Does what it says on the tin

February 8, 2016 7:34 PM

After logging onto their computers today, staff here at the MERL were greeted by an unusual email from the Assistant Curator:
There appears to be a dead mouse in this mousetrap, it began, …which is not described as being there on the database.
155-year old mouse trap claims its latest victim
and
How a mouse died in our Victorian mouse trap

Read the comments for an appearance from the inventor's great-great-granddaughter!
(via The Toast)

posted by Joe in Australia (21 comments total)

The conservators at work are having a field day with this.


I love that they are discussing how to integrate the mouse into future conservation (Do we remove it and give it a proper burial? Dessicate it? Taxidermy? )

Conensus seems to lean toward somehow keeping the mouse in the trap, that it did not give its life in vain. Because that mouse had to do a lot of work to get into that trap, and museum people respect that.
posted by louche mustachio at 7:39 PM on February 8, 2016 [21 favorites]

I like how the old-timey mousetrap looks like a little mouse jail.
posted by jpdoane at 8:04 PM on February 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

And for those who have smelled a rat, we can categorically deny that we planted the mouse in the trap in order to gain this publicity. Not only does it go against every rule in Conservation and museum ethics, we don’t think any of our staff are Machiavellian enough to have pulled it off.
posted by figurant at 8:08 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's a better mousetrap! Why are we still using those ones that violently snap it's neck?
posted by adept256 at 8:12 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Aw, man, why did it have to be a cute mouse?
posted by Mchelly at 8:42 PM on February 8, 2016 [6 favorites]

All they've confirmed is that they don't have any staff that are incompetent at being Machiavellian.

That's a better mousetrap! Why are we still using those ones that violently snap it's neck?

The snap-and-it's-over type are bit more humane. I just wonder if Squeak gets its own accession number.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:12 PM on February 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

You can still buy several styles of multi traps like that one but besides the humane consideration they are much more expensive and also you end up having to deal with live mice which weirds a lot of people out.
posted by Mitheral at 9:20 PM on February 8, 2016

poor mousey :(
posted by Gymnopedist at 11:05 PM on February 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's a better mousetrap! Why are we still using those ones that violently snap it's neck?
posted by adept256 at 11:12 PM

If you had to die, would you prefer a broken neck and at most maybe a minute of intense pain and then lights out, or to slowly die of thirst and starvation over the course of days while gnawing madly to try and get free?

I tend to think of anything that fails to pass the mirror test as just a biobot, and I'm *still* horrified that everyone seems so blase about its manner of death.
posted by Ryvar at 11:29 PM on February 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Aw, man, why did it have to be a cute mouse?

Careful! If we start going easy on the cute ones, Natural Selection will run with that and the next thing you know your house will be infested with such cute puppy-eyed cockroaches that you'll be ruined trying to afford a second home just to have somewhere to live after discovering that you are powerless to hurt them or take your home back from them, and the entire internet would brand you a cruel heartless monster even if you managed to try.

You'll end up in the gutters; starving, destitute, and dying.
But you'll know it was all worth it, because... AWWW!!! They're ADORABLE!!!
posted by -harlequin- at 11:48 PM on February 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Great, a 150 year old mousetrap works, and a one-day old one doesn't.

Nope. it just crushes the mouses' 'lil legs, and when I find it the next day I have to kill the mouse, which I am terrible at. (I am, however, I like to think, more humane than my cats).

So, I'm voting instant death and better traps.
posted by Mezentian at 12:12 AM on February 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Careful! If we start going easy on the cute ones, Natural Selection will run with that and the next thing you know your house will be infested with such cute puppy-eyed cockroaches that you'll be ruined trying to afford a second home just to have somewhere to live after discovering that you are powerless to hurt them or take your home back from them, and the entire internet would brand you a cruel heartless monster even if you managed to try.

eg
eg
eg
eg
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:51 AM on February 9, 2016

Being recently catless (fosters all adopted - happy endings for them), we found ourselves in need of a (more) humane mousetrap recently. Being ourselves, I bought a cheap plastic one (that didn't work) and _then_ we did a lot of research to find a really good one.

Over and over again, people emphasized that you _must_ store your mousetrap securely inside a sealed container if you are not checking it regularly. Mice will get inside, and one day you'll go to retrieve the trap only to find...despair. And a trap that needs cleaning before you can use it.

We are very careful. Looking forward to having cats again soon.

