My New Perspective on Childhood Entertainment

Sometimes you realize something, and you can’t believe it took you decades. It’s so obvious, it’s shocking you missed it.

Here is what I realized last week. You remember the old Tom & Jerry cartoons? It finally dawned on me that Tom was the hero.

In case you’re so young you’ve never seen Tom & Jerry, possibly because your snowflake overlords had decided good cartoons were too violent/racist/sexist/fattist/speciesist/colorist/whatever, I can sum up the premise. Tom is a cat. Jerry is a mouse. Jerry lives in Tom’s house, and he regularly pops out of his little mouse apartment and wrecks everything. Tom, understandably, tries to kill him.

This is exactly what you’re supposed to do to a mouse. Mice are pests. They spread horrible diseases. They break into food containers and contaminate them so food has to be thrown out. They damage houses. They need to be killed.

A long time ago, I read a book or a story or something, and there was a scene in which a character stamped on a mouse. I thought that was shocking. I couldn’t believe a person could just put his foot down on a squirming mammal. Now I live in an area with mice, and so far this year, I have stamped on two of them. It’s the best way to kill them fast. My whole attitude toward mice has changed.

Maybe three weeks ago, I was sitting in my living room when I heard a noise. I looked toward the fireplace, and I saw a fat mouse flop off the screen and into the room. He took off. I couldn’t believe it. How, in 2021, could there still be a chimney not designed to keep mice out?

I put out the glue traps and poison I already had on hand, and I waited for success.

I had chosen the poison carefully. I picked bromethalin, a neurotoxin, in chunks of green mouse food.

In the old days, warfarin, an anticoagulant, was the mouse poison of choice. It made blood pour out of mice’s rear ends until they died. There were three problems with it. First, a mouse had to eat it for several days before it worked. Second, it was likely to poison anything that ate the dead mice. Third, many mice were immune to it. Their ancestors had developed resistance.

I didn’t want immune mutant mice wasting my time.

Bromethalin, supposedly, kills mice in one feeding. I read that immunity was not an issue, and I also read that if I threw a dead mouse out in the yard, it wouldn’t hurt whatever ate it.

My mouse ate the bait. He ate it for days. He throve on it. I kept thinking, “Tomorrow, he dies,” but it never happened.

I also set one of my old wooden Victor traps. I baited it with meat. I fixed it so the mouse absolutely had to pull on the trip mechanism. He tripped the trap, ate the meat, and retired, victorious.

He also stepped in at least two glue traps and shook them off. He dragged one most of the way down my stairs before freeing himself completely.

I got more serious. I bought Victor mouse baits with diphacinone, a newer anticoagulant. The mouse grabbed the little balls of bait and took them to various corners of the house for snacking. The poison didn’t seem to bother him.

I bought bigger glue traps, but the mouse would not go near them. They were white, which was supposedly to make it easier to see dead mice once they were trapped. Maybe the mouse preferred the black ones.

I got a bunch of small Catchmaster Gluee Louee traps. They were so useless, they didn’t even catch bugs.

I also bought two plastic Tomcat traps. These are nice because you can set them instantly with one hand. The trip mechanism has a little cup in the center, with a hinged platform around it. The mouse reaches into the cup for the food, he puts a foot on the platform, and the trap crushes his spine. That’s what the instructions said, anyway.

I put peanut butter in the cups and stuck balls of poison in the peanut butter for good measure. The mouse took the poison, ate the peanut butter, and laughed at me.

One day I decided to examine a trap carefully. I poked the trip mechanism over and over, and it was impossible to make the trap go off. I could not believe it. I had been feeding the mouse from what was, effectively, a safety feeder.

I started manipulating the trap, setting and resetting it, and for some reason, it started going off reliably. I had a pair of these traps, so I also worked on the second one. I baited them again, and the next day, I had a dead mouse with a broken neck.

Nice.

Why does the Tomcat company make traps that have to be broken in before they work? No clue here.

The mouse amazed me with its ability to defeat poisons. It reminded me of the death of Rasputin.

In case you don’t recall, on the night he died, Rasputin was fed a large quantity of cyanide-filled cakes, along with poisoned wine. He showed no ill effects at all. His attackers shot him in the chest and prepared to dispose of the body. He surprised them by coming back to life and leaping on them. He chased them until they shot him several more times. Then they bound his hands, wrapped him in cloth and threw him in a river. Some witnesses claimed that when the body was found, Rasputin’s hands were free, as if he had gotten them loose and started to work his way out of the cloth.

Rasputin has nothing on my late mouse.

I lost several pounds of beef jerky, along with most of a bag of diastatic malt powder and maybe 7 pounds of jasmine rice. The mouse didn’t eat much. He just made sure everything was defiled.

Yesterday, I had to go around the bottom floor of the house, cleaning out the corners where he liked to dine. I had to mop one staircase, too. I hope I won’t find any more surprises.

My recommendation is to be very serious and completely heartless with mice. It’s astonishing how much one mouse did to disrupt my house.

If I ever see a Tom & Jerry cartoon in the future, my sympathies will be completely with Tom. Now that I think about it, I wish Elmer Fudd had shot Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. They were annoying, and hunting is a virtuous, productive activity.

If you try those Tomcat traps, make sure you test them before you use them. Otherwise, your mice may die from gout and strokes before the traps themselves get them.