ray's big blog

Well, now I've caught two mice in the apartment. The first was a long
time coming - it took us a month of mouse hunting, but he got caught
eating peanut butter in a good ol' fashioned spring trap. At least with
those traps there is no question what to do with the mouse - you can
really only throw it away.

Tonight, however, a mouse wandered into one of our dreadful glue traps.
They are dreadful for both the catcher and the catchee. I don't know
that there is any humane thing to do with a glued rodent. You could just
throw it in the trash alive like the package says, or you can take the
"humane" route and lube the little guy up with vegetable oil to release
him from the glue. But the idea of a mouse starving slowly to death
doesn't appeal to my humanity, and I'm not running a catch-and-release
program here. So what else? You could whack the little dude with
something and hope that a quick end is met. Or - aha! - you could choose
the path less traveled: drowning. I read somewhere that drowning is
considered a suitable humane end for pest cats, so what is good enough
for Tom must be good enough with Jerry, right? Well, that's the path I
took with the little victim of the glue trap - a quick dunk in the toilet.

I'd say he was not happy with my decision. He blew a bunch of bubbles,
kicked around. Then stopped after maybe 20 seconds. I thought it was
over. But alas, he had another little 10 second flame out before his
back got these weird bumps in it - first one, then two. I think it was
all over in about a minute. Poor little guy. I'll consider this whole
episode a success if I don't dream about it tonight.

The lesson? Don't drown.