Despite me being a modern sort of a woman, in our house there is a pretty cliched division of labour. Mostly. The bloke generally cuts the firewood, looks after the garden, backs trailers, mows lawns and so on, and I try to keep things relatively clean and tidy inside, do the groceries, feed the chookies and administer the bills. However, there are some clear deviations from the traditional model. He, for example, is a far better cook and does much of the cooking (and I cannot seem to get my head around putting away clothes). Importantly, I am in charge of any rodent control. The bloke is not called the bloke for nothing; he drives a Hilux and taught me how to dive for paua. If a chook gets sick he is the one to deal with it. However, he draws the line at rodents, and after a decade in DOC and now Forest & Bird it comes a lot easier to me.
There was the time a rat created an underground superhighway below our chookhouse, leaving me to dispatch the perpetrator; this winter it's been mice. Nobody likes admitting they have rodents, but rats and mice have been commensalists with humans for a long time and will no doubt continue to be for some time yet. In winter, rodents head toward houses for extra warmth and shelter, and I recall various flats in my life where I went to sleep listening to the pitter patter of little feet in the walls and ceilings.
We have a laundry that at some stage has been added on to the outside of the house. You can shut a door and nothing that reaches the laundry could possibly go further, but still the little mice have discovered a hole near where a pipe comes out of the floor in a laundry cupboard. They can't actually go anywhere from there (if the cupboard door is closed), but they can hang out in the cupboard and that's plenty close enough, thank you. Hence the need for mouse control. Choosing not to have a cat, and with a dog that's even afraid of the chooks, our weapon of choice is the little grey plastic mousetraps you buy at the supermarket with a bit of peanut butter for bait. As soon as I started setting the traps I started catching mice. They suffocate almost straight away and I felt absolutely fine about emptying the traps.
Until...
I came home one day and opened the cupboard door to find that one of my traps had moved, and as I peered closer, was STILL moving, a tiny mouse wriggling as hard as it could to get the trap off. That mouse must have been a fast mover because instead of the trap snapping on his neck and therefore his windpipe, it had caught this mouse across the nose. I was horrified and immediately removed him from the trap. He sat calmly in my hand (probably out of sheer terror), and his wee face had been quite badly squished. I, the great white mouse-hunter, was appalled and quite upset.
House mouse - Nature's Pic Images
At this point in time, given that the mousetrap was intended to kill him anyway, many would have dispatched him. However, I thought since he had cheated death on the trap it seemed only fair to give him a second chance. I dug out a shoebox, tore up strips of newspaper, tried to get him to drink a few drops of water out of a beer bottle cap and placed some cheese and grain in the box. Every so often I went outside to check on him, until an hour or so later I found him dead, probably from the shock.
Some of my recent posts (notably The conversation about cats and Wildlife baddies: The hedgehog) have been about the need to kill introduced predators in order to protect our unique native wildlife. This is true. However, some of you have pointed out that simply because an animal is classified as a pest does not entitle us to torture, maim or kill it in a way that causes great suffering and pain. You are absolutely correct.
Contrary to what you might think based on my cat and hedgehog rants, I am no bloodthirsty pest-killing savage, hell-bent on seeking out and destroying these animals for some conservation-crazed mercy mission with no regard for their welfare. True, I do get involved in pest control, but I take no pleasure from killing animals (except for a grim satisfaction relating to the opportunity to give the native inhabitants a chance of survival that would be compromised by the pests).
So, by all means get stuck into pest control, but any pest controller should have regard to the target animal's welfare. In fact, the agencies and organisations involved in pest control must go through a rigorous independent process to ensure that their chosen method of control is one that causes the least amount of suffering.
In the "Land without teeth", much of conservation relates to the killing of small furry animals. This in itself may be a difficult approach, but given the neccesity, it behooves us all to ensure that their lives are ended swiftly and with some form of humane understanding for how they must be destroyed.
Personally, I think these days our modern lifestyle has divorced us from the realities of the lives and deaths of our fellow animals. How many of us can tuck into our bought-from-the-supermarket-on-a-plastic-tray meat without therefore having to be troubled by how the animal was slaughtered? Does this affect our expectations and ideas about the neccesities of pest control and how it should be done? How do you feel when you're dispatching of pest animals, be it fly, wasp or possum?
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@Tania99 (#1). Good to hear you engage in pest control, but catch and release of introduced mammals does no good for our native wildlife. Apart from the fact that mice eat plenty of invertebrates, and drive the population numbers of stoats etc, mice themselves can be cruel predators. In particular they can eat the brains and guts of skinks and geckos, AND they eat albatross chicks alive on Subantarctic Islands including the Antipodes, which is why Gareth Morgan is offering to match public contributions dollar for dollar to get mice off the Antipodes. See http://www.ourfarsouth.org/milliondollarmouse/
Sometimes we have to be cruel (e.g. kill introduced mammals) to be kind (protect native wildlife). As long as we kill introduced mammals in a swift way with the least amount of suffering. but we still must kill them. They are simply in the wrong place.
