I'm an evil murderess...and I feel very badly

[Candace]

This has been a bad year, critter in the g.h. wise..

I've been battling mice and rats and they've done quite a bit of damage. I've caught some rats in traps and baited. Two weeks ago I caught a huge rat in a trap that caught it in the shoulder. It must have lived for a long time and drug the trap around the g.h It didn't die and easy death. that made me feel badly. And today, I was watering in the g.h. and heard some noise in my paph area. Out pops this guy, scaring the hell out of me, by the way.

It just sat there shivering and wouldn't move. It definately has something wrong with it-maybe the bait is making it ill. I checked on it an hour later and it's in this same spot shivering. I debated about putting it in a box, but if it's dieing, then no sense moving it. I know it's war and I have to kill them, but I don't like it one bit. It would help if the mice weren't so damn cute...

 

[likespaphs]

why not just get a snake and let it loose in the house? perhaps it's for the same reason i don't have one, it'd freak me out!

 

[Heather]

Is that a mouse or a rat? If a rat, I thought they were nastier looking, he's kinda cute.

 

[NYEric]

that's a mouse! Whack it with the broom now!

 

[Candace]

It's a mouse. I've only been trapping rats so far this year. All my snakes are hibernating, but I'm sure I'd be overrun with vermin without all my garters out back.

My husband won't whack it and I can't:< I was almost crying over it this morning.

 

[littlefrog]

It would be more humane to put it out of its misery. PM me if you want to know how we do that in the lab, it is easy but I don't think anybody else wants to hear it.

 

[Persephone]

Even though I don't have a greenhouse

we have problems with our kitty bringing home live mice to play with. We usually capture them with a shoe box and a piece of cardboard and bring them a distance from our house. We also have heavy duty construction grade gloves that my daughter used to use as her mouse catching gloves. For a while, I had a mouse who lived somewhere behind my computer and every once in a while it would appear scampering across the back of my desk.

If you want detailed instructions about using the shoebox method let me know....but I think you've got the idea.

They are very cute.

 

[Candace]

I picked it up by the tail and removed it from the g.h. There's definately something wrong with it and I'll be very surprised if it's alive in the morning. It's one thing to put bait out and have the critters "disappear" but quite another to watch it in progress. I would surely be a vegetarian if I had to butcher my own food. And I don't care for veggies much. I'm just a softie at heart and these sort of things bother me for a long time.

 

[Eric Muehlbauer]

It doesn't look like a house mouse to me...looks more like a "field mouse", in the NY area its the white footed mouse, probably a related species where you are, Peromyscus is the genus. Cute, but capable of carrying hantavirus...which is very nasty. Unfortunately, 90% of the mice I catch in my house, right here in Queens, NYC, are white footed mice...and there have been (fortunately) rare cases of hantavirus in Long Island and Queens...so I do what I can to kill the buggers no matter how cute they are. My cats help...but I wish that they wouldn't be in the habit of leaving chewed off heads behind..........Take care, Eric

 

[DukeBoxer]

Oh man, you guys are too nice, when I was younger I worked at a garden center and me and a few of my friends used to go and pick up the pumpkins in the fields when they were ready. The guys picking them used to leave them in big piles and the best part was getting to the end of the pile and watching all the field mice scatter, lets just say not all the pumpkins made it back to the store to be sold, some got smashed in the field.

 

[Candace]

It doesn't look like a house mouse to me...looks more like a "field mouse"

Yes, it's a field mouse.

 

[TheLorax]

I feel for you Candace. I've watched what you watched and it left me feeling horrible. I've never used snap traps or poisons since. I didn't realize how inhumane they were.

If you poisoned it, it could end up in the food chain. Probably best to dispatch the next one you find in that condition and put it out of its misery.

