To Kill or Not to Kill

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I use safe trip-traps with mine and then release them in the wilderness. Sometimes it's smart to be enviornmentally conscious. Who knows.... there might be a hungry fox, owl or whatever who needs a feedn'.

Plus, I just can't stand seeing a cute mousy killed in cold blood....



Oh....and I have cats but they don't really do much except play with them.....

these are really good traps

http://www.kness.com/Shopping/shopexd.asp?id=35

That does look great... the mouse walks in, the trap tips up and traps them inside! It's not that expensive and can't really hurt them.

^ Yeah they are really good traps.

The only thing with them is that you have to keep an eye on them, if you forget about them and a mouse gets caught it will die a slow death.

I brought mine from a pet store.

Yes, even my humane trap somehow sent them a message, the first catch was immediate (I'd got them used to taking the bait from the surface that was to be the floor of the trap, and gradually built the rest of the structure around it, so by the time it was first armed, the mice were used to going under the inverted bread bin). But the second catch didn't happen for a day or two, and there was always that interval between catches. A dead mouse might well send off a stronger message than a caught one though.

I agree about stopping up the holes where they get into the house. And it's amazing what a small hole a mouse can get through.

I would suggest either a cat or a terrier dog, I might sound brutal but I have found that sometimes neither the cat or the dog will finish a mouse off so you the human may have to kill it. Once I had to kill the mouse after my dog chased it under something.

What does not wanting to hurt anything from flies to mice have to do with AS? I know tons of NT's, and I mean tons, with the exact same sentiments.

Regarding your question, I wouldn't advocate their killing. Humane traps aren't that expensive, I believe.

Thanks for the tips! Also, I've found that mice can get in through an opening as small as the basement door your husband leaves open all night by mistake.

I have heard that there are AS who can't kill or hurt things. They get very upset. I do.

Whether or not that is truly a trait is an interesting question. If it is a trait, then it only applies to a subset of AS, maybe?

I wonder if it was here on WP that I heard it's a trait...

As for no-kill traps that aren't that expensive, I think that some of the suggestions and traps people have made themselves are pretty good. I had only been aware of expensive ones, probably professional equipment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW2z8mewwGQ

Kill kill kill!

Just kidding!

Actually I voted to engineer a way to remove without killing.

They're cute, but I wouldn't want the little buggers in my house!

How did the mice get in? If you kill all the mice, more will come in and take their place if there is a way to enter the house. If you remove the mice and set them outside, they'll come back in through any openings.

Why are the mice there? What are they eating? The mice will be less inclined to stay or enter in the first place if you don't make any food available to them. Seal off pet food, don't leave anything open on the counter, clean up spills, etc. In short, seal the house off, and don't feed the mice!

What to do with the mice you have? Don't use poison. If you poison them, they'll crawl away to the same spot and die, and you'll have a stinky mess somewhere in your house, maybe where you can't get at it and clean it up easily. There are live traps that can catch them so you can release them, but now the mice are homeless, and they'll probably end up as something's lunch. It sucks to be a mouse, because your highest possible aspiration is to end up as someone's lunch or smooshed on the bottom of someone's shoe!

OK so maybe killing is the quick and dirty way to resolve this, and cheap too. At least you know any mice you kill won't be back!

Ahhhh, Crunch!

Ha Ha! I remember that "Jackass".



I think that there are openings, because we did get a couple of mice. But my husband caught them. I have a hole in a second bedroom wall where I ran a cable and didn't use a cover plate. My husband caught them by putting a plastic bin under the hole and and the mouse couldn't get out after it came through the hole and fell in. Then, about a week later during our last snow, he accidentally left the basement door open all night. Now it's like a happy horde in here. Don't know if the original mice bred or if a lot of mice moved in that night.



I have a lot of natural foods that I order in bulk online (cheaper!) and in the last couple of weeks I've gotten everything that was not already containerized stored in food-grade pails and solid containers. I've always kept things in plastic bags since living in the Deep South for a while -- they have insane bugs in the near-tropical climates. But the mice chewed right through the plastic and were feasting on my nuts and grains. So that is how they got established in the house. That stuff is put away, now.



You have a point about the catch-and-release. It won't be easy for them to avoid running into disaster if I dump them.

These have to be the cutest mice I have ever seen. So that makes me feel bad. But I have to get them under control before any litters create a population explosion.

Yes catching mice needn't be expensive. Dad used to say an old method was to leave a milk bottle on its side with bait in it. The mouse would go into the bottle and couldn't get back up the sloping side to leave the restaurant. But he also figured it wouldn't work so well on modern mice.....they seem to upgrade their survival toolkit pretty regularly.

Cats can be more cruel to mice than death-traps, though it depends on the cat. They don't all use their victims for practice. One that lived with me would kill instantly, they really can't have felt much. And I agree the mice usually know when there's a cat around, and move on.

we put mouse traps where i lived before. we cought a mouse. i felt a tiny bit sorry for the bugger, but then again, 100 000 people died in iraq, dead is dead, get rid of them, and toss them in the bin :M

life is life , no killing.

when I was younger I had a huge obsession with animal rights and vegetarianism, I probably would have shared your belief in not wanting to kill them. Now, though, I would kill them in a heartbeat.

1. Mousetraps kill them quickly.
2. I have a sensitivity to touch and any kind of animal fur touching me is unbearable... so I've developed a hatred/fear of animals.
3. I realized not long ago that mice can jump up on your bed! We had one in my brother's room manage to jump up on the bed with us when we ran up there when we seen him/her on the ground. Then, it ran towards me at one point and touched my foot =[

but I guess if you don't share the same fear as I do it'd be different.

I use a standard spring powered mouse trap baited with penut butter. Nine time out of ten the whacker breaks the neck of the mouse producing instantaneous death. Mice are pests and vermin and I will not share my house with them. They chew through food cartons and wrappers and leave fewmets all about. Snap! Crack! That is the solution!

ruveyn