse to it with food, and if the mouse steps on the trap instead of eating the peanut butter from the side which is quite possible, then it becomes stuck to the trap. The food contains no poison as I understood it, but perhaps it does. So OK, you've trapped it, the thing is stuck.... Now what? You have to pick it up with the thing still alive? and do what with it? Pull it off and set it free? Or let it just sit there stuck for the rest of it's life? Rosa however said she had it all figured out so I washed my hands of it and secretly hoped that the mouse was of the Einstein variety.
And for a few days it seemed like he would be. 3 days turned up no evidence of the little guy. One morning however I found a trap to be minus the food and minus the mouse. I triumphantly relayed this to Rosa who found it rather disturbing...but what can I say? It made my day.
The next morning I was taking a shower when I hear Rosa yelling at me. Shutting off the water I was able to comprehend that poor "mr. dead" had been glued. For the next five minutes my once peaceful shower was disturbed by my screaming housemate and a screaming mouse and the screaming of the dorm residents. As I heard later she had gotten one of the boys to come and pick it up, put it in a plastic bag, and throw it in the dumpster. What a way to die. Poor mr dead had to spend his last hours, stuck to a piece of plastic, suffocating inside a bag, amidst the dorm trash. I hope he had lived a long and prosperous life, and that those that still remain have learned from his martyrdom.
5 comments:
I agree with you, that was very inhumane! My parents have used the kind of trap that you were wanting to use. The mouse just walks inside and the trap closes and you don't have to see it (or touch it), well except for maybe the tail...
oh, and as a fellow frequent purchaser of enchilada sauce, both the sauce and refried beans are always in the "Old el Paso" section of the grocery store. It is easily found by looking for bright yellow packaging, usually near the end of the aisle. ;-)
ryan used to catch mice at mt. vernon with glue traps, then he'd have to slam them down on the ground to kill the mice. he's an expert and i'm sure you'll be hearing from him after he reads your blog post.
my stomach hurts from laughing so hard... you and Rosa make quite a pair =P
Yeah, I caught 10 mice last year at MVA. I think 3 or 4 were in the glue traps and still very much alive. We just took them out in the snow and turned the trap upside down and then used a large steel pole to finish it off. When the mice are all in your office, storage room, food room, and your workplace constantly it is a bad situation.
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