It's a Rat, not the End of the World!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, I had an experience over the weekend that I’m still coming to terms with, and this being StraightDope, and the “Stuff I Must Share” board, I thought I would share it and see if I can find a way to deal.

You see, I’m not normally a very emotional person. I rarely feel giddily happy, and while I admit to occasional bouts of anger or depression, they rarely last for very long. My anger usually dissapates in a matter of minutes, certainly not more than an hour. So I don’t understand why, nearly a full day after this event I’m still having issues.

We have a rodent problem in our house. Originally we put out poison to take care of the problem, but after the dog got into the poison, we no longer felt comfortable with that. After much discussion, we eventually brought an exterminator into the picture. He ut out many traps and sealed up entryways into the house that he thought the rats were using. So far, no problems.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, he pulled out the corpses of five rats, caught in various areas of the house. Each time he put new traps out where he was successful in catching the rats. While I am saddened by the loss of life (I find as I grow in my spiritual understanding I’m finding life of many forms to be sacred), I don’t feel too bad since they are in my house destroying who knows what.

Yesterday evening, I went out to the garage to start doing some laundry. There’s a trap near the laundry machines, but I didn’t glance over there until after I started loading the washer. That’s when I saw the very small rodent. I don’t know if it was a mouse or a very small rat, but it was definitely mouse-sized. At first I thought, “I’m sad that it’s dead, but I’m glad it won’t be harming my property any longer.”

Then it moved.

It wasn’t a strenuous motion. The glue trap it was stuck to had it pretty well caught, and I’m guessing from the slowness of the motion and just from how it looked that it was near the end of it’s struggle. Well, it sounds all rational now, but it wasn’t then. I wasn’t very rational, you see.

I just lost it.

I had to leave the garage; I had to get away from the suffering. I went back in the house and was shaking. As I tried to tell thomasm about what I saw, I lost it even worse and had to sit down before I collapsed. I actually started crying, which is something that hasn’t happened since thomasm and I had a significant relationship crisis several years back. And I couldn’t stop for about a half hour, and even after that, for several hours, I would just randomly start tearing up again.

(Thankfully, thomasm had the nerves of steel needed to dispose of the poor thing. I don’t know what he did, and frankly really don’t want to know. All I asked was if it was still suffering, and thomasm told me he thought it was no longer.)

Okay, I’m getting all freaked out over a RAT for cryin’ out loud! I didn’t lose it when the Vet thought my dog might have cancer. I didn’t lose it when my sweetie was in the hospital (well I did but not as bad). I haven’t lost it when I’ve had every reason to. So why am I blubbering over a freakin’ RAT (or mouse; as I implied, I didn’t take the time to make the distinction).

Maybe I’ve been overstressed. I’ve had a lot of things on my plate recently and had some conflict with people I’m working with on some large projects (outside of work). Maybe work has been getting to me. I seem to feel I’ve had larger burdens in the past and was able to cope. Why is this time different?

Well, I was hoping that writing about the experience would help to make me feel better. In some ways it has, but I’m still puzzling over the "why"s. Of course now you all think I’m some kind of big time wuss or something, or maybe validating some stereotype or other, but I really don’t care much what others think, I’m just trying to understand myself.

Thanks for spending a few minutes reading my sob story.

JOhn.

2

Well, ya are a wuss, but that’s not a bad thing. :slight_smile:

I’d chalk it up to stress, myself, but only you can answer that in time.

And if I’d found the little fucker? I’d have screamed like the 14-year-old girl I am. To quote what I said when I made the pleasure of Eduardo the Scorpion’s acquaintance, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

Esprix

3

FWIW, I had tears in my eyes just reading about the rat.

I cannot stand to see any animal in pain. I help moths and flies find their way out the door. I was teased at work for rescuing a mouse and taking it outside to a field behind the school. I hate bugs and spiders, but I will not kill one.

