The humble house mouse gets bad press, and not without good reason.

They are small, furry and not entirely unappealing, certainly they can make lovely pets, till they turn nasty and eat each other in a power struggle..however they are entirely incontinent, and never have the good grace to clean up after themselves. Nor do they buy in their own provisions, oh no.. the gnaw your vegetables, spill your oats about the cupboard and make free with your teabags, as house shares go.. I prefer people, at least they leave a note saying 'sorry finished the milk' and aren't usually wont to piss in the pantry..

Its been a good 2 years since I won war with my rodential contemporaries, the addition of two bloody thirsty killers to the household is, we hope deterrent, or pest control enough...

The day I discovered the mice was quite traumatic for me... put an animal out of context and it becomes immediately terrifying.. mice ranked slightly lower then the Toad that hopped into the kitchen one summer evening and rendered me, trapped on a chair, babbling incoherently and gesticulating at the amphibious infiltrator, a spectacle made all the more amusing by the fact that outside, when encountering, presumably the same toad in my garden, I just pick him up gently and move him out of harms way so I can mow the lawn (I flymo-ed one once, it made a god awful racket) needless to say, no toad nor frog has crossed my threshold since that day... a situation probably helped by my ex, who once whilst on his way to the bin managed to catch a miscellaneous amphibian on the toe end of his shoe and send it soaring majestically several feet through the air, before it landed indelicately and with a bellicose 'croak' went about its business.

Anyway yes.. the mice.

I boxed up all that was untarnished by their feasting, and threw the rest away.. and cleaned the pantry and kitchen to within several inches of their non mortal lives.. I identified the point of entry for the furry burglars.. and with a demented look in my eye.. and a cry of... 'this isn't rock and roll THIS is genocide' poured a heady cocktail of poisons down then hole... this wasn't ever going to be enough.. who eats blue wheat when theres a cornucopia of heady delights above floor level.. not mice thats for sure.

I blocked the hole... they gnawed through.


The only solution then was to lay traps, and poison...

I got through countless traps... evenings trying to read or heaven forbid watch the television were punctuated by the rhythmic 'CRACK.. *ricochet* THUD' of another mouse having its neck broken...

I never could bring myself to empty the traps... a spike goes through their head.. its a messy business and I have a weak stomach when it comes to rodent brains.

Friends recommended glue traps.. I couldn't bring myself to use them... cold hearted killing is one thing, willful torture is another... which brings me to the reason, I never considered 'humane traps'

My Grandmother, once had a mouse in her pantry... and decided far from kill it, she would ensnare it in a humane trap and release it to the wild far far from her house, safe in the knowledge that if you just put them in the garden, they come back.

We applauded this gentility, this tolerance and respect for life...and wished her luck with this endeavour.


6 months later, she cleaned the pantry out... and found the Humane trap stowed, where she had placed it, behind several jars of maturing chutney... she picked it up, and then.. when she heard the rattling sound from within..

She remembered... you have to CHECK humane traps and empty them.

My Mother was summoned, via the unusual practice of telephoning our next door neighbour (we didn't have a phone, and Grandma was in no state to hop on her moped)

Bravely, and not without a little amusement, my mother opened the trap.. and outside, emptied its contents onto the ground.. there, preserved beautifully, dehydrated, and not unlike Tutan Khamun was essentially a mummified mouse.

We considered the option of reconstitution, and were accused of being silly, worse still it was suggested we were cruel, harsh words from the mouth of a woman who had, starved to death an innocent field mouse which had taken refuge for the winter in her pantry..

From that day on I avowed.. never will I attempt genial dealings with the rodents, once more I encountered a humane mousetrap.. in my late teens, the cat had decided my bedroom was the ideal place to stow his live prey.. and safe in the knowledge I would never remember to check the neck-breaker traps - or indeed equally likely would have ended up injuring a hand or foot by neglecting to remember where they were.. we opted to use,yes, my grandmothers old humane trap... over several nights it became apparent, house mice are clever and long enough to escape these traps... so we devised an extension - to make it harder for it to escape, and so positioned it that it would make a noise against furniture when the mouse was trapped and devising its escape... at which point I believe the plan was to drop the whole set up out of the window...

And THEN.. at the point, where, watching idly from my armchair (I had essentially turned my room into a bedsit by this point) the mouse was making its approach to the trap.. ah HA we've got you NOW I thought.. THEN.. then the cat decided to kill it, and eat it..

So the moral I believe is, go straight in for the kill, too much kindness will kill slowly, too much ingenuity and thinking.. and someone or something else pips you to the post.


Oh and the mice situation here.. that was ultimately solved by having new flooring put down..