wisdom / soft spot
"I can promise you milk and cookies, but if the oven's broke, you just get milk."-Ninth-grader Urail King, in the film version of Freakonomics
***
In other news, I'm not much of a killer. Steph discovered when she was here last weekend that we had a mouse on the loose; she spotted one running behind the kitchen sink just before bedtime. So I put out some traps, and a day later when I was pointing out the traps to Josh one of them was not where I'd placed it. Turns out, the mouse had caught a leg in the trap and had dragged himself under the fridge. We fished him out with a coat hanger, and Josh turned it loose in the yard--more towards the neighbor's house than ours.
A day later I decided to make sandwiches and discovered a perfectly mouse-sized hole in the bread. I assumed, optimistically, that the hole was made before we'd caught the mouse in the trap.
This weekend, Josh left some biscuits on the stove, and discovered that we apparently still had a mouse problem.
I put the trap out again, and discovered tonight another mouse, smashed midway in the trap, but still twitching around. The jaws of these traps aren't super powerful, so it's possible that he was only smashed and not broken. Not sure; the front half seemed to be moving around more than the back half. I considered flushing him down the toilet. Instead, I let him loose in the alley. If he's damaged, a cat will get him, or a bird. If not, maybe he'll choose another home to invade. That seems slightly more sporting than a watery death in the sewer.
I set out another trap tonight, just in case there's yet another mouse to deal with. I really, really don't want a mouse problem to turn into a mice problem. I'm not sure whether the soft spot is in my heart or in my skull.
***
In other news, I'm not much of a killer. Steph discovered when she was here last weekend that we had a mouse on the loose; she spotted one running behind the kitchen sink just before bedtime. So I put out some traps, and a day later when I was pointing out the traps to Josh one of them was not where I'd placed it. Turns out, the mouse had caught a leg in the trap and had dragged himself under the fridge. We fished him out with a coat hanger, and Josh turned it loose in the yard--more towards the neighbor's house than ours.
A day later I decided to make sandwiches and discovered a perfectly mouse-sized hole in the bread. I assumed, optimistically, that the hole was made before we'd caught the mouse in the trap.
This weekend, Josh left some biscuits on the stove, and discovered that we apparently still had a mouse problem.
I put the trap out again, and discovered tonight another mouse, smashed midway in the trap, but still twitching around. The jaws of these traps aren't super powerful, so it's possible that he was only smashed and not broken. Not sure; the front half seemed to be moving around more than the back half. I considered flushing him down the toilet. Instead, I let him loose in the alley. If he's damaged, a cat will get him, or a bird. If not, maybe he'll choose another home to invade. That seems slightly more sporting than a watery death in the sewer.
I set out another trap tonight, just in case there's yet another mouse to deal with. I really, really don't want a mouse problem to turn into a mice problem. I'm not sure whether the soft spot is in my heart or in my skull.
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