We have a little rental house next door we lease out via Airbnb. Usually folks stay a few days, but sometimes they rent it for a week or more, even a month or two. Because it\u2019s an old 1940\u2019s cottage, the mice have their secret highways in and out if we\u2019re not there to put out traps so when Karen got a text two days ago from our current guests who\u2019ve been up there three weeks that they\u2019d seen mice in the place, she groaned and told me the news. Since I have been catching mice in the shack the past week, I can\u2019t say I was surprised. <\/p>\n
I know she didn\u2019t want to tell them to get out the mousetraps we keep up there in the closet, but really, what are their options? Move out and look for a motel? Chances are they\u2019ve been around the little vermin and probably know the drill. If not, welcome to the country. And just so you know I\u2019m not totally a hard-hearted SOB, I can tell you that once I used to catch mice with one of those Have-A-Heart traps, the kind that has a spring-loaded wheel that, triggered by a small peck on the bait, slings the little guy into an adjoining holding cell where he waits until I take him across the road or back in the woods and place him on parole, not even a leg bracelet to monitor his whereabouts, which, you can bet, are a bee-line back to the shack. That bit of squeamish liberal guilt ended when the mice started getting caught in the cage\u2019s wheel and mangled like roadkill. <\/p>\n
So I tried the bucket of water trick with the string across the top and a dangling piece of cheese. It works, by the way, but imagine the poor mouse swimming for who knows how long until exhaustion gives way to drowning. Trust me, it interrupts a good night\u2019s sleep. And sure, there\u2019s D-Con, some poison that thins their blood until they hemorrhage. Nothing too humane there. I even, and I know I will pay a visit to Hell for this, bought one of those sticky pads thinking that the little guys would get stuck on it and I\u2019d be able to take them back in the woods and set the free. If you\u2019ve never done this, DON\u2019T!! These should be banned by the animal Geneva Convention as nothing less than a torture device. You cannot remove the mouse without tearing his little legs off. It was ghastly and I will pay dearly. And should.<\/p>\n
So a mousetrap, horrible as it is, seems like the quickest most humane dispatch of the little mammals I can think of. But like Karen fears, what will the guests think? Nobody really wants the cute buggers in the house with them, but maybe killing the bastards is a bridge too far. Today we got a text that James had caught two of them in the traps. He said he was a city boy, Boston, and was no stranger to these kinds of intruders. Which was a relief to her. \u2018What should I say back?\u2019 she asked me, still a bit worried about our guests\u2019 reaction to the invasion of mice. \u2018Tell em I can give them recipes if they want.\u2019 <\/p>\n
I suspect she didn\u2019t send that message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have a little rental house next door we lease out via Airbnb. Usually folks stay a few days, but sometimes they rent it for a week or more, even a month or two. Because it\u2019s an old 1940\u2019s cottage, the mice have their secret highways in and out if we\u2019re not there to put […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[3666,3664,3667,3665],"class_list":["post-14188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-animal-torture","tag-building-a-better-mousetrap","tag-invasion-of-the-mice","tag-strategies-for-catching-mice"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14189,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14188\/revisions\/14189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}