At 5:30, in the peaceful nighttime darkness, one of my mousetraps… caught a mouse. I was awoken by the SNAP!, and I came to consciousness to the banging and the pathetic cries as the little creature struggled in the trap. I turned on the desk lamp and got out of bed, and shone the light under the table.
There it was, a small grey mouse twisted in the trap, against the far leg of the table next to the baseboard. As I watched, it gradually ceased moving. I felt rather sorry for the mouse, but then I remembered the mouse turds I’d found earlier while cleaning, and the scurryings that kept me awake at night, and the need to keep food well stored, and I didn’t feel too bad.
Just another episode from the Life of Sunspace. Next time: the strange sounds from upstairs, and the awful tobacco smell that occaisionally emanates from the apartment down the hall…
You’ve obviously never shared the joyous experience of sharing an old weatherboard farmhouse with humungous bush rats.
I’m lying in bed one night, and can hear a loud scrabbling noise in the hallway behind my room. So I drag my arse out of bed, and set up a rat trap. Not five minutes have passed when “BANG! clunka clunka whack clunka whack whack rumble rumble whack…” The rat, the size of a puppy, was expending its dying energies running about the hallway, still attached to the trap, crashing into walls, and leaving little pools of crimson rat juice lying about the place.
Well, this reminds me of what one of my school friends saw in an elevator in Japan once: a giant rat! (they were on an exchange trip to Japan) Needless to say, everyone was horrified! There are no giant rats in Canadian elevators… [sub]let’s hope, anyways…[/sub]
A FOAF used a giant capacitor to get the last mouse in his apartment. He woke up after hearing a bang one night and, hearing nothing more, went back to sleep. My friend said that when his (extremely fastidious) friend went to the kitchen the next morning, there was semi-dried mouse bits all over the place.
Awww…
I agree that you can’t have mice and run a sanitary household, but the poor little things have to SUFFER for so long when those traps get a hold of them. I cant bear to think about it.
Is there any other way to get rid of them?
Can you-well- I guess not-makes no sense to use live traps, dump them outside, and then have them walk right back in the front door?:o
They do have those devices that emit some sort of sound (inaudible to humans) that rodents hate. Maybe that would keep them away, instead of having to pick them off one by one?
At the very least, get a cat. Mice will still die, but you wont be directly implicated!
stalk stalk stalk stalk
Gotta admit, stalking you, pez has caused me to read more threads that will disturb me than I ever thought I would on the board.
I wouldn’t be able to read the negative. I’d start thinking Mrs. Brisby and the Rats of NIHM and want to let the poor thing go.
There’s a different kind of trap…actually, it’s a tray of some kind of, uh, poison. When I lived in a house that was next to a cornfield, we used these, and many was the time I saw a mouse that appeared to be peacefully sleeping with his head down on the tray. It was my job to dispose of them as well. I didn’t mind, because they weren’t gory. I don’t like the idea of a trap that makes a rodent bleed and spread his disease around the vicinity. Defeats some of the purpose.
That’s how I feel. It’s always good to have a cat.
I used to live in a little pool cobana, which had some REALLY huge rats, that were eating my stuff, and leaving rat feces everywhere. I’d wake up early in the morning and see them scampering around.
I figured that my dear (now departed) kitty Virgil would take care of the rat problem. He did. He zeroed in on where they were hiding, and for DAYS on end, he just stared and stared at the area (near the stove). When he pounced, I happened to be on the phone with a friend. My friend was quite amazed when I started to yell “Get them! GET THEM!!!” right in the middle of the conversation.
I never saw the rat remains that time. But, Virgil was quite the little hunter, and made sure to keep the place free of vermin. Sometimes, he left little “prizes” for me to discover. :eek:
I live with 4 cats that can come indoors (and a godawful number of passers-by felines) and I STILL had enormous mouse problems.
Lady Chance had resisted putting out poison (the baby, you know). I put out 5 or 6 traps and bagged quite a few but they were definitely gaining on me, population-wise.
Two weeks ago she let me put out poison in a space between the joists above the living room and below our bedroom. Not E-Z access but I know they little bastards use it as a thoroughfare.
Bang! In less than a week no more mouse sightings, no more rustles and squeaks in the night. No more nothing!
Well, except the smell of decomposing mice for a week or so. But it’s mostly gone now. And it was worth it. It seems like I had a clean sweep. Or the others are so terrified of what should appear (to them) as random death that they packed up their old kit bags and headed down the road.
