So over the past month or so, we became aware of an extra "pet" in our house... the kind of pet that usually has a partner and can produce more pets at an astounding rate.
It's really no surprise that we would acquire this kind of winter-time pet... goodness knows it had plenty to eat with my littles leaving their crumbs about.
I bought traps that are fully enclosed so that when you capture your pet, you don't have to see the end results of the capture - if you know what I mean. (Can you even imagine Iraq finding a squashed mouse in the kitchen? It would traumatize her for months.) The other benefit of such traps is that they are pretty much child-proof (a good thing in our house). Unfortunately our pet didn't take the bait.
So my hubby went ahead and bought the old-fashioned-type mouse traps and then proceeded to come thiiiiiiiss close to trapping his own fingers... twice. (It's really entertaining to see a 6'3" man's reaction when a mousetrap gives way in his hand.)
Finally he got 2 traps set and placed (all of his fingers still intact), and over the last week our "pet" has apparently been using the set traps as feeding stations... and then leaving.
Until this morning.
Did our little pet have the decency to stick its neck in the trap like a normal mouse? No. I got to wake up to the most pathetic little brown mouse dragging the trap around the kitchen by its broken femur!
So. Not. Right.
You see, I have a real issue with killing critters. Yeah - it's a mouse. I know. But it's a life. (I swear - I must have been a Buddhist monk in my last life.) If the thing had been relatively uninjured, I would have had no issue with driving it out to the countryside and releasing it. No problem at all.
But no. NO... now I have to kill it. I can't just let it suffer with a horribly broken femur (and possibly hip). I have to put it out of the misery that we inadvertently caused it by catching the wrong part of it's anatomy in a trap and mangling the poor thing.
So I found a plastic container and held the trap over the container while I gently lifted the lever, letting the mouse plop down into the container. I've heard that carbon monoxide poisoning is a good way to kill small critters with a minimum of pain, so I trot out and turn on my truck. I open the container and hold it up to the exhaust pipe (but not too close so as not to burn the poor creature). As it got down to the twitching phase, I capped the container, assuming there was still enough carbon monoxide in there to finish the little scrap off.
Just as I was about to deposit the container into the garbage... our pet awoke and started running around the container again.
Really?
Back to the exhaust pipe, and this time I held it there long after the twitching stopped.
Then, as I was dumping the mouse and its clear, plastic coffin in the garbage, I could see that the mouse was female... and lactating.
Yippee... more pets!
And with that, I leave you with some recent pictures of the two people in our house who have seemingly put themselves in charge of ensuring our "pets" will have enough to eat. As you can see, with the weather turning nice, I am encouraging them to eat their treats outside.
*
It's really no surprise that we would acquire this kind of winter-time pet... goodness knows it had plenty to eat with my littles leaving their crumbs about.
I bought traps that are fully enclosed so that when you capture your pet, you don't have to see the end results of the capture - if you know what I mean. (Can you even imagine Iraq finding a squashed mouse in the kitchen? It would traumatize her for months.) The other benefit of such traps is that they are pretty much child-proof (a good thing in our house). Unfortunately our pet didn't take the bait.
So my hubby went ahead and bought the old-fashioned-type mouse traps and then proceeded to come thiiiiiiiss close to trapping his own fingers... twice. (It's really entertaining to see a 6'3" man's reaction when a mousetrap gives way in his hand.)
Finally he got 2 traps set and placed (all of his fingers still intact), and over the last week our "pet" has apparently been using the set traps as feeding stations... and then leaving.
Until this morning.
Did our little pet have the decency to stick its neck in the trap like a normal mouse? No. I got to wake up to the most pathetic little brown mouse dragging the trap around the kitchen by its broken femur!
So. Not. Right.
You see, I have a real issue with killing critters. Yeah - it's a mouse. I know. But it's a life. (I swear - I must have been a Buddhist monk in my last life.) If the thing had been relatively uninjured, I would have had no issue with driving it out to the countryside and releasing it. No problem at all.
But no. NO... now I have to kill it. I can't just let it suffer with a horribly broken femur (and possibly hip). I have to put it out of the misery that we inadvertently caused it by catching the wrong part of it's anatomy in a trap and mangling the poor thing.
So I found a plastic container and held the trap over the container while I gently lifted the lever, letting the mouse plop down into the container. I've heard that carbon monoxide poisoning is a good way to kill small critters with a minimum of pain, so I trot out and turn on my truck. I open the container and hold it up to the exhaust pipe (but not too close so as not to burn the poor creature). As it got down to the twitching phase, I capped the container, assuming there was still enough carbon monoxide in there to finish the little scrap off.
Just as I was about to deposit the container into the garbage... our pet awoke and started running around the container again.
Really?
Back to the exhaust pipe, and this time I held it there long after the twitching stopped.
Then, as I was dumping the mouse and its clear, plastic coffin in the garbage, I could see that the mouse was female... and lactating.
Yippee... more pets!
And with that, I leave you with some recent pictures of the two people in our house who have seemingly put themselves in charge of ensuring our "pets" will have enough to eat. As you can see, with the weather turning nice, I am encouraging them to eat their treats outside.
*
