Instrument of Near-Death

January 26, 2011 11:04 +0000 | Animals Death 6

Warning: the following post can be rather upsetting for animal lovers. If you're at all squeamish about bad things happening to tiny creatures, you may just want to skip this one.

I tried to do the Right Thing, really I did.

As part of the experience of house-sitting for my parents these past few weeks, I've discovered that they have a mouse problem. It seems that when the weather outside gets cold, they look for warm old houses in which to hide out and you know, do mouse-things like eat, breed and defecate.

As an urbanite, I stand decidedly on the side of ignoring the problem until it goes away... since you don't generally have problems like these when you live in a glass box in the sky. Besides, the idea of killing a mouse just seems horrible! They're not bugs, they're cute, and have fur, and tiny little legs!

But then I talked to my parents who insisted that the only right thing to do was to lay out the mouse trap. The little bugger could chew through electrical cables and start a fire, or start breeding tiny little defecating mice all over the house. Catch and release wasn't an option they insisted, they apparently always find a way back, even from as far as 5k away.

I decided to be an adult, do the Right Thing, and set out a trap, a trap I knew to be less-than-instantaneous, but sadly the only trap we have here. Maybe the one time I'd seen it take a couple minutes to kill a mouse was a fluke. Maybe the trap was, as my father insisted, a quick and efficient end.

It isn't.

I never even heard the trap go off. I only know what happened because I checked in before I went to bed. I opened the cupboard to find this tiny mouse just lying there next to the trap, little bits of mouse blood scattered about. It would seem that she managed to struggle free, but now lacked the motor skills to do much more than that.

She wasn't dead though. Looking closely, I could see her little lungs pushing her belly up and down quickly. She was dying and terrified.

I didn't really have any options. I grabbed some paper towels, bent down to pick her up and her little legs waved around sporadically for a moment, and then she lay still. I put on my father's shoes, carried her out into the front yard and crushed what was left of her, little bits of blood coming through the white paper towels. When I was sure she was dead, I tossed her into the garbage, came inside and washed my hands... a lot.

I'm not writing about this to upset the animal-friendly folk on here. I don't think this is cool or even interesting. The whole this is rather upsetting for me, so I wanted to write about it. Maybe I shouldn't be upset, maybe I just need better, more lethal traps, I don't know. I just hate how I feel right now and needed to share.

Comments

Shawna
26 Jan 2011, 2:23 p.m. |

okay, I will share back. Keep in mind this happened in 1994 and I still remember it.

I was walking in the dark up a laneway in a provincial park near Thunder Bay, Ontario. The drive in the park is dark, but it's a moonlit sky and I'm wearing a heavy pack. I'm ignoring all teh scary rustling noises the wind & trees are making. I could hear scurrying feet around me, but was too scared to look down and was just tryign to move up the lane, towards the light of the bunk house as fast as I could. Then I felt a crunching noise underfoot that felt more substantial than leaves or gravel. I picked up my foot and look down. I was not paying attention and had stepped on the head of a vole and crushed it to death.
Death can be a fluke or random or by trap, but sometimes it just happens that you are the method that delivers the death blow. For that vole, if it hadn't been my foot it might have been a hawk the next day, or a slow freezing to death, or a slow roasting to death if they got in the heating ducts. At least the death was fast.

Sorry if that's too brutal, but hope it helps you feel better. you did the right thing.

Melanie
1 Feb 2011, 6:46 a.m. |

I'm sorry you had to do that.

I'm also angry at you for not finding a more humane way of killing the mouse. "It's the only trap we had" is not acceptable reasoning. Daniel, please tell me that you did not subject this mouse to a slow and painful death because you couldn't be bothered to go looking for a better trap.

Daniel
1 Feb 2011, 10:18 a.m. |

Give me a little credit, I'd be assured that the ineffective use I'd seen in the past was a one-time freak incident and that I should feel confident that the trap would be swift and deadly.

I've since gone out and purchased two (hopefully) more effective traps for my parents.

Joshua May
12 Feb 2011, 12:18 a.m. |

traps don't need to be lethal (or even harmful!) to be effective.

with some kind of garbage bin and some tubing (or even a ruler) with a sprinkle of food, you too can have a Humane™ trap. you don't even need to leave the house to get it together! (and I can personally testify to their success!)

(see http://journal.chrisglass.com/2005/09/how_to_catch_a_.html for the general idea)

alas, just food for thought. appropriate solutions are not always obvious solutions.

and, of course, I can't let you get away without stating that what ends up on your plate most nights goes through a fairly similar treatment. and that's not being overtly pro-animal rights, that's fairly blunt fact. worth considering imo.

Daniel
12 Feb 2011, 1:12 a.m. |

Josh, you're absolutely right on that last one. To be clear, I don't really have an issue with the killing of animals, but the sacrifice should be quick and respectful rather than what we usually do to animals for our food.

For this reason, I avoid factory farm meat and opt for certified organic options whenever I can find them as I understand that that these certifications are awarded based in part on the conditions of how the animals are kept and slaughtered. As I'm unwilling to become a vegan, this is the best I know how to be, unless you have a better third way?

Daniel
12 Feb 2011, 1:15 a.m. |

Also with regard to the mouse problem, my aunt had a similar situation in her home and was unwilling to kill the mice. Instead, she captured it and released it down the street.

It came back a few days later (they tagged it to be sure after the 2nd time). She claims that she read somewhere that mice can find there way "home" up to 5km from where you trapped them. This was the primary driving force behind my willingness to kill the mouse.