We found evidence that a little mouse had gotten into our house. Droppings around where we had some chocolate stored. I went to the hardware store to get some mouse traps and they had the kind that are trays filled with gooey sticky glue with a few peanuts scattered on top.
Well this morning we found a mouse in one. The poor thing was totally trapped and covered in this disgusting glue, but still very much alive and trying to free itself.
The kids were horrified, especially because the little guy was very cute. These kids, especially the 5 and 7 year olds, wanted me to take it somewhere and set it free. This is totally unrealistic because even if we could get it out of the glue tray, it would stick to whatever it first touches and it would die and extended death. We will kill the mouse as humanely as possibly.
My question is this: do we tell the kids that we set it free in a field, shielding them from the knowledge that we had to kill this adorable fuzzy little mouse. Or do we tell the cold hard truth about how we had to kill it?
I don’t have any kids or any particular expertise in child development. That said, I’d tell them the truth, which (as I glean from your own words) is this:
Sadly, this mouse was irretrievably glue-bound and could not be saved. You made a mistake in buying glue traps, and next time a mouse problem comes up, you promise to choose:
a trap that kills them quickly (classic snap-trap) so they don’t suffer,
an anticoagulant poison that kills them painlessly so they don’t suffer, or
a trap that catches them alive and ininjured so you can release them near your neighbor’s house.
Funny, because just the other day the topic of baby bunnies in our yard years ago came up in our house, and I commented that I had taken them out back, dug a hole, killed them and buried them. My 3 kids - aged 18-21 - expressed dismay that I had not actually “left them for Mommy Bunny to move to a new home” as I had said. Apparently we had even seen a bunny, which I assured them was the mommy getting her babies.
Man, I can’t keep track of all the lies I told my kids! Yeah, tell them the mouse is all happy somewhere. Or - if you think better - tell them the truth. In my experience you’ve probably got a pretty equal chance of the kids claiming to be traumatized whichever choice you make!
There was a story going around at my middle school that one of the home ec teachers found a mouse stuck by its feet to a sticky trap in her classroom. Supposedly, she couldn’t bring herself to kill the mouse, so she cut out squares of sticky material around each of the mouse’s feet, and released it.
My cats say you should give the mouse a good shampooing to get the glue off of it, and then humanely release it in our house.
These don’t always kill the mice. Sometimes they just injure them, and someone has to kill them. My cousin used a hammer to do this once.
I wouldn’t recommend poison of any sort if you’ve got other pets that might eat a mouse (dogs and cats both might try), or children who can’t be trusted not to put things in their mouths.
Poison, anticoagulant or otherwise, is never a good idea for a house mouse. They will - and I know this from personal experience - die inside your walls, and the stench is unbearable. That area of the house will become uninhabitable until the corpse desiccates enough to stop stinking.
We usually used snap traps (plastic, not those flimsy balsa wood finger-biters) to control the mice that try to move into our house every fall. If they did survive the snap, we submerged them in a bucket of water for a relatively merciful drowning. This year, though, we’re getting one of them newfangled mousetraps - a CAT.
Huh, I got a small rat in the house a few years back, and a glue trap wound up being the most humane option.
Wait … wait … I’ll explain …
We tried the Hav-a-Hart traps or whatever the live traps were called. Little guy simply stole the bait. Every time. We tried everything for about a month, including just running into the kitchen in the middle of the night when we heard him, trying to catch him in a pillowcase. (Yeah, really.)
I’ve had pet rats and remember them fondly, so the poison and spring-trap options were right out - the goal was simply to move the rat from the kitchen to the great outdoors.
Finally it escalated to trying the glue trap, which worked the 1st night. (Finally! Success!) I gently and while wearing gloves pried the rat off the trap with a pencil – he was not stuck very tightly at all, his skin was not right up against the trap, and YMMV at this very critical point – and put him, gluey fur and all, into one of those clear-plastic reptile keepers they sell for a couple bucks at the pet store. They have a perforated plastic top. I put the whole plastic box under gentle warm running water in the sink (yes, I can hear some of you snickering at this point, but eff you, I have a soft spot for rodents) and gave him a rudimentary bath, then carefully drained all the water from the plastic keeper thingy and walked away for ten or fifteen minutes, switching off the lights behind me.
You think cats lick themselves clean all the time? They’re filthy pigs compared to how fastidious the average rat is about his fur. That little guy cleaned himself up the rest of the way in double-time, and I drove him over to a wooded park and set him free. Every time I drive by there I think of that glue-trap rat, even though it’s been close to, what, five years now and there’s no way it’s still alive anyway.
After trying all the kinds of traps, I have settled on the conventional spring traps. The corpse I put out in the bird feeder as food for whatever comes along. Crows love my feeder.
the anticoagulant baits cause them to bleed internally, they then get thirsty and seek water which is often outside. they are often peanut based to attract grain feeding rodents.
snap traps work well. an instantaneous death. you can find the body and dispose of it. you might often hear it trigger and get the mouse with in a few minutes.
We tried the snap kinds but the mouse avoided it. We finally heard snap and thought we’d finally got it, but it was just our dog trying to lick the peanut butter off and she got her tongue caught in the trap.
She didn’t try that again, but it never caught a mouse either.
Tell them the truth: the glue trap hurt the mouse, and killing it quickly was the humane thing to do. FYI, a nice vegetable oil shower will often free a sticky mouse and leave him a bit greasy, but no worse for the wear. Snap traps are widely considered the most humane option, though (not preaching, just saying).
Personally, I used to be all for live-trapping and releasing elsewhere. Then I moved to New Mexico, where mice sometimes carry fun diseases like hantavirus and plague (yes, that plague), so…mice are cute; plague and hantavirus really aren’t. I believe that New Mexico proudly leads the nation in plague deaths (we do have roughly half the cases reported every year; I think the rest tend to be spread throughout the rest of the Four Corners region). So, snap traps and disposal in a sealed plastic bag it is.
It occurs to me that you’ve got a volunteer for Mousekanaut Training.
Ever heard of a potato gun?
Note there may be issues with maintaining structural integrity of said mousekanaut, and the device may cause you to become folded, spindled, mutilated, dead, or otherwise inconvenienced. You prolly shouldn’t do this at all.
This is the way to go. Live trap, clear lid to see when there is a mouse inside. You can pick it up and carry it to a remote location, slide the lid open and let the mouse out. (Don’t worry about having to touch the mouse - he wants nothing to do with you and will make a beeline away from you once freed.) It will easily hold four mice. Most hardware stores carry them.
In case you are curious, the entrance tunnel has a weighted metal “teeter-totter”. The mouse’s weight tips it so he can enter, then in drops back so he can’t exit. Sounds corny, but they work great.
That was my method (sledge hammer) until one mouse popped like a little balloon all over me and my favorite Jets jersey, then I learned to place a napkin over the little critters. :smack:
There is a budding mouse infestation where I work. People kept food in their desks, and we started finding mouse poop in the drawers. For some reason the management isn’t taking it seriously, and there’s jolly talk about all different kinds of DIY mousetraps that we can build. All the while those little guys are procreating in the walls or wherever it is they’re hanging out.
I’m not sure exactly how serious the health issues are, but I find the casual attitude rather baffling–especially since we have customers in the building on a daily basis.
Years ago we had such an infestation - we all kept food at our desks. When I saw a mouse run all the women were like: Oh leave the poor thing alone, it is so cute.
Then they found poop in their drawers and suddenly it was: Kill it, kill the vermin!
