Musings from the Angel of Death

The little black organic capsules started showing up in the basement shortly after I found them rolling around under the recycling bin. The calling card of tiny, nominally cute woodland rodents seeking respite and victuals in my glorious hovel.

Our glorious hovel, I might add.

Home Despot has an impressive array of devices that despatch vermin at remarkably affordable prices. While I was tempted by a battery powered device that detects and electrocutes unsuspecting stow-aways, and a compact live/starvation trap appealed to my inner animal lover, I ultimately settled on the time tested, spring loaded, mouse trap that has been in mass production since before grandfather was a boy (or 1894, whichever came first... I loose track so easily).


(Honestly, if trap is going use electrocution as a method of dispatchment, it had better a) supply enough current to vaporize the target b) connect to my home wireless network and post statistics conveniently on a webpage for my perusal. At least vaporize. It's 2011 and vaporization is not part of everyday life. What is wrong with us?)

I set the traps around the basement, including on shelves (Small quantities of poop everywhere, just like in kindergarden and the asylum). I took care to personalize them so that the any mice that might possibly pause to read them would find them enticing, then I turned out the lights and hoped for the best.

I had to hope for a long time, as we left for the holidays without successfully catching any mice, or with the traps having been obviously disturbed.

A week later, I returned to find mice and one trap set, sans bait.

Thus, I began to meditate on the trigger mechanism and it's connection to the bait. The trigger on spring traps has a curl of metal with teeth and holes in it. This serves to provide a surface for the bait to adhere, and also, more subtly, means that there is more surface that must be licked/nudged, thus increasing the chances that the trap will be triggered.

My original bait was creamy peanut butter. My dog can lick creamy peanut butter off a knife with out pushing on it very hard. Maybe a small creature could do the same, I wondered? Maybe I could improve the trap by improving the bait?

I decided to try to leverage the rodent hoarding instinct by baiting the traps with dog food glued to the trap with peanut butter. I reasoned that removing the kibble from the trigger would be enough force to trigger the trap. I imagined finding mice with big bits of dog food en-maw, so to speak.

This morning, I discovered two traps that were free of both kibble and peanut butter, and unsprung, and two traps with mangled small furry creatures that -did not- appear to be dispatched in a greedy attempt to pilfer kibble, to the contrary, the traps triggers were quite clean... the perps were nailed when they got too greedy and went after the peanut butter in the curl of the trigger. The kibble was safely inside the deceased.

Tagging and bagging the evenings catch, I wondered if a) there were any more critters, and b) if I was taking the wrong approach with the bait. Instead of focusing on hoarding, maybe I should be focusing on how long the mouse is fiddling with the trigger. Like Russian Roulette (or President for Life), the best way to loose is to play more often. I took a dollop of peanut butter, and mixed oatmeal, steal cut oats, and cornmeal in until it was much more thick and textured, and again, set the traps.

I gave the left over grain-goo-bait-slop to The Dog, as a sort of lick test. It takes him a long time to clean a plate covered in it.

We'll see what the morning brings.