The Animal Rights and Rats dilema (Part II of the Vermin series)

  "Every animal (meaning us) has the right to defend itself.  Way back in the Pleistocene Era there were creatures who were higher  up on the food chain than we were.  They were ferocious and they would eat you. "

-Dan Mitchell (My husband's response for why it is okay to exterminate rats)

It's possible that I pontificate a tad  about animal welfare (someone in my family is groaning right now).  It started a few years ago when I read the book Skinny Bitch, and I won't describe the horrors that the book reveals of animal suffering , but suffice to say it turned me off to meat for the most part.  The problem lies not in my personal preferences, but in my need to convert others. 

We live on a hill, so we don't have it as bad as the valley folk, but that doesn't stop beady eyed monsters from traveling up land and into each hole and cranny of our home.  Currently there is an actual hole in the stone foundation that doesn't just allow light in.   For a long time we battled mice and they were gosh darned cute.  Many of them were baby mice who didn't move so fast.

The terriers would be fast asleep on say, the couch, and a weak, baby mouse would come stumbling out into the very middle of the great room.  Neither dog would flinch.  I would look right at those two useless dogs whose names mean "earth dog," who are supposed to by instinct go to ground and chase all manner of small rodent, and they would lie still as sacks with a helpless baby mouse teetering in front of their very noses.

Baby field mouse-makes you ache from the cuteness

"What do we pay you for?" I would ask to which one or the other would respond with a pointless snort or sigh and roll over for a belly scratch.

I didn't feel bad about the mice because we devised a humane method to deal with them.  We bought Have A Heart traps, at my insistence, and caught many, many of them.  It might have also been the same mouse over and over because we tended to release them in our back field giving them easy return access.

When our washing machine stopped working one day and the other water had been sputtering for months, we finally resolved (this after months of tiny rat turds in every kitchen drawer and small nests everywhere) that the hole chewed into the dryer ventilation system could only be the handy work of a larger rodent. It's not like we didn't see this coming.  There had been signs of a large rat on the premises; like the time we saw a shoe box length one scamper from our festering compost pile across the lawn to its "safe place" under the stone foundation.

The traps we set were futile.  This rat (and Dan kept referring to it as singular though I suspected there was at least a colony, if not a galaxy of them living in our walls)out smarted our traps every time.  Somehow it got away with the food with no repercussions. It (they) built nests of stray, paper and plastic (which meant it was also rummaging through our trash) in surprising areas of the house.  It/They had taken up permanent residence at Grapeview. 

In short,  animal welfare now conflicted with living standards.  Rat (s) had to go.  ...And lo, the d-Con was employed.  In my typical denial, I let Dan do the spreading.  He placed it inconspicuously behind cabinets and throughout the basement.  Yes, it did work.  I will spare you all but this.  I discovered said rat beneath the ladder of our great room (we have a loft which was my contribution to modernity), heaving, listless on its side spewing a bit of blood from its mouth.  There was a removal process which I then tried to ignore but later felt wracked with guilt about.  The rat wasn't dead when we removed it.

Looks tasty doesn't it?

Karma paid us back as Myrtle, our lackluster hunter, decided that the d-Con was a delectable treat.  After plying her with Hydrogen Peroxide (we had plenty available from the skunks) and counting the green pellets in her bile, we spent the remainder of the evening rushing her to the animal hospital and making her eat charcoal etc.

Thus Dan was able (along with some help from our son) to convince me we needed cats.  Rather than hate myself for using toxic poisons, I could reason that this was nature's way. Yes, the cats could be cruel to other animals, but they deserved to fulfill their feline destinies as well.

Smokey

Bear

A couple of things about cats:

1.  Never take free kittens-They can cost you upwards of $700.00 in vet bills.

2.  Litter boxes are heinous.

Are the vermin gone?  Who knows, but now we have two chatty cats that largely prefer being indoors and keep us up at night with loud meowing.   Oh, and Myrtle loves to hunt them, mercilessly.

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