As most people who pay even the minutest amount of attention to this blog know, I have issues with animals.
Budapest’s latest battle scar
There are a lot of facets to this problem, which range from dealing with my feral cat Budapest and her near-daily scuffles to doing battle with slugs (indoors) to run-ins with all manners of wild things in Tennessee Valley, the place I often hike at dusk near my house. But by far my biggest animal problem over the last few years, since I moved back to Mill Valley, has been the constant presence of mice and voles in my house.
This is a multipronged issue because roughly half the rodents I find in my house arrive here against their will in the jaws of a feline. Three separate times during the last week I ransacked my entire place while chasing a vole around and trying to catch it in a used yogurt container while Budapest stared at me scornfully from her relaxed perch on the sofa, après hunt. Contrary to what a lot of people think about cats, they aren’t all that interested in killing things. They like the chase. I am often gifted with a dazed but basically uninjured animal that Budapest found out in the wild, and when that happens, I have a catch-and-release policy.
I understand that this policy is not ideal.
Actual vole I caught (and freed) last week
I know that it’s not good for birds and mice to be in a cat’s mouth for even a moment. And yes, my cats do sometimes-to-often kill them. And I know that I am a horrible, horrible person for being a purported animal lover while allowing my ruthless, serial killing asshole cat roam free to singlehandedly destroy the songbird population of America. I’ve read the statistics. I’ve seen the videos where they attach a camera to a cat’s collar and track its disturbing behavior as it terrorizes the neighborhood. I have been told by numerous people (including the entire audience of Elephant Journal) that if I had a decent bone in my body, my cats would be “supervised” and always indoors.
But I live in a tiny, tiny little cottage in a quiet little parcel of woods, and my cat Budapest will single-paw-edly 5150 me within 24 hours of forced inside-ness. I’ve tried and tried and tried to “extinction burst” her into being a peacable, decorative cat, but her nature is invincible and my nerves, I’m afraid, are not. I’m pretty sure she is biologically half raccoon, which means that nearly every night I have to pin her down and apply ointment to her face after her latest epic catfight. At any rate, she can’t be kept inside. I know that by letting her out, I am risking her health, safety and the very lives of hundreds of wild animals smaller (and some slightly larger) than her. But Budapest is not staying inside with me. Because I am a freelance writer, and I work from home.
Also, she will not use a kitty litter. So.
Anyway, a few days ago I was woken up in the middle of the night by a scuffle in the kitchen that turned out to be my cat uselessly taunting a pretty ugly little mouse that I had watched her stalk under the heater all evening. Out of curiosity, I opened the heater cover and found the makeshift entrance to what I can only assume is an opulent mouse palace nestled comfortably in the warmest spot in the house. Shudder.
I believe in live and let live when it comes to wildlife, but with mice in your house, you really have to draw the line somewhere (remember the Black Plague?) and I draw the line with the potential to chew through heater wiring. So I reluctantly notified my landlord, who called the exterminator.
One thing you should know about the exterminator my landlord uses is that she is pretty much the cutest thing in the world. And yes, she is a she. Christina should star in a sitcom about a spunky, corn-fed Iowan farm girl who decides to try her luck in the big city and can only find a job working for Terminix, so she makes the best of it and becomes the kindest darn exterminator there every was. I adore her and get really excited when she comes by every six months or so to help me with my various and ongoing critter problems.
Christina laid it out for me. She said, you need to get rid of these mice. They aren’t good. She said, we need to set poison. You can imagine the dichotomy of hearing the sweetest Iowan farmgirl you’ve ever met tell you she is going to lay poison in your house. I demurred. “How about Havahart traps?” I pleaded. Havahart traps are supposedly-humane rodent traps that will lure and capture the animal without killing or hurting it. You have to then take the trap elsewhere and let it go. One thing I have learned about mice and voles is that they have an amazing sense of homing. If you simply free them in the back yard, they come back in the house lickidy split. If you liberate them down the street, they will find their way back PDQ. But if you actually get in your car, like a crazy person, and drive the car at least a few miles away, and then spin them around really fast, chances are they won’t come back.
So Christina finally acquiesced to letting me lay Havahart traps, and off I went to the hardware store, to purchase them. That’s when things really went downhill.
The Appalachian, crystal methy hardware store lady sized me up right away and decided she was having none of me. “You want what!?”
Spelunking for voles under the heater.
“Havahart traps.”
“Why?
“To get rid of the mice.”
“Why can’t you use poison?”
“Because I don’t really want to kill them.”
Visible eyeroll. “You a vegan?”
“Er, no.”
“Look, mice are not in danger of going extinct. There are a lot of them. They reproduce like crazy, and they are filthy. They carry diseases. They are vermin.”
“I understand. That’s why I want them out of my kitchen.”
“But you don’t want to kill them.”
“No.”
“And you’re not vegan.”
“That’s right.”
This went on for a while. I became increasingly embarrassed about my unmoored ethical foundation and she continued to bully me, unchecked. She explained that Havahart traps are really hard to set and even harder to empty, that you have to keep a constant eye on them, that I would be busy all day long operating a mouse express once I began, and that she didn’t understand why I couldn’t just buy what they call “snap-traps,” like everyone else.
They are called snap-traps because they make a horrible SNAP!!! when a mouse gets caught in one. And by “caught,” I mean beheaded. They are grisly affairs that result in blood and guts and murder. And I am not that girl. I am not the girl who is going to pick up, clean up or even look at a used snap-trap. Nope. Not going to.
Yup, I’ll eat meat. Yup, I’ll let my cat roam unchecked. Yup, I’m a huge hypocrite. But at some point, this is not about my moral sanctimony. It’s about my willingness to deal with gore. What can I say, I’m a total wuss. And I’m still not emptying a snap-trap. I’ll drive a mouse to the W Hotel every day if I have to. That’s my lot in life, and I accept it.
