About a week ago, for the first time, I saw a mouse (or maybe a rat) scurry across my kitchen floor at night. The pesticide people spray once a month, but that's apparently only for insects. So I told the front office, and they said they'd send a maintenance guy around "to put down traps."
The maintenance guy showed up holding two of these glue board traps. If you've never seen them before, they're basically a think plastic pan filled with glue. You can bait them with food, or just put them in a common area where the rodents traffic.
The rodent gets stuck in the glue, and they usually die in one of two ways: starvation/dehydration or they try to chew their own leg off and bleed to death. Charming, huh?
I'm no bleeding heart or anything. I used to hunt when I was younger, and I don't have a lot of love for a pest that's invading my living space. But I also know that rodents have fairly sophisticated nervous systems, and they're most likely capable of a fair amount of pain and suffering. No need to torture the things. So I thanked the maintenance guy and then promptly threw the glue traps in the trash.
If I'm going to kill the rodents, it'll be with good old fashioned snap traps, which have a much better chance of killing them instantly.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
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1 comment:
You can use glue traps humanely, just check them regularly. This is what I have been doing, since stores around here since the old fashioned snap traps have become hard to come by.
You can actually catch a mouse in a glue trap and then set it free outside using vegetable oil and working it loose. Rubbing alcohol dissolves the glue faster, but the mouse might try to gobble it up, poisoning itself in the process.
If setting them loose isn't an option, you can always dispatch the mouse in a humane fashion as well. You don't have to let them suffer on the trap.
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