You want to see a cute mouse? Behold the white footed deer mouse.
posted by amtho at 3:11 AM on February 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Being recently catless (fosters all adopted - happy endings for them), we found ourselves in need of a (more) humane mousetrap recently.

Sure, cats are 'cycle of nature', but do you find them humane?
posted by Mezentian at 3:55 AM on February 9, 2016

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that cats are a humane mouse treatment... bad wording on my part. Actually, I thought that "in need of a humane mousetrap recently" made it sound like I was substituting a new humane mousetrap for the old humane mousetrap (now I see that was misguided). So, I added the parenthetical (more) to imply that a new mousetrap would be more humane than a cat. That clearly does not have the intended effect and I need more tea or something.

I can't help my affection for cats, but yes, there are ethical concerns with keeping them. The time one puts into entertaining them, and the whole industrial cat feeding complex, are just parts of that. The idea of living with a predator with very different values from me is...interesting.
posted by amtho at 4:11 AM on February 9, 2016

Nature blue in tooth and claw.

But I think technology can deliver a better deal than that. How about a device that secures the mouse, then stimulates its pleasure centres until it finally expires in murine ecstasy? Or a system that signals to a drone, which takes the captive critter and flies it to a central mouse care repository, where it is tended by compassionate robots for the rest of its natural life in a highly mouse-centred, stimulating and pleasant environment? Or just a very powerful laser that vaporises the beast faster than its neural signalling can respond, before silently removing any residue to a no-maintenance, hermetically sealed storage/disposal unit?

I dare say plentiful funding for any of these will be available from any long-sighted government which is also concerned about the cost of health care for the elderly.
posted by Devonian at 5:59 AM on February 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

If you had to die, would you prefer a broken neck and at most maybe a minute of intense pain and then lights out, or to slowly die of thirst and starvation over the course of days while gnawing madly to try and get free?

Alternatively, and I know this really depends on how much time/ability the trap owner has to do this, you could check the trap once or twice per day. A major thing to worry about with mice is dehydration, so depending on the kind of trap like this you could find you could include a little soda-lid of water or something.

We've had issues with mice where I work over the past year and the business owner insisted on glue traps, which... are the absolute worst. There are ways to save them, provided they haven't injured themselves (invariably horribly) or suffocated because they've gotten stuck in a bad way. I pretty much begged work to choose a different trap and I've volunteered to take care of any live mouse we catch (I even bought glue trap removal supplies that I keep in the office) but instead for now they've decided to not deal with the situation at all. Which I am selfishly totally fine with.

This last year I also had a mouse come up the drain in my apartment and let me tell you trying to figure out a way to get it out of the bathtub without it getting loose in the house and without hurting it was ummm an experiment, because she kept running down the drain pipe. Eventually after TWO DAYS of leaving her water and peanut butter, despite concerns I had to flush her out with some significant water flow (I'm so sorry mouse). She turned out ok though. Hopefully she got to live out a little more time where I let her loose.

I'll always advocate for a better mousetrap. I learned about a lot of options this year (the bucket trap is one, which you can use pretty humanely if you tweak it a little bit) warning, dead mice photos in link :(.
posted by suddenly, and without warning, at 7:23 AM on February 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

2000 fps movie or it didn't happen.
posted by lagomorphius at 11:01 AM on February 9, 2016

This particular trap, I think no one has mentioned, was in fact meant for humane trapping and releasing of mice — they'd be captured whole and unharmed, and you could transport them to the woods, the neighbor's house, etc afterwards. Of course a long, hard death is possible if it's not checked regularly, but that's not the intended scenario, I'd say.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:24 AM on February 9, 2016

A lot of humane traps are used in a "trap and drown in a bucket" manner. The trap's advantage is you can catch several mice every day. Farmers for example generally aren't catching mice in their barns and releasing them out in the woods.
posted by Mitheral at 5:48 PM on February 9, 2016

Could be worse.
...
The activity makes evolutionary sense, Gosford told IFLScience, because fires provide both species with a major food source. “Reptiles, frogs and insects rush out from the fire, and there are birds that wait in front, right at the foot of the fire, waiting to catch them,” Gosford said. Small fires often attract so many birds that there is insufficient fleeing prey for all, so a bird that was being beaten to its lunch might benefit from starting a new fire with less competition.

via
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:21 PM on February 9, 2016