I have caught over 40 mice over the past three years in the humane mouse trap my late wife insisted upon. We used to carry them over to the woods near our home in the trap, and release them as I sang “Born Free.”
But today, for the first time, I woke up to find a terrified baby mouse in the trap on a day when it is freezing (and snowing) outside. I do not want to care for a pet mouse; I have enough to worry about already. I do not want to put the little thing in a position where it is doomed to freeze—the spirit of my wife will start haunting me. I do not want to let it free into the house. It won’t warm up for at least a few more days. Now what?
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Ethics Alarms 
Get a cat. Yes, he or she will kill the mice, but it’ll be a quick death. As to the current mouse, if you don’t wish to care for it until the outdoor temps are above freezing, MAID (Man-Assistance in Dying) might be your best alternative. You’ll want to Google the quickest, most humane way to execute a mouse, though. (And put any food currently in cardboard or plastic into mouse-proof containers, lest the current mouse’s sisters, cousins & aunts hear about the good eating at your house.)Sincerely,Catherine McClarey(Still having a problem with logging into my Facebook account just reloading your blog posts instead of allowing me to continue a comment in the combox — sorry!)
Hardly. I had a cat that used them as play-toys. It had the most morbid torture he would use. It would torment the mouse endlessly. It would let it go and catch it again, over and over. Each time it would give the mouse a bite but not the coup de grace yet. Eventually the mouse would stop running and just cower in terror once it lost the spirit to live. At that point the cat would extend one claw and poke it. At first it would take a few to get it to move. Eventually the mouse just stopped running even when poked, and he’d finally crush the mouse’s skull in a kill bite.
He was a killing machine though. Not only did I not have any mice or rats, he also eliminated the moles and gophers in the lawn.
I now have a lab, and he eliminates them fast. He gives them one bite and swallows them whole. No mice or rats, but he has no interest in moles or gophers.
“it’ll be a quick death”
Huh? Have you ever owned a cat? Maybe your cats dispatched mice with ruthless efficiency. Mine have always been very circumspect, peripatetic, or even disinterested in the time it takes to dispose of mice.
I agree, though, a cat might just keep them from getting in the house.
As for this one, I have tossed mice out into the frigid temperatures of Minnesota, leaving them to fend for themselves. I figure they know what they are doing out in the wild. Of course, that is how they came into the house in the first place. Maybe you drop it off close to your nearest Harris-Walz yard sign and let them seek shelter from there.
-Jut
Forty mice over the last three years? It’s time to face the reality of the situation, you have a serious mice problem.
My elderly Dad’s and Mom’s house was infested with mice and they were both constantly sick with some sort of nasty respiratory bug, it seemed like they caught absolutely everything that was going around no matte what they did. My brothers and sisters and I went through and cleaned up the house one end to the other and got rid of the existing mice, yanked the carpeting, installed tile floors, bagged up anything that could house mice and got rid of it, and called an exterminator to put together a long term plan to get rid of the ones we couldn’t find and keep them out! The entire house is MUCH more healthy, smelled better, and they don’t constantly catch all those nasty respiratory bugs, simply put, they are healthier.
The mice are invading your space and mice can make it an unhealthy space. Hire someone to get rid of them and block up the places they are getting in. It is well worth the dollars in the long run.
Have no mercy.
P.S. Don’t allow dog food to sit for Spuds, anything he doesn’t eat after being fed immediately pickup. Mice LOVE dog food; my parents were essentially feeding them because their two dogs were messy eaters and the food lingered in areas the mice could get it.
Call animal control
Every house on our cul-de-sac has battled mice for as long as I’ve lived here.We are right by a field, and my neighbors agree that paying for an exterminator is a waste of money—the mice are back almost immediately. Spuds keeps the numbers down: in the single year in which we had no cat or dog, the little bastards would be absolutely fearless. The 30 years of Jack Russells were as effective as the cat. Spuds has no interest in mice at all, but his smell and presence is enough. That trap had been out for weeks.
The trap was outside?
Inside, on the kitchen floor.
It’s frustrating. If the vermin hadn’t gotten in, whatever worries you have for it now, it would have faced otherwise without you even knowing.
At the end of the day it’s going to be released back to nature- you’re concern is you think releasing it now doesn’t give it a fighting chance versus caring for it until some day you think it might have a better chance.
I imagine mouse infant mortality is an incredibly elevated number so it’s odds with or without you are pretty low regardless of the options.
The shed seems like a reasonable place to put it so it can survive only slightly longer before succumbing to predators or hunger. As for the cold- I’ve almost never heard of furry creatures freezing to death outside of genuinely extreme weather events.
And patch up the holes in your wall and floors come spring…?
The burden of taking care of it in the meantime is it will never learn to fend for itself so you’d be putting an “untrained” mouse back in the wild.
So:
1) pet it is
2) let it go now knowing without your help it is likely doomed to a short existence though not much shorter than letting it go later
3) let it go later knowing even with your help it will only slightly less likely be doomed to a short existence.
4) let it go now because your caretaking efforts to release it later will likely be in vain.
Feed it to your dog. Other than that, do what you always do, unless you have a neighbor who has a snake or lizard? They might want it to feed it to their pet. Buy some electric pest chasers and use peppermint or cinnamon essential oil to repel them. Put cotton balls soaked with it where you see droppings and in your car floorboards. (Be careful with this because the oil will irritate your eyes if you touch your face after, it can also damage plastic) the scent doesn’t last too long so you’ll have to replace it once a week or so.
There is never, ever, one baby mouse. Call the terminator. Quick!
Do you have a shed? A mouse can live a pretty soft life in a shed for the winter. Moderate food supply, cut off come spring.
ooo. I DO have a shed!
Peppermint spray has worked well for us around the inside and outside walls of the house and inside the shed. Prior to discovering this trick, we found mice nests in seat cushions, cots, and even lattice panels used for my art shows! YUCK! A gallon of the stuff lasts quite a while for periodic reapplications.
When I went to put on my winter boots for the first this year, I found one of them partially filled with dry dog food.
We had someone mouse proof the house. Putting in barriers to prevent them from getting in. Alot of steel wool in small spaces. and small metal grates.
Humane euthanasia. (Double checking that I did not spell that “human”.)
My dog managed to make all my birthdays memorable for the wrong reasons (including the day she died). On one of them she caught a mother rabbit in her burrow and ate the head before we caught her. I ended up with 5 baby bunnies no one could care for and that would die shortly if left alone. So I put them in a plastic bag, wrapped it around the car exhaust and let it run for about 20 minutes until they all asphyxiated. Beats breaking their necks or feeding them to my overly excited dog at that moment.