Monday, February 9, 2009

Weekend at the Farm








I went to the farm this weekend in an effort to be more productive, escape distractions, etc.  It worked only kinda sorta.  
What I did or did not get done is not really what is important here.  What is important here, and what I want to talk about, are rat/mouse traps.  I'm not talking about the Tom & Jerry-metal bar-slamming down over the neck mouse traps.  I'm talking about sticky pads as seen above.  "Last Step".  First of all, there's a rattlesnake stuck in it.  I cannot even imagine how terrifying it would be to deal with that.  Luckily, we don't have rattlesnakes in Hubbard.  We do have tons of field and door mice.  
The problem with these traps is that they don't really kill the mice.  They just stick them to the pad.  If you are unlucky, you end up stumbling upon a mouse with a dislocated shoulder, half a second away from chewing his arm off in an attempt to escape.  Unfortunately, his or her entire body is also stuck the pad, so they end up starving to death (or bleeding to death, internally, from their broken shoulder?)
Now, I've been one of the unlucky ones who has come across a still alive mouse on the pad, more than a few times.  It is BRUTAL.  You have to kill them, obviously.  They're in excruciating pain.  But I mean, come on!  
What if giants set these things all over the place to trap us?  Wouldn't you much rather just get stepped on?  Or poisoned?