#281 Leave You Can Never

Some have been put off by my recent description of mouse trapping. The tableau of the business end of a mousetrap knocking the teeth out of the head of the poor pitiful pest was a little too much to bear. To which I reply, it could be worse. Back in the old days, I used the classic wire and wood mouse trap. Stapled securely to a piece of wood was an incredibly strong spring. One end of the spring turned into a rectangular loop of pure backbreaking rat death. You placed another wire rod over the retracted backbreaker and locked it under the trip plate, on which you mounted a little piece of cheese. When the mouse tried to take the cheese, the trigger plate would move, the retaining rod would pop up, and the backbreaker would snap down. Perfectly good idea in theory. But lo the unwary or clumsy hunter. Setting a mousetrap required far more dexterity than getting drunk and pointing a high-powered rifle at a bear feasting on mountain blueberries. Because mousetraps were as sensitive as a nerve in a cavity. One false move when you were fixing the restraining rod under the trigger and bam, black and blue thumbnail for a week. So suffice it to say when Ralph Waldo Emerson told us that if a person could build a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to his door, it made a lot of sense. Cause the world was tired of beating its digits all to hell setting the old ones. Also, I’m guessing, where Waldo was had a lot of mice and he was sick and tired of bunging his fingers.
I was once encouraged by a roommate who was squeamish about backbreakers to buy one of those mouse hotel things. Seemed like a good idea. The rat hotel is a cardboard box that’s open on either end. If it were a human hotel I’d think it was lacking in amenities, like you know, four walls. You put your bait inside. The trick is, the surface of the rat hotel, instead of being a nice shag carpet with generations of baby boogers encrusted in it, is an extremely sticky mat. Once a mouse sets foot in it and stops for a split second, he’s trapped. One problem with the hotel Rat-ifornia. And it’s not just that if you’re a rat, you can never leave. It’s that steely knifes or no, you just can’t kill the beast anyhow. The beast dies of starvation. Now, would you rather die of starvation over a long period or have your neck snapped in a millisecond? Suppose two of your friends came into the hotel to help and they got caught. And you all were starving together and finally in desperation you started to consume the only source of food available. Suffice it to say, when I showed my roommate the Hannibal Lector rats she conceded with a mumble that indeed the old traps were better suited to our rat removal needs. Then, by way of punctuation, she puked all over my shirt. Ah, the path unbeaten.
America, ya gotta love it.