I don’t have a problem EATING an animal that’s already dead, however. :slight_smile:
I just don’t wanna SEE it suffering.

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i believe that it was because you saw the struggle. you empathised with the wee rodent. i’m sure at one point or another you felt just as trapped as the little thing.

i think that glue traps should be banned. they are horribly cruel. my mum used one once, i was very close to attaching it to her. i had told her not to use it, but she did.

one night while she was away i heard a scream. a wee little mouse was stuck… about a foot from my pet chinchilla (he was in his enclosure). the chinchilla and i were very upset. i apologised profusly to the wee mouse as i gathered up the trap, ran to the back door, gently as i could, i peeled the trapped one from the trap and released. i don’t think the little feet touched the ground for about 5 houses.

later we instituted the “me rodent” “you insect” rule. gotta go with your strengths.

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I think glue traps are the cruelest form of torture for the poor rodents. I can’t believe they’re legal. Please consider catch & release live traps in the future. The little guys really like sunflower seeds (bird seed kind, not salted).

jkusters, I’m pretty sure you saw a mouse. If you have a rat problem, that would be rather weird. Crying over a rodent? I understand it. I had to ask my husband to put one of my mice out of his misery after he came down with an upper respiratory infection that antibiotics couldn’t cure. I cried over the obvious pain he was in, though I was better once his suffering was over. See, some of us keep the little guys as pets. If you want to see people crying over the loss of a rat or mouse, go to the rat & mouse boards on Petsmart. Some of those people have thirty or more pet rodents.

6

Thats just silly, losing your mind over a rat.
When i was younger, i would stand at the edge of a corn field as the corn was being cropped. As the Rats (or mice) came out, i did my very best to cut off their heads with a shovel that i had sharpend to a razor edge.

Occasionaly i would use a pitchfork…requires better aim, but often the rat is left there to struggle a little before it dies.

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I hope to god you’re not serious, Justin. If you are, a hearty FUCK YOU. Causing pain, suffering and death for fun is just sick. I feel ill just having read that.

Anyway, crying over another living being in pain is quite understandable. I have had a few pet rats in my time and I always cried when they died. I don’t really understand why you would think it was strange or unacceptable to feel empathy for pain…

And please consider using the live traps and releasing the little fellas… glue traps are horribly cruel, and snap traps aren’t that much better.

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I know exactly where you are coming from, jkusters.
Not too long ago, The Most Confusing Girl in the World[sup]TM[/sup] found a snake. She took it to the pet store, and they told her that she could let it go, and it would die (since it is too cold for a snake who is not already hibernating to live), or she could keep it in captivity for the rest of its life. “Fine, let the snake live” says I. So now every so often, I have to go to the pet store and buy a little pinky to feed it. It saddens me to see a baby mouse die like that, but at the same time, I know that it is natural.
Life is life, we are all so similar that to me, the life of a rat and the life of a human are easily equal.
This is totally random and pointless, but I thought I’d share.

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I think your feelings were completely appropriate and normal.

I’m a molecular biologist, and I work with mice. I may have to kill anywhere between 0-6 mice a day. It doesn’t bother me, I consider it a fact of life, and I deeply believe that it is better to use experimental animals than experiment on people. They are killed cleanly, and have reasonably happy lives until death. Except for one, which moved when I was trying to kill it, and I broke its ribcage instead of its neck. It was horrible. I put it out of its misery immediately, of course. And then I went and sat down and shook for about 15 minutes. I let the rest of the mice I had scheduled for that day live - I couldn’t face trying (or failing) again.

As to why this affected you more than other difficult life events, do you mind if I hazard a guess? If your pet or your loved one is sick, there are things you can (and should) do about it, and action makes bad situations easier. But more than that, you are not at fault. With the rat (mouse?), knowing that your actions were the cause of the suffering was probably a large part of why it freaked you out so much.