This is a product we use that dispatches them instantly-
RatZapper Ultra
http://www.ratzapper.com/index.cfm
We may have purchased ours from this site but it has been a while so you might want to check online pricing.
These RatZappers are quick and humane and there is no risk of a higher order predator eating a poisoned rat and dying. Matter of fact, you can toss the dead rats over your fence allowing critters such as opossums and raptors to safely have a go at them.

Bait with chunky peanut butter but sometimes we bait with berries, raisins, canned cat food, or anything that we think they might go for. Stick it in small caps and slide them into the zapper.

Batteries last for about 8 kills. We get rechargeable batteries now.

They also have a smaller mousezapper model that works very well that we picked up at a hardware store.

 

[Grandma M]

While out in the corn field, when my brother was a kid, a mouse ran up his pant leg. The mouse really clawed and chewed up my brothers leg before my uncle could squeeze him to death. That was almost 40 years ago but my brother still has scarring on his leg. After that we stayed a long way back when they were picking up the piles of corn stalks left out in the field.

 

[littlefrog]

My old boss used to tell me of experiments they used to do with caffeine and rats. Evidently at least once a rat ran up one arm of the lab coat and did laps for a while...

I worked with lab mice for ... oh 10 years or so ... but don't anymore. I think rats are probably easier to work with. Last spring at the Michigan OS show I stunned my orchid growing friends by catching a mouse that was loose in the registration area. Took me about 15 seconds, faster than a cat. So I still have 'mad skilz' as the kids would say. I had it caught before the ladies were up on their chairs.

 

[goldenrose]

maybe Rob shouldmake a trip to CA, Sir Pied Piper of ST is on the way!

 

[Candace]

Lauren, that ratzapper gadget looks like something I'd be interested in. Is it horrible asking Santa for an electrocution device? How does it zap them exactly? Through their feet when they stand on the platform? I'd probably only get one so would still need the traps until I saw that the zapper worked.

I guess all the years of owning mice, hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs as a child has caught up with me.

 

[NYEric]

PM me if you want to know how we do that in the lab, it is easy but I don't think anybody else wants to hear it.

I want to read it here. :evil:
You people are too much. If you were incapacitated and a hungry field mouse caught you on the floor it would eat your eyeballs as hors doeurvs. Everything is food in nature.

 

[TheLorax]

Not horrible at all asking Santa for an electrocution device. I sent one to a personal friend as a birthday gift. He said it was the best gift he received.

I don't know exactly how it works however there are a lot of horse people using them because of feed present at the stables. Where there is feed, there is a rat. I know the dairy farmers are beginning to use them too. Most of the people around here are relying heavily on them because they do not want poisoned animals ending up in the belly of a hawk or fox or their neighbor's dog. Me, I want it to be over with as quick as if it was a bullet to the head and the RatZappers do just that.

Animal control will come and pick up any trapped stray or feral cats to be adopted/ humanely destroyed and they will deal with relocating opossums, fox, and such but they don't deal with rats. Everyone has to fend for him/herself in that department and these RatZappers have been out for a while and people have been using them.

Presumably it isn't all that complex of a device. What I do know is that it is quick, very quick. They're also simple to empty and we just walk them out to the field or toss them into the woodlands.

 

[biothanasis]

Hello all,

Candance: Using poison to eliminate rats and mice will just make them stronger and immune to this kind of poison after a few generations... So I guess you should definetely avoid it.... and as TheLorax said it would enter the food chain... What about your cats? I thought you have one or two, don't you? Or you can have a Kestrel... or an owl...(I am just kiddingoke
Good luck...!!!! I know it is difficult....

 

[Candace]

My cats are indoor only, so no threat to the outdoor rats and mice. I do worry about them winding up in the gut of a neighbors cat or dog, though.

I think I'll send the link to Santa for Christmas and if Santa doesn't come through then I can buy one on my own. I do see you can buy a "case" for it, so I'm assuming it doesn't do well with water, rusts, shorts out etc. I guess I'd also need that in a wet, g.h. environment.