City Living

There is one thing that makes you realize that city-living sucks and that is rodents.   Between the poodle size rats on the platforms of the subways, those nasty black squirrels in the park and this little mouse I saw running around the other day, I'm ready to turn in my metrocard and move out to the country where you are critter free.

 

The old saying is that if you can invent abetter moustrap you will make millions.  Now I thought this was always some stupid saying that they threw out at business conferences but I realize now that it's not a joke and somebody could make a lot of money because like baseball's steroid policy they keep inventing smarter mice.  

 

The options now are pretty limited and really are no different than they were 20 years ago.

 

- the traditional snap-trap, I've seen enough cartoons to know how this ends.   Basically at some point in the night I walk into the kitchen for a glass of water and proceed to get my toe snapped by one of these contraptions.  My other fear is that if I do get so lucky and catch one of them, I'll be cleaning up mouse-goo all over my kitchen floor plus I just know that putting a piece of swiss-cheese on the trap is the equivalent of expecting a bear to get tempted by honey.

 

- the glue trap which catches them but you are forced to hear them scream and eventually start to eat at their own limbs.   I know that If I was stuck under a huge boulder, I'd have no issue carving off my own arm but I probably wouldn't do it with my own teeth

 

- The ultrasonic high-pitched frequency plug-in thing.   I'm 100% sure your electricity bill goes up and I'm 99% sure you aren't scaring anything away with it.

 

- The hybrid glue-trap and snap-trap.    It looks like an oversize roach motel in the shape of a tunnel.  The mouse enters one side, gets caught and SPLAT the snap-trap closes down on it.    The postives are that maybe the entire thing is self-contained, so you'd only have to throw the entire thing out that is if the mouse is actually dumb enough to go into this plastic tunnel willingly.

 

- A Chinaman to sit on a stool right about the little mouse hole with a baseball bat just waiting for the thing to come peaking out, at which the Asian will pummel it like he's Sadaharu Oh (his father was Chinese) 

 

- A cat which might be a great solution but comes with a major problem because even if you catch the mouse you are stuck with a fucking cat.