I’m sorry you had to see that. It is a difficult decision to kill animals, even for me who does it daily. Remember that there are good reasons to do so (and defending your turf is a perfectly good reason) and stand by your decision, whatever it is. A visceral reaction of sorrow and sympathy is sometimes meaningful, but sometimes the intellect has to take over.

Hope that helps (or makes any sense at all).

mischievous

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i have nothing aginst pet rats. (i have owned over 32 hamsters at one time)
But…i will guess that most of yall live in a city/suburb?
Probably never been hunting, probably never will, and would i be venturing too far if i said you refuse to think where the meat in your grocery store came from?

I live in THE WOODS…thats right, my town has a total population of less than 500…and the nearest city of any size whatsoever is 45 miniutes away. Here, we dont have “mice” we have RATS. Incase youve never seen a rat, they honestly do get bigger than house cats. When the farmers start harvesting, they will leave the fields, and go to the nearest source of food (possibly my house) I have had to kill rats with everything from shovels to pistols. It aint fun, but it needs to be done. AND I WILL BE DAMNED AND GO TO HELL BEFORE I WILL CALL AN EXTERMINATOR TO DO SOMTHING I CAN ACCOMPLISH FOR $2.00 WORTH OF BULLETS.

I hunt. I eat what i kill (with the exception of rats). I will continue to do this for as long as possible. It is not my proplem if killing a rodent makes you reconsider the meaning of life. To me they are, and always will be, pests, and if they choose to come on my property when they are unwanted, they will be “exterminated”.

A rat/mouse released into the yard will only return…so much for fixing that problem. Im sure yall never feel sorry for an offending bug before you crush it? why should i do the same for a rat?

I think ive said enough?

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jkusters, I don’t think it’s silly at all. I am a gardener and rabbits love eating my stuff, especially my bulbs (crocus & tulips) and my pride and joy - my $$ hosta. I am constantly trying to outwit the bunnies by making my garden unedible, not wih chemicals, but with twirly whirly things, bloodmeal sprinkled about, fencing, etc. In the Spring my most uttered phrase is: Damn rabbits! Last summer a baby rabbit was attacked by crows and died under one of my hosta - and I cried for the longest time. I felt so sad at the loss of life, even though rabbits are my sworn enemy.

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Cutting the head off a rat or mouse with a sharp shovel or a well placed .22 round gives them a quick and relatively painless death. Leaving a mouse/rat to starve in a glue trap is horrible and lets their suffering endure. Live trapping them is idiotic because they will just come back
and multiply if they have found your domicile to be a food source.

jkusters,
If you feel emotional. Then feel emotional. Everyone has a right to their feelings, but don’t get down on anyone for having a more practical bent. (I’m not saying you did, but other posters were pretty rude to Justin for merely being practical and realistic.)

I’m glad your SO was able to take care of it. I would hate the mental picture of a house full of wriggling slowly expiring flea-filled disease-ridden rodents.

13

This was the phrase that bothered me. I grew up in a small town surrounded by small towns. The country, as most people would call it. Almost everyone around eagerly awaited the start of deer season. People shot dogs that were dropped off instead of taking them to the vet for euthanasia. My dad had to kill the four pet rabbits we had because they were sick (rabies, I think) with a .22 pistol. If Justin had to kill rats with a shovel or whatever, I don’t have a problem with it. But if he’s implying by this statement that he did it with a pitchfork to let them struggle, then that’s just plain wrong.

Enuma Elish, it’s true that if you live trap a rodent and release it out in your back yard–ten feet from your house–you might as well just open the cabinets for him and save him the hassle of wiggling back in, but it’s not idiotic to make the choice to preserve life.

14

Not with a pitchfork so they will struggle, it requres better aim with the pitch fork to keep them from struggling…I didnt catch how i worded that one…besides, rarely used the fork, shovel and .22 were much more common.

