Simple mouse traps won out over poison. Too many critters might eat a poisoned mouse, even outside. Neighbor cats. The gorgeous bull snakes that keep down the mouse population in the summer clearly is not out and about yet (temp dropped to 19 last night), but I don't want the first one to wake up to see a weak, poison mouse and die from eating it. You know, we have to worry about bad peanuts and wicked meat and deadly salad ingredients. But that's no reason to bring our good snakes into the fold of the food threatened.
So yesterday DH and I sat with two little mouse traps and tried to figure them out. They had "an improved bait delivery system" which was just a little plastic square and we both squashed the daylights out of our fingers trying to figure them out. We persevered and the first two traps were set in the garage, baited with peanut butter (overkill??). This morning, success! There in the middle of the garage was an obviously successful trap and an obviously dead mouse. Was it the trap or the peanut butter?? I'm pretty sure it was the trap.........
DH and I looked at it. It was just a little tiny mouse, soft brown on top, fawn below. He went into the garbage bin, trap and all. (sometimes economy is sacrificed to avoid the ick factor)
Afterward we sat in the house, quiet. "It's wrong, isn't it?" DH said. "I'm pretty sure it is," I replied.
Wrong it may be, but we can't have mice in our house, eating my stash, digging into the insulation, nibbling on the wires, breeding like...... well, like mice.
I wanted to go dig up the bull snakes and make them get up and start eating mice. DH gave me a look that can't be described. Thankfully. Besides, he added, that wouldn't stop the inside mice. Ewwwwwwww, he's right.
So traps it is. Baited with peanut butter and a heavy heart that knows without doubt that it's wrong to kill the pretty little things just because they like to be warm and safe and well fed. Seems all wars force us into moral equivalency, even MOUSE WARS.
Sunny