As I'd mentioned, I killed the first mouse with a trap. Something interesting happened, so I decided to seek advice from Christian of TheSpark.com. Here's the letter I sent him:
* * * *
Last week I noticed that something had been eaten a hole into a bag of bird seed I had in my work shed. I set up a mouse trap with peanut-butter (chunky, because
varmints like the chunky) and bird seed, and succeeded brutally killing a mouse. Honestly, I didn't know that mouse traps would make them bleed that much. I don't know if the blood splatter was due to the initial snap or the rodent's violent convulsions afterwards.
Upon seeing the red mess, and especially after seeing the bloody teeth clinched
permanently to the bait holder, I swept the entire mess into a trash bag, tied the bad, and put it in the garbage. The shattered neck was clamped under the bar in a manner that God never
intended. The horror...
The trash bag was on the top of the garbage, about 4 feet from the ground. When I went to take the garbage to the street the next day I discovered the trash bad had been torn through. When I lifted the bag the mouse trap fell out out of a hole about the size of my fist. THE DAMN TRAP WAS EMPTY!
Christian, what manner of creature could have reached the top of the trash can, torn through the bag, and removed the mouse from the
trap through that small hole? Please, I need to know! I fear for my family.
Awaiting an answer,
-Paul-
* * * *
Christian responded: "Raccoon? Little brother? Do you keep either of these on your property?"
Um... I was disappointed with that advice to say the
least. It was obviously a creature of great evil, and raccoons aren't
evil. And my little brother is over 2000 miles away.
I decided to ask TheSpark.com's Starr (I can only
assume her parents were hippies... I won't hold that against her.) about the
problem. I sent her a similar copy of the letter to Christian.
Starr responded:
Dear Paul,
Raccoon's don't eat mice... at least I hope not. Your visitor is obviously
some sort of meat-eating deer similar to the uberdeer that disrupted the Stinkymeat experiment.
-Starr
Brilliant! It made perfect sense. I have woodland full of deer in my back yard. One was bound to be a decomposing-flesh eating uberdeer! This was quite a relief to me. At last I could end my nightly vigil behind the trash can, hands clenched around my rifle, whimpering at every noise in the night.