@tania99 #1: So, you believe that all animals, large and small, have the right to live, you just don't want certain ones living around you? I strongly believe that all animals have rights, however their numbers should be limited (I also believe that their should be limitations on human numbers, but that's another topic), especially those of introduced species that severely endanger the survival of native animals.
As far as rodents go, I don't know anyone who likes having wild pests living in their house. However, live catching mice and releasing them elsewhere doesn't solve the problem, it just makes it someone elses problem. That mice (provided it survived the shock of its upheaval) will likely breed, enlarging the population, and will either move into someone elses house (making issues for them), or potentially endanger the local bird life.
If you truly believe that all animals have a right to life, and this includes those most consider pests, then why not allow them to live on your own property, instead of forcing others to ultimately do what you do not want to: trap and humanely kill them.
TAnia99 - while I commend your enthusiasm, we need to be realistic. I will make every attempt to retain the native NZ residents, which means getting rid of the competitors - mice, rats, possums, stoats, ferrets, weasels, deer, etc. But I will always do it humanely. If we let these things breed unchecked, we will be over-run by pests and lose our identity. For example there are over 300000 feral cats in Christchurch. They are keeping the native bird population well below what it should be. As a result there is a proliferation of mosquitoes and small bugs.
New Zealand has no natural predatory mammals, so we need to stop the infestation that we started.
Checks and balances.
I use the Nooski mousetrap at home. Extremely humane, kills them in 1-2 seconds, with no trauma - for both parties :) www.nooski.com/products.html - They walk into the tube and a small rubber band is released over their heads and kills the mouse instantly. Best invention ever!
Our home acquired a family pet rat, but after a couple of years now, I have to admit that I am the most fond of the little critter. I have hard time dealing with all the things we do to rats and mice now, but I know that for the most part we have to do them. We don't have a "right to life", we have a right to attempt to survive. Life is a struggle. Life without death is not possible, but what we can do is respect that life, honor it, and, perhaps if we are able, give it a second chance.
First, you need to be brutally honest and admit that environmentalism is simply a religious cult. Aside from food production there is no logical reason to kill one species to preserve another. It is simply your emotive choice. You can't complain if others make a different choice - although you do, without much thought.
That said, all animals deserve to be treated as humanely as feasible. I endeavour to give our cockroaches as swift and humane an end as possible.
We live in the country and we have 4 cats.....every night without fail I am running around the house chasing the cats who have a mouse in their mouths....I always rescue the mice, plop them outside by the woodshed and feel good that I save them....but every morning...like clockwork, there is at least 3-4 mice, usually one outside our bedroom door, on the kitchen floor and one usually near the lounge suite.....all dead...not an ounce of blood....it makes for a small nightmare when we are wanting to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and you feel something soft and fluffy at the bottom of your foot as you are trying to get to the loo.....they are very cute..and I do try to save them....
@tania99 #1
Its a shame that 'Janet' was still feeding 3 babies which will now die because you relocated her.
@Alan_wilkinson (#7). yes yes we get that you think Environmentalism is a religious cult. Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and/or improvement of the natural environment, and from my point of view, most of this is based on credible science.
Regarding your stance that there is no reason to kill one animal to preserve another, you're quite wrong. In NZ, with one of the highest levels of endemism in the world, and the most threatened biodiversity per capita, we have every reason to kill introduced mammals that threaten the survival of native species. It's based in science, it's legislated for and it's also a crucial part of our history and national identity. We introduced the mammals that are threatening the native inhabitants, therefore we have a responsibility to ensure the protection of this wildlife if that is what we as a society desire (which through legislation and other community led programmes, it seems we do). Ecology supported by democracy in action. Environmentalism is the idea that we should look after the environment (which we are a part of) - i'm not sure that makes it a religious cult, and I can assure you that I use science for the basis of my values.
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good article. I am vegan and i use cruelty free traps. Although yesterday afternoon we caught our resident mouse in another way. Well "Janet" as we called her, caught herself. she was inside the dog's 15kg bag of dry kibble and couldn't get out. i happened to hear her, peer inside and see her there and it was a mad rush to tape the bag shut put the bag in the car and drive to the park to release her. SUCCESS!! Once you make the connection that all animals have a right to life, you never go back. I have been Vegan for a year and a half now and wish i had gone Vegan sooner.