Mice
I live out in the sticks, and mice make their way into the house. The lease said "no pets" but come on, it's on a farm. We need a cat, surely. Nope, no pets. Damn.

So, my gf and I set some spring traps. At one point they were catching three or four mice a night, and quite often I would be prodded awake because herself had been woken by the thwack of a trap springing.

One night, there was the now-all-too-familiar thwack, followed by an ominous scrape. Scrape, scrape. Scufflescuffle. Scrape, scrape. Aw no...

Oh yes, this mouse was caught by its back legs. Letting it go wasn't really on, because it was too mangled to survive and obviously in a lot of pain. Shit, how do you kill mice with the minimum of suffering? Shit shit shit, what am I going to do...?

Oh I know, car exhaust, carbon monoxide will kill it really quickly and in theory won't trigger the "can't breathe" reflex that carbon *dioxide* does if you just seal it in a jar and let the air run out. Great. Car keys. Nope, battery is flat. Can't find the keys for gf's car, don't fancy rummaging around the bedroom. Van? No, it's diesel, no significant CO in the exhaust. Bike? Yeah that'll do.

So, gentle reader, if you found yourself wandering around the farm on a beautiful summer morning you might have seen the most entertaining sight of me, in my boxers and a t-shirt, trying to kickstart a recalcitrant Honda without dropping the jar with the mashed mouse in it so I could fill it with petrolly, carbon monoxidey fumes. Would it start? Would it buggery. Eventually once it was running I filled up the jar, gassed the poor wee mouse, and disposed of it (lobbed it into the trees and long grass up the back).

A day or two later, I got a cat. We still get the odd mouse but they get dispatched fairly quickly.

Length? Only about five seconds before the poor wee rodent was as dead as a doornail, without it looking too distressed.
(gordonjcp, Fri 23 Dec 2011, 1:52, Reply)