aggienaut: (Default)

   Yesterday I got home from Ye Old Factory after an overnight shift, at 11:30am. I proceeded to take a nap on the couch.

   Around 14:00 I was rudely awakened by a mouse loudly squeaking. I didn't want to get up and knew from past experience there'd be no hope of confronting the culprit, I'd just see it scuttling behind the oven. So instead I just loudly exclaimed "SHUT UP MOUSE!!"

   That worked for only about a minute before it started up again, so I got up, it was probably about time to anyway. Investigation revealed the mouse was actually in the toaster, his leg suck on the toast elevator. This was an interesting circumstance but there was no simple solution. The most obvious, that were this a computer game I'd call "delightfully evil" and do in a moment to an enemy, would be to activate the toaster and toast the hapless creature to death. But this is not a video game and I am not a sadist towards animals, that seemed cruel and inhumane. Plus, then I'd have a toasted mouse in my toaster!!!

   But how to extract it? My favorite method of disposing of mice is somewhat avoidant -- I have live capture traps and when I get one I like to put it in my greenwaste bin. I assume it can happily live there off the bugs frolicking on rotting lemons in a sea of coffee grinds, until its pitched into the greenwaste truck where it will either be taken off to some greenwaste paradise, or possibly crushed, but ::shrug:: that's not on me and everything dies eventually. So I was contemplating maybe taking the toaster to the greenwaste bin and shaking it upside down into it in hopes the mouse popped out, when the mouse popped out. And in half a second had disappeared down the gap behind my kitchen cupboards (this place unfortunately is a mouse's dream with the available gaps).

   So now this mouse is still alive in my house and I have a toaster it may have pooped and peed in. How do you clean a toaster? Maybe I should take a bath and bring the toaster that's a classic yeah? ahaha. If I had, like Paul "Maud dib" * Atriedes from Dune, had spice induced foreknowledge of future events, I suppose I would have just tossed the whole god damn toaster in the trash bin. It's a $40 toaster but not sure how I can possibly clean the insides it might as well be trash. (* "Maud dib" apparently means "desert mouse" in-universe, maybe it was the mouse that had foreknowledge of future events after getting into my spice cabinet)

aggienaut: (Default)

   We have a bit of a rodent plague here right now. It's not as bad down here as it is in New South Wales but still, I seem to have at least one mouse living in every room. They're always darting between furniture out of the corner of my eye, I hear them chewing on things all night and lie there hoping they're not in the act of ruining something, and in the morning I find their poop all over the table and counters. I realize now what a "bread box" is actually for -- and not having one I've taken to storing my bread in the microwave.

   Legendary cat Cato doesn't actually live with me unfortunately, he lives at work. Every now and then I glance outside and see the neighbor cat Bailey walking by, and throw open the door calling out to him "Bailey come patrol for mice!" And, lo, he immediately changes direction and walks right in, and then he proceeds to walk the perimeter of my house sniffing around at all the nooks mice could be in. As he passes the kitchen I'll open the undersink cabinets and he'll walk in and sniff about and then come out. Once he's done a thorough inspection he proceeds to the door to be let out. He does this so purposefully it's like he's a pest control professional just doing a routine call, and it really makes me think about how really this is exactly why we domesticated cats in the first place and maybe it's deeply ingrained in their instincts as essentially a job.

   This morning after hearing particularly insistent gnawing in the kitchen I traced it to a box of pasta I hadn't known was there (it was among some things my Russian friend had given me before evacuating last year), I quickly tried to close the box to trap the mouse but it successfully lept out.
   Ereyesterday I heard rustling from the small box I put recycling in in the kitchen. I also went to quickly pick up the box but much to my alarm I fekt something strugging against the hand I'd placed under the box -- it had been under the box. I whipped my hand away doublequick because I'm not keen at all to get infected with something by a mouse bite.

   I've been lucky on occasion though, I did successfully catch one in a box, and in a stroke of remarkable luck (good luck for me, particulary bad luck for the mouse), I heard rustling in a box of crackers, I quickly picked it up but the mouse lept out. flying through the air right into a pint glass half full of water, from which it was unable to extricate itself.

   Now many people might find this very convenient indeed, since drowning is a common method of killing mice, but it feels a bit barbaric to me. I'm actually a big softy in fact, or maybe I can blame it on my vague pseudo-buddhist philisophies, I feel I cannot kill anything _directly_, but I can feed things to other things because the circle of life. I've attempted to feed mice to Cato in the past and have wished I had a snake just to feed the mice to it (though apparently feeding live mice to snakes is illegal in Australia, which.. comeon people, in nature things eat eachother, you can't deny the cycle of life!). My current preferred method of disposing of mice is to simply place them in the greenwaste bin. If it's mostly full of stuff I dont' worry too much, but currently it's mostly empty and there's two mice living in there, and now I find myself looking around for some past-its-prime fruit or vegetables to throw out to feed the mice in the Greenwaste Gulag. It may well be that they will be crushed by a trash compactor in the greenwaste truck but, well, that's still easier on my concience than if I offed them myself.

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