Recently, NorthernDaddy got the opportunity to try out a few electronic rodent traps. For homeowners, there isn't much less welcome a sound than that of mice scurrying around behind the walls or chewing on parts of the house. Well, the sound of water leaking from a burst pipe, or the sound of breaking glass, or the sound of a tree falling on the roof - those might be worse sounds for a homeowner to hear, but this is about those pesky mice.
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With the long, cold winters that the Northerns have to live with, mice and other critters in the house are a fairly normal occurence. The scritching and occasional squeak are annoying enough, but when the vermin start getting brave enough to run along the baseboards when people are in the room or -as has happened - run right up to NorthernMommy in the kitchen ("Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?"), action must be taken.
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There are many options for rodent control. Poison baits are out of the question, what with LittleNortherner and all the animals around. Glue traps are especially cruel and have proven to be ineffective. Most people recommend getting a cat......NorthernDaddy isn't yet a cat person, and there's already too many mouths to feed around the house (wonder if the chickens or ducks want to go on rodent patrol? Maybe the bunny?). The default mouse control for the Northerns has been the traditional snap trap. Sturdy, effective, and only hurts your big toe every other day when you forget the trap set under the sink cabinet. There are problems with snap traps - the trigger isn't always sensitive enough, the dying mouse sometimes gets all theatrical and flops around, and setting the darn things without snapping your fingers requires about as much fine work and care as defusing a bomb.
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Enter the RatZappers. NorthernDaddy got a deal on a few of the earlier-generation units and decided to try them out. Simple to use: install batteries, toss in the bait (dry pet food is recommended, but chicken feed is close enough and there's plenty of it around), and flip the switch on. When a rodent enters the unit to grab the bait, it completes an electrical circuit between two metal plates, causing the home-invading, wall-scratching, NorthernMommy assaulting, chicken-feed-stealing vermin to, as they say, "ride the lightning". (Hence the name RatZapper....)
The first few days, the traps were catching one mouse every night. No noise, no mess, no escapees.
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This afternoon, when NorthernDaddy arrived home, he had no problem getting into the mudroom. When he tried to pass through the door from the mudroom into the kitchen, he found the door locked and one agitated LittleNortherner standing guard on the other side - holding weapons. After correctly guessing a few passwords and solving some riddles ("What is the airspeed of an unladen swallow?"), NorthernDaddy was granted access to the kitchen command center.
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Apparently, security was on DEFCON TWO because a tiny little mouse had run all around the mudroom when Mommy and Little got home. They were a little keyed up by the mouse's actions and went into lockdown - right after they lobbed a fully-armed RatZapper into the area where the mouse was last seen.
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Several hours passed, dinner was consumed, and Mommy and Little headed out to the theater to see some production or cirque or what all. NorthernDaddy was cleaning up the kitchen when he heard a very loud and unusual buzzing sound. It sounded like really loud hair clippers....or a tattoo gun....or...kinda like the cartoon sound of an.........an electric chair.
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A quick check of the mudroom proved that there was a mouse visiting the death chamber - but the loud, repeated zzzaaapp noises made it seem like he was dancing back and forth between the metal plates. It took a while, but that little mouse stopped "dancing with the stars".
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NorthernMommy, LittleNortherner; it is safe to return to the house now...
