- Do you remember a while ago I thought I had mice in the house? Well, after clearing up there was no more evidence for a while. Until this last week where there has been a LOT of evidence. Tiny poo's in my kitchen cupboards and a shredded crisp packet on the floor with tiny tooth marks in it.
- I'm gutted! But trotted off into town and bought some mouse traps. I'm ashamed to say that I did not buy humane mouse traps. I bought 3 back-breakers. I don't really want to kill them, but they can't stay, and if I put them outside they'll only come back. Our house backs onto a field and cold little mice will prefer to be in a warm house with a soft cat who wont catch them, than out side where predators lurk in every shadow.
- So this morning I bated the three traps and set one in each of the three places we have had mouse evidence. At 3pm today I went to check them. And sure enough in trap number 3 is a poor dead little mouse. It's jaws still clamped round the cheap lump of cheddar I'd stuck on it. I felt bad for not using the good stuff. It's last meal should have been a good one!
- It took me a few minutes to get my head round what I have done. It's not like I've never killed anything before. When I have been camping I have caught killed and cooked my own fish - but I caught pike which are nasty aggressive predators and in eating it I am giving smaller fish a greater chance of living, and I killed it to EAT it. Not because it was an unpleasentness in my life. That was food. This feels like murder.
- Eventually I opened the door again and picked up the trap and mouse. I opened the trap and the mouse flopped out. I've put it in a small plastic box and it will go in the bin. But I found myself showing the cat the boxed mouse and repremanding her for not being a "proper cat" and catching the mouse herself. I was feeling that if she had continued the natural food chain and caught and eaten the mouse then I wouldn't have had to murder it in a cowardly way. Now she takes an intrest in the dead mouse and I feel like I'm being a sick freak for tormenting a cat, who has no idea what I'm saying to her, with a dead mouse she cannot reach.
- I console myself thus: If Muppet had caught the mouse she would - as all cats do - have tormented it. Throwing it up in the air, playing with it and getting fed up with it once the poor thing dies of a heart attack out of shear terror. This way it died instantly (I hope) and will not have suffered in the same way as being played with by a cat. I also hope that it was a lone mouse. I don't want a house full of mice. I don't want the one I have killed to be missed by it's family, and most of all I don't want to have to kill any more of the little buggers!
- Animal Rights People: Please don't hassle me over this. I feel terrible for killing this poor little creature. If I didn't feel this was the only option I had left - short of moving out - I wouldn't have done it. I haven't done it out of sport or enjoyment, I've done it so that I am not eating off plates with mouse wee and poo on them, or living in a house which could burn down because they have chewed a power cable. I've hated this. And don't want to have to do it again.
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