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[TD1]

Eh, I prefer choosing the possibly inhumane option over the definitely inhumane option.

[Egan_BW]

In some random field somewhere is certainly a less hostile environment to find oneself in than a house with cats.

[ArchAIngel]

I'm going to be honest, the savings on kibble and house upkeep mean I just let my cats do cat things. The only time I've felt guilty is when a kitten did a full...


Something like five laps around the house chasing a mouse until it fell over then came and meowed at me to say "Human! The toy stopped! Fix it, that was fun!"


And then I felt bad enough to put the mouse outside. It was alive, just terminally exhausted. And probably terrified out of its wits.


Kitty did not know how to kill things at all.


The other cat we have doesn't leave dead mice anywhere though. He just eats them, former street cat who came off the street fat as fuck and uninjured. Very good hunter.

[hector13]

It may have just been playing with it. Housecats, or cats generally getting enough food from their owners, indulge in their hunting instincts with prey, whereas a cat that actually requires hunting to get food will kill prey quickly with as little energy expenditure as possible.

I had a cat that was particularly great at hunting, but it would bring it back to the house to play with it. Mice were most common, but there were also birds, frogs, and baby bunnies.

I also recall one time finding the back half of a mouse stuck to the kitchen counter by viscera one morning, which totally put me in the mood for breakfast that day…

[Lord Shonus]

A lot of "playing" with prey is literally the cat not knowing how to kill quickly. A lot of hunting tactics are instinctual, but a mother cat usually does teach some aspects, which a kitten raised by humans doesn't get.

[KittyTac]

My first time [I think] there were only glue traps in stock. Unfortunately I soon realized that you essentially condemn the mice to very slow death, so I had the "great idea" to lessen their suffering by drowning the trap in bucket before disposing of them, do not recommend the experience.

Not sure who the "humane" traps are for, but I would bet that 99% of the time their humanness translates into this

You can rescue mice from glue traps! https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Live-Mouse-from-a-Sticky-Trap

[jipehog]

The 'humane' traps are for my family, I guess? We caught 'em, shipped 'em off to a field, released 'em.

I can see this work if you find them before they dehydrate, but i'd rather use more direct approach. Meanwhile in the city, most people will just put them in plastic bag and throw them in the dumpster, so either they suffocate or rip the plastic bag and become someone else problem.

You can rescue mice from glue traps! https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Live-Mouse-from-a-Sticky-Trap

Why would I want to do that? I have zero qualms about disposing of pest, I just rather avoid unnecessarily prolonging the process.

How the hell do you find a video with only 7 views?

Google magic..

[scriver]

I had a cat that was particularly great at hunting, but it would bring it back to the house to play with it. Mice were most common, but there were also birds, frogs, and baby bunnies.

Mine usually brings back rodents, sometimes birds, and the occasional summertime lizards and copper snakes. We found a headless hare-kit behind the house once, no idea if it actually was hers though. Most hard to accept was the squirrels, they're way cuter than they have any right to be

[Mathel]

I've seen mouse traps that were a cage enterable through what was effectively a chinese finger trap. A mouse could climb in, but could not climb out. There was a door in the bottom for removin a trapped mouse.

Whether it is more humane depends on how often you check on the trap. If you don't do it often enough, you starve the mouse to death, which is more cruel than decaptiation.



We use plastic spring traps though, as increasing the mouse population outside our house is not our goal.

[Grim Portent]

I prefer live traps and releasing the mice back outside. Lots of fields, woods and gardens around here for them to live in. Normally only get mice in the house that have been brought in by the cat, but we did have mice in the garage where we kept some unsecured food like crisps and kibble. Caught and released the mice and we put all the food in boxes and haven't had a recurrence.

We do have rats living in the garden, under the shed we think, which were attracted by the feed in the adjacent chicken run, but now the feed is in a rat-proof container they should move on sooner or later.



I had my corn snake out in the back garden today, it's warm and sunny here at the moment, so my reptiles are getting some outdoors time. Was sitting in a chair by the pond and decided to let Loki slither close to the pond, I assumed he'd have a sniff, maybe touch the water and recoil because it was cold. Instead he just kept slithering out of my hands into the water, gliding across some plants and then diving under the water.

He spent a good 5-10 minutes exploring the water. He seemed particularly charmed by the water feature, sitting his head under the falling water for a while. He eventually got bored or cold and slithered out, at which point I scooped him up and carried him to a sunny spot to dry off. First time he's ever done something like that, but then it's also the first time I've given him the opportunity to do more than just noodle across grass and through flowerbeds. He hates being in the bathtub, but I suppose the pond was more stimulating.

[Egan_BW]

Nice!

[Il Palazzo]

Goddamned geoduck. It just looks so... fake.

[King Zultan]

The only time we've used a live mouse trap is because the hamster got out and that was the only way to catch it.

Also the last time I saw a mouse in my house it ran into my bathroom and I lost sight of it, a little bit later when I went to go to the bathroom I found that the mouse had apparently jumped into the toilet and drowned, so I did the only proper thing and flushed it.

[hector13]

I spent an inordinate amount of my morning arguing with people in BBC comments before coming to my senses.

[pisskop]

but...  theyre wrong