I knew we had at least one critter in the house.  I was sitting at my desk in the office working on something when I saw movement.  I looked to my right and there he was:  A little mouse.  I suppose while working on the computer, my only movement was my fingers typing. Now that I moved my head, he darted away into the cabinetry.

I’ve always had a particular liking and empathy for animals. I think I may have inherited this from my father.  I observed it in him and remember him telling me a story of his first hunting experience. He had a wide range of interests, and I suppose he was just trying hunting to see what it would be like.  He had shot a rabbit.  And while he had enjoyed rabbit as a meal before, he claimed that this particular rabbit he did not enjoy at all, and he never hunted again. 

One curious aspect of hunting, or even just buying food at a grocery store, is that the perceived intelligence of an animal species seems to play a role in its acceptability as food.  We eat cows.  But (at least in my country) we don’t eat dogs.  We eat tuna, but we don’t eat porpoise. I once had a coworker who was very adamant about only buying tuna that was classified as “dolphin safe”.  I once had asked if she ever considered tuna that was “tuna safe”.  I received particular look that I get often from family and friends.

The value we place on life seems to be proportional to the perceived intelligence of the respective lifeform. I can’t say I don’t fall into this same way of thinking. I will kill ants en masse. In cases of severe infestation, I’m talking outright genocide. Yet, I typically won’t kill a solitary spider. I admire their skills in catching their prey. Jumping Spiders are particularly amazing to me.  If spiders appear in the house,  I’ll catch them with a glass and piece of paper or cardstock, then take them out and release them to the wild.

I got a good look at the mouse before he ran away.  (I suppose I assigned it a gender as it just makes it more personal.)  He looked like the typical pet mouse, a dark brown with little light colored Mickey Mouse type ears.  I started considering coexistence.  How bad could it be?  It would just be like having a pet mouse that you get to see on occasion. I went back to work and did not give it much thought.

But then, during breakfast, The Admiral brought it up.

“We’ve got mice”, she said.

“I know”, I replied. “I saw him the other day.”

“Well . . .  You are going to need to get some traps.”

The coexistence idea was going south on me already.  Even the gender thing was clearly not working in this case.  I momentarily regretted not referring to the mouse as a “she”, but then assumed it probably would not have made a difference. I thought about naming the mouse.  “Phil” would maybe give him a bit of personality.  I think I may have suggested the coexistence idea to her, but it did go over very well at all.  I put the task of getting traps on “the back burner”.  Admittedly, I thought her concern might just go away.  But then there were additional sightings.  She was sitting at the breakfast table and saw him scurry across the floor.  Then I found the mouse poop and the evidence of snacking in the form of the corner of a flour container being chewed off.  I had to empty the entire cabinet, sweep out the mouse droppings, and clean it the best I could with soap and disinfectant.  I discarded the entire 2 lbs. of flour, because I think that’s what you do.  In modern civilized society, the entire mass of flour should be considered contaminated if one tiny corner is chewed off.  And I had just started taking on the hobby of baking pies, so I took this a little more personal than I probably should have.

Then there were two.

“I was watching TV last night,” The Admiral recalled, “and I saw the same big one, along with a little one, run across the floor in front of the fireplace.  It’s like they are having their own little party.  You have to do something about this.”

I considered the typical mousetraps.  I envisioned the pitiful sight of Phil in the trap with his tongue out and his spine shattered at the neck.  Or the ultimate horror of a partial trap malfunction and Phil still alive but severely injured.

So, I started looking into humane traps.   I found an article on the subject on a PETA website.  I found some of the information a bit puzzling.

“Live cage or box traps are humane so long as they are checked hourly. Mice and rats can die from stress-induced disorders, exposure, or dehydration in just a few short hours.”

Seriously?  We are talking rodents that have evolved over perhaps millions of years. In the wild, they deal with predators, some swooping down from the sky.  Besides aerial attack, I figure the typical mouse in the wild has to deal with lawn mowers, weed whackers, cats, and running across streets in traffic.  I would think being stuck in a container would be a minor inconvenience in comparison.  

Then there was this:

“Captured mice and rats can be kept calm by placing a towel over the trap. Release them within 100 yards of where they were trapped. (Rodents can also be humanely euthanized by a veterinarian or at a local animal shelter.) Releasing a mouse or rat into a strange area will almost surely result in the animal’s death because relocated animals don’t know where to find adequate food, water, or shelter and often become weak and succumb to predation or foreign parasites or disease against which they lack a natural immunity.”

Okay. . . The vet thing is definitely out.  I’m not going to go to a veterinarian and suffer both the expense and the humiliation of asking him to euthanize a mouse.  But the release proximity, along with the reasons for it, sounded ridiculous.  In a strange area, mice apparently won’t “know where to find adequate food, water, or shelter.”  But release them within 100 yards, and they will know where to find these things:  In our house.  I’m not sure the folks at PETA get the point of the purpose of trapping rodents.  My intent was not to give Phil a temporary outing.  I had not intended to take him a couple of doors down, release him, then tell him, “Have a nice time Phil. Remember to watch out for predators and we’ll see you back home in a couple of days.  Or maybe even this afternoon.”  Then there is the aspect of my neighbors seeing me release pests in front of their home that probably would not have gone over well.

So, my option was to either to get a lethal trap, or get a humane trap and release Phil far from home, where he would apparently succumb to thirst, starvation, predators, or a “stress-induced disorder” brought on by any combination of these threats.  I imagined Phil, getting the typical pains in his chest and left foreleg, then clutching his breast and dying in a distant field. Without his little friend. Alone.

I found myself at Lowe’s, looking at a variety of options. Poisons were definitely out, simply on the basis that it introduced the possibility of a bird or house cat consuming Phil’s remains which could kill them as well.  They had the typical mouse traps that I obviously had an aversion to.  Then I saw it: The Victor Electronic Mousetrap model M250S, with “No-Touch, No-See Disposal” and a “100% Kill Rate”.  The device was powered by four AA batteries, and I am familiar enough with electronics to know that a capacitor charged with this many batteries is going to pack a punch. I would be like an electric chair for a mouse.

I bought two of them, placing one in the kitchen and one by the fireplace where The Admiral had observed the “party”.

Within a couple of days, I saw the green flashing light on the device indicating a mouse.  I hinged open the container door, and there was Phil.  He looked like he was sleeping.  So much for the “No-see”.  I took the device out to the trash can, dumped Phil into it, and said a few words. 

After another two days or so, I caught Phil’s friend.   His smaller size made it a bit more poignant, but this was tempered a bit by the fact that I had not yet named him.

As far as I know we are now mouse free.  I suppose I’ll leave the traps out for a while, but really would rather have someone else do the dirty work.

Maybe we will get a cat.