/life/Man vs. Nature
This morning at about 3am, I went to the kitchen to grab a snack, and saw a little furry quadruped skitter across the counter and down behind the couch. "Something must be done!" I thought to myself, and then went to bed.
Today, I've put together a humane mouse trap from instructions
I found on the internet. Mine is a little simpler -- instead of the wooden board for stability and weight, I just
wedged it into a corner. I used twist-ties instead of heavy-gauge wire, a Chris
Tindal pin and a Bic pen instead of a drill, and a knife on my bike tool
(which I once accidentally brought through airport security — oops!) instead of an exacto blade, and
oil-on-a-paper-towel to slick things up. I'm a little skeptical that the original hole is big enough for a mouse, but
I'm sure I'm wrong.
Speaking of "vs", I wrote a little webapp using Google App Engine that mimics a game we used to play on the whiteboard, and it's called "versus". At the risk of nerding out, I can't really explain how excited I am about GAE — it's definitely the coolest thing Google's done since Google Maps, and possibly even cooler. The time to develop a reasonably sophisticated app, and be able to nearly "deploy and forget", not having to worry about rotting servers, overloaded MySQL databases, etc, is incredibly powerful. It probably divided by 3 or 4 the time to get that app running, and over the next year it will probably divide the time to keep it running by 10 or 100. (Note that "versus" is mostly a proof-of-concept and learning tool, and not actually that exciting of an app.)
Don't worry, dear reader, I'll be sure to let you know the result of the epic struggle of man against nature.
Comments
Tony wrote
I agree about GAE - it promises to rock :)
Ver/sus doesn't make Safari 3 happy; the SVG appears in a very small square :(
BTW, how well does your brilliant anti-spam tech actually work?
NOw I see where I am supposed to type the magic word!
Keep us posted on how this trap works. I am most interested in what you are going to do with the mice. Will you carry it down the street and drop it off at your neighbour's house? What if an angry neighbour catches you? Or will you clandestinely hide it in your backpack? Or bike it out to the country to give that urban mouse a taste of the good life? At the farmhouse we had MANY mice. One season I killed (yes killed) almost 20. I only used neck snappers and whenever i heard the snap I would go check it (even if i was in bed) to make sure it was dead. A couple gruesome times I had to finish the deed. Mostly it was instant. I had heard that a mouse will find its way back to its nest unless you put it on the other side of a river but don't know if this is true or if it applies to the city. I never used the humane traps because I was afraid I would forget to check it and I know someone who did forget and later found a bunch of starved mice inside it. Very gross.
Rob wrote
Tony: thanks for the bug report. I'll take a look next time I make a round of changes; admittedly it was firefox-focused development. as I've tried to use GAE for something a little more sophisticated, the inability to easily manipulate server-side data has gotten annoying. And, I don't get any spam anymore at all, but I do get "user interaction issues"; some people don't believe that they have to type in potato. :-)
P: I think the mouse is gone. We saw a little brown sign from it two nights ago, and nothing since then. The trap is untouched. I hadn't quite figured out what to do with it, but I was thinking of releasing it in a park somewhere, and letting it pick its next victim. We get along with our neighbours too well to sneak it into their space. :-)
Krista wrote
Just because you no longer see the mouse...they're sneaky, man. And there's never just the one.
Andrew wrote
Versus is fun and easy.
Is dragging off the screen acceptable to delete a vertex? Or does it just lie off the screen?
