Three Dead Mice, See How They Die

This is an old story (months ago), but beautifully disturbing-

Back before there was a blog, I noticed that I had a serious mouse problem in my apartment.

I had read somewhere that a good way to humanely dispose of mice was to:

A) get an empty paper towel roll
B) place food in one end (parmesian cheese because I am traditional)
C) balance the roll half on your kitchen counter
D) place something the mouse cannot get out of where the paper towel roll will fall
E) displace said mice

I could hear them scurrying around one night while I was watching television. I promptly rushed to the kitchen and took action. I set up the trap and the bait and went back to the tv room.
30 minutes or so later I heard a little crash and ran into the kitchen. I noticed the paper towel roll had fallen into the trash can, and saw the little sucker hiding under it.

Now... I knew that there were other mice, so I emptied my laundry bin and placed it on the floor, then got the trash can and brought it to the bin.

I carefully tipped the trash can with one hand and held the lid of the laundry bin with the other (the laundry bin was more of a tub really). Anyway the mouse slowly slid down the side of the trash can, and just before it fell into the tub... it did an Indiana Jonesesque leap over the tub and back onto my floor.

I was only a little disheartened as I had to give him props for the timing it took to narrowly avoid capture.

I then repeated my steps in the kitchen and went back to the tv room to wait.

About 30 minutes later I heard the same crash and went back to the kitchen. Once again, there was a mouse, but this time it was jumping around frantically in the trash can. I removed the paper towel roll and thought about what I should do.

My friend Will called luckily, and I told him the situation.
"Give the mouse a little alcohol to calm him down" Will suggested. He said that beer would get it woozy enough to just fall right into the tub.
"All I have is Rum?"
"Make sure you don't give it too much or you'll kill it" we agreed.

I am not one to dump liquor into an empty trash can, so I grabbed a zip lock bag and put about a half a shot of rum in, and and softened it with a little coke.

I then sealed the bag mostly shut and placed it in the trashcan, and waited for the mouse to take interest, but it was just too scared.

It was starting to get a little late, so I decided I would have to be a little tougher on my visitor.

I grabbed the trash can and instead of trying not to hurt the mouse this time, I jerked it to throw it off balance and dumped the mouse into the tub, with the rum and coke bag, and shut the lid.

(I also threw in some bird seed, I figured it might be hungry)

I then set the trap again, brushed my teeth and went to bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of a thud and mouse claws scratching the inside of my trash can. Somehow I laughed myself to sleep thinking of this little mouse in it's holding cell.

The next morning the first thing I did was go to the kitchen. I took the mouse that was in the trash can and dumped him into the tub.

It was at this time that I noticed the other mouse was acting a little strange.

Seems it had been drinking all night... and all it could do was circle around the tub, falling over every fourth or fifth step.

Pretty funny really, but I also thought it was a little cruel, got some tupperware and filled it with water, in case the mouse was dehydrated, and put a spare toilet paper roll in the tub in case it needed to sleep. I then took a shower.

When I got out of the shower I checked on the mice. One was hiding in the toilet paper roll and the other had stopped circling and was just laying there. First I thought it was dead, so I sprinkled some water on it, and it woke up, but then laid back down. "Sleep it off buddy, you will be awake, sober and free when I get home..." I thought as I left.

I gave them some more bird seed, and this time also sprinkled in some Parmesan cheese in the tub. Then I went back to the kitchen, set the trap again... and left for work.

I told everyone at work how awesome I was, and we all had a laugh about the drunken mouse that was sleeping off a tough night.

At about 6 o'clock I returned to my apartment.

First thing I noticed when I got in was that the paper towel roll had fallen from the counter, which meant that I had trapped a third mouse. I figured that it would be a good idea to displace the first two before adding another, and walked to the tub.

When I looked in, I noticed that sometime during the day the sober mouse had eaten the drunken mouse's face off...literally, and all that was left was a little bloody body.

For some reason that infuriated me, and I grabbed the water dish out of the tub, and dumped out the water. I found the lid and walked back to the tub.

"Paybacks you murderer" I thought, as I punched air holes in the lid. I then grabbed the mouse, toilet paper roll, and put it in the tupperware and clamped the lid tightly. I walked out to the trash can and placed the jailed mouse in with the trash.

I figured it would have a long miserable, confined life there in it's tupperware jail cell, gnawing on toilet paper roll to sustain itself, a fitting end for the horrible opportunistic piece of mouse trash that it was.

I was laughing the laugh of justice when I reentered my apartment. Unfortunately I realized that I still had a mouse jumping around in the trash can. I was tired of playing with mice at that point and figured I would carefully release my new captive onto the fire escape, where it could scurry down safely to freedom (and it would be so grateful that it would never come back).

Sadly I misjudged the third mouse's intelligence, because as soon as it slid out of the trash can it took three quick steps and lunged off of my third floor fire escape.

So three mice caught, three mice horribly tortured and murdered.

My landlord a few weeks later put some poison around the building, and luckily I haven't had the displeasure of "humanely exterminating" any more mice.