Catching mice
Capitan Fuckin' Positive's post reminded me, a while back I caught a mouse in my kitchen. It was just sitting on the worktop staring at me when I turned on the light, probably a bit too surprised to move and hoping I'd just go away.

Of course then what could I do with it? Throw it outside? Then it would just come back in. No, I needed a humane way to kill it. I could have just left it in the jar I'd dropped it into with the lid screwed down until it suffocated but that seemed a bit cruel. I know, car exhaust!

Right, let's start my car. Oh, it's been sitting parked for a couple of weeks and has run out of electricity. Bugger. Right, let's try my girlfriend's car. No, I can't find the keys and they're probably in the bedroom where she is asleep. Let's not wake her up with a mouse in a jar, eh? Okay, and the van is diesel which has non-toxic exhaust fumes.

So that is how I came to be standing in the back garden at 3am in my underwear trying to kick-start a recalcitrant motorbike, to provide some carbon monoxide to do away with a mouse that had probably already died of boredom.
(gordonjcp, Tue 6 Aug 2013, 17:59, 3 replies)

My story begins similarly.
I grabbed it by the tail, and ended up releasing it in an animal playground.

On balance, my cat seemed to enjoy the playtime more.
It can be difficult to tell with animals without risking anthropomorphising though.

Maybe mice are secretly into vore.
(speedevil, Tue 6 Aug 2013, 19:17, closed)

After this incident, I got a cat.
(gordonjcp, Wed 7 Aug 2013, 9:16, closed)

"diesel which has non-toxic exhaust fumes"
I think you mean less noticeably toxic. NOx have a funny habit of being absorbed into the mucus membrane in your lungs, hydrolising into nitric acid and then giving you either bronchitis and bronchiolitis for at least a month or death, depending on the concentration of the gas. The best bit is that it usually takes between 3 and 24 hours for the symptoms to fully emerge. On the up side it only takes 4 days to find out if you'll die from it; nobody with a fatal exposure lasts longer than that (according to clinical case studies) and they're all comatose on mechanical ventilation by day 2.
(squigbobble existed, Wed 7 Aug 2013, 13:35, closed)