Why do I feel so bad about this?

[Primrose]

This morning we started a long overdue clear-out of our garage, having earlier discovered a mouse had been nibbling through the bag of peanut stored there for feeding the birds.
We came across a mouse's nest in carefully shredded up newspaper with six perfect little babies who had just opened their eyes. Nearby were little piles of peanuts she had secreted away for her food store. . Mother fled and we were faced with having to destroy the nest and dispose of her babies. (The last time we found mice in our garage, they had nested in the heating system in my car while we were away on holoiday and it cost a huge sum to have the dashboard removed and part of the wiring replaced!). We couldn't risk a repeat performance, but we couldn't track the mother down, otherwise we would have put her and her babies in a small box in some undergrowth nearby so they could have had a chance of survival. She must have felt our garage was a perfect haven to rear her babies. Why do I feel like a murderer?

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Primrose, they will soon have another litter, if there's one thing they do well, that is keep producing.
So please don't worry too much.

[richard p]

a couple of days ago our cat was chasing a rabbit round the living room, i chased the pair of them outside, mrs reckoned i should have kept the cat in,
guess we,re in danger of getting into the minefield of "female logic "

[Geoff]

I wouldn't bother about them in the least - vermin is vermin!
The other day the dog disappeared so I went searching and spotted her bum and happy tail down a hole beside a young pear tree. She is half chocolate labrador and probably half Staffordshire so fairly solid. She had dug her way into a rabbit burrow and extracted seven young that I took away and drowned. I don't know how they had managed to get to this stage unnoticed and I don't know how it has affected the tree.

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[alan refail]

Primrose

You probably feel bad because they were mammals like you.
Do you have the same bad feelings about killing "lower" life-forms that threaten you, such as insects? And how about the non-threatening ones like worms that you kill unintentionally?
As OH says, the parents will have some more and not notice the loss.

[Primrose]

Yes, I generally feel pretty bad about killing any insects, apart from wasps and bluebottles. I've even been known to stoop down when walking on pavements to rescue worms to prevent them being trodden on.
We finished the Spring Clean on our garage today and Mother Mouse is still there. She has pinched peanuts and deposited them in just about every single container on all four shelves and even got into a drawer and started making a nest there. Everything has been cleaned up now. Question is - how do we kill her off? We've put down a dish of rat poison mixed with oats and crushed peanuts, but she totally ignored the last identical bait so have no idea what to do if this doesn't work.

[alan refail]

Primrose

I hesitate to suggest it, but how about one of these baited with a bit of cake or chocolate - or maybe her favourite peanuts.

[The Mouse]

This thread reminds me of someone I once knew someone who tried the 'humane' approach to getting rid of unwanted baby hamsters. She was told that she should put them in the freezer, and that they would just 'go to sleep'!
She only went and wrapped them up in cotton wool, in a little cardboard box, so that they could go in comfort (making her feel better, obviously)!
When she went to remove them from the freezer next day, they were still very much alive, huddled up close, shivering. Needless to say, she hadn't the heart to put them back in again.
I'm not sure what she did in the end.

[Primrose]

Poor little hamsters. Any creature which managed to survive that ordeal deserves a second chance. Don't think I would have the heart to dispose of them after that either.

[jane E]

I found a nest of baby mice in a compost heap once and covered them up again and they ate my courgettes all summer! Needless to say I will dispose of them next time - how, I don't know, because I haven't got the killer instinct.
Primrose - what about a differen poison - eradimouse? We keep traps down all the time in our garage and then we know hen they're about.