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and just so you guys dont think im the most evil person in the world…

I am totaly aginst the mistreating of domesticated animals.
To see somone kick a dog or cat makes my hair stand on end. I have a very unuasual bond with dogs. I dont understandy why though. Often when i visit somone who has Rottwilers or pit bulls trained to protect their property, instead of raising hell, these dogs become overgrown puppies, doing their very best to get me to play with them. During summers I will hear a dog owner say “ive never seen him/her act like that before. what did you do to my dog?”

…for some reason i feel that im wasting my time with this post…

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Thanks for the clarification, Justin. That’s what I was hoping you meant.

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Had an interesting conversation with a friend in town for a neurosciences conference this week. As he’s working on research into Parkinson’s disease , Tourette’s syndrome and Alzheimer’s disease, he has to experiment on - you guessed it - monkeys (another friend in the same field also works with mice). He and I have had several long talks about the treatment of these animals and their use, and we had another one this weekend (while touring the Zoo, no less). He was saying that when they first get a monkey they’re kind of feisty and don’t want to be handled by humans, but they eventually come to understand that “leaving the cage” = applesauce! This pleases them to no end, and they live happy lives, even while being the subjects of various experiments, until the day comes when, in order to conclude the research, they must perform the post-mortem; but even in this, they die happily with an overdose of some happy drug.

I, of course, in my wit and wisdom, condensed this into, “Applesauce, applesauce, applesauce, FLAMING DEATH!”

OK, I’m a smartass, and I could never do what he does, but I am convinced that (a) human lives are being/will be saved, and (b) these animals are treated and, yes, eventually killed in the most humane and painless way possible.

At least snap traps are likely to kill the thing quickly (although the one we had sitting in the garage for way too long was pretty nasty towards the end - ask jkusters if you don’t believe me - ugh :frowning: ).

Esprix

18

I once lived in a building with a BIG mouse problem. We tried snap traps (didn’t do much) and then glue traps. I had the same reaction you did the first time I saw a mouse in one. Felt absolutely awful. Got rid of those things fast.

Next stop - a kitten. He killed his first mouse when he was sitll a wee thing. From the noises at night, he would chase them, kill them, and then eat them completely (yes we fed him plenty - didn’t matter apparantly). There was never a sign of the mouse the next day.

I didn’t have to see or do anything. After a while, mice rarely came into our house. I think they could smell the cat. Anyway, problem solved. Okay, I still felt bad for the mice but that was better than sharing my home with them and I rationalized that my eradication method was one that occurs in nature all the time.

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I certainly will never go hunting. I do think about where the meat comes from, and it makes me very very sad. That’s why I haven’t eaten any form of meat in over 15 years.

You’re so sure that I never feel sorry for bugs before I crush them? You’re right, but not for the reason you think. You see, I DON’T CRUSH THEM so I don’t have to feel sorry for them. I carry them outside.

And yes I think you’ve said quite enough. You disgust me.

20

Opal Cat.

So I disgust you now?
Thats very nice to know!

I have no problem with somone not liking me. But I do have a question for you. Why are you so determined not to kill anything? even to go as far as to refuse to crush a bug? What causes this? Im sure (or at least i hope) that when you are bitten by a mosquitoe you dont just sit there and let it finish its meal? If you are bitten by a tick, I hope you dont relese it back into the wild, only for it to bite some other person or animal?

Rats are not poor defenceless creatures. Although this happened before I was born, my great grandfather, lost most of his toes and a larg portion of his left foot to rats. He was quite a poor person, he lived in a old house with many holes in the floor, and no insulation, allowing pests in. (as was most of my family back then, only as recently as the 1950s there were families of 6 or more in my family that lived on $10.00 a week) While sleeping, a large wood rat began to eat on his foot. having poor circulation and being quite old, he didnt wake until the rat had devowered a prety nice chunk of his foot. The rest of the foot was saved, but it was always quite a nasty sight to see.

A lot of words come to mind when i think of rodents, but “defenceless” isnt one of them.