Of mice and menFollow

Last Sunday, I was sitting on the sofa with the missus, watching the highlights of the Mighty ********* loss to the thieving-scousers of Everton (for you non-brits, I was watching soccer football).

Suddenly, we see a little brown thing run behing the TV.

It was a... MOUSE!!

In our flat!!

My girlfriend freaked out quite a bit, but me, being the manly man that I am, only freaked out a little.

So I call my landlord. Tell him about the mouse. Ask him if, maybe, he could put some mouse traps. And he replies, in his stuffy, pompous, empirilaistic and colonial accent: "Well, you see, the problem with mouse-traps is that they tend to kill the mouse."

FUcking English people and their love of animals.

"Yeah, alright", I reply, "but the girlfriend really doesn't like them, so it would be dandy if you could do something about it."

He says he'll send the builders in to "block some holes", which he did.

A few days later, we see another mouse, in exactly the same spot.

So yesterday, feeling like Rambo III gearing up to help the Talibans fight the Russians, I go to my local Homebase and buy traps that "don't kill the mice", as well as some NASA-tested electronic device that sends ultra-sound that drive away the mice.

I'm guessing it just plays "The Best of Raggaton" at a frequency that only mice can hear.

Last night I install the Nasa thing, and 2 minutes later, a mouse runs from the underneath the sofa, into the kitchen. So I put some delicious nutella one the end of the mouse-trap, and stick in the kitchen.

This morning, I wake up and, lo and behold, there is a mouse in the trap.

Like the manly man that I am, I make a face like a acid-splashed bum, take the trap with mouse inside, go into the street, and throw the whole damn thing into a bin.

Now, my colleagues at work thing I'm some sort of **** doctor for not "releasing the mouse into the wild and leaving inside a coffin instead."

Fair point, but it's a freaking mouse! Scientists do experiments on them. Cats eat them. The sewers are filled with the bastards. As far as I'm concerned, this is the War on Terror in my living-room, and no prisoners are taken. Until the mice get off their lazy-asses and pay teh rent, it's my living-room, and it's the mice or me.

So, was I in the wrong? Should I be "nicer" to these germ-filled rodent vermine? Have you guys had mice, and if so how have you dealt with the fUckers?





Edited, Mar 23rd 2007 11:33am by RedPhoenixxx

It was the latest kick in the teeth to our English-denture of a season.

Yeah, you really didn't miss anything.

It was typical of our season. We dominate the whole game, miss the few chances we create, and they get a scrappy goal in extra-time with their only shot of the game.

The only bright side was little Denilson, the 18 year-old Brazillian that's almost as good as Fabregas.

He'll be world-class before he hits 20.

Well, while I'm not innately opposed to killing the mouse, capturing it in a live-catch trap only to throw it into a dumpster seems to be missing the point of the trap. They sell those little wood & wire snappy traps for under a buck, you know.

That was gonna be my next thread, "Of cats and men".

We don't have a garden, and I'm not sure if it's cool for a cat to live in a flat without a garden. I'm feeling it might be a bit cruel to the cat. I don't know. Any of you guys own a cat that lives in a flat all day?



Totally.

I'm secretly hoping it will conduct the rodent version of "The Great Escape".

Most people I know never let their cats outside. I think you'd be fine.

In the winter field mice always seem to think that finding their way into my warm house is a good idea. Well I showed them. I place a few of the snappy-wire traps in a spot I know the mice like and over the course of a winter it's not unusual to catch 8-10. I clean the traps out and make a little body pile in the yard like the Spartans did with the Persians. The carcasses are usually gone in a day so I know some critter is getting well fed.

I know this wouldn't have bothered me at all if I hadn't watched The Secret Of NIMH last weekend. I'm so impressionable.

Nexa

Thread officially Godwinned.

I've mentioned this before in a Flea thread I believe about mouse hunting, but ...

1 Version

For you softies, just leave out the water/soap and let the rodent go when you wake up the next morning.

I prefer a 2% HCL solution and a glass "bucket". No muss, no fuss.

I prefer this type.

Oh come on, someone had to do it.

Nexa

I remember that thread. My hospital put down sticky-traps, and we never caught a one. It's like the mice said, "Nuts to this, let's go next door" and left us alone. I caught a roach the size of a mouse, though. I have to confess, I'd prefer to trap and release. I can't see the point in causing more pain than I have to.

My favorite story ever about my grandfather, and the type of guy he was involves my mother seeing a rat once in the kitchen of my grandparents' home. They lived in an adobe open-patio oldstyle home the kind they featured in Frida, and the kitchen was open to the courtyard and the main entry hall past it, which led into the street. Well, my brother and I were 5 and 3, respectively, and my mother, scared of an infectious bite, climbed onto a table with us and screamed for my father. For the next almost half-hour, my father, and two uncles chased this thing around with brooms and a machete, but whenever they would corner it, no one would deal the killing blow. In walks my grandfather, almost blind and stone-deaf, spots the rat right away and walks over to it and kicks it with a swiftness in its head that causes it to splat against the wall and slide down, dead. He then proceeds to curse at it in booming Quechua as he kicks it, soccer-style, out into the street to be run over by a car. He came back in, called my father and uncles maricones, and asked for his breakfast.


Damn I loved that man.