Random Thoughts on Meher Baba by Paul Cooley
You are Here: »My natural tendency is toward love for all creatures to begin with. I probably feel greater guilt over slapping a mosquito than many people, and Baba even said that killing mosquitos was OK, though given that was in India, it probably had more to do with halting the spread of disease. The mosquitos here don’t carry disease — or at least they didn’t before the Avian flu reached here — so I try to brush them away rather than kill them. Our house, however, often gets overrun by mice. We have chickens, dogs, a rabbit, and a parrot, (named Pegu after Baba’s cat), so there is a lot of food that attracts mice. Mice live under the shed and under the house. I strongly suspect mice live somewhere in the house, but I haven’t found their location….
…. The mice here have become almost tame, to the extent that they peer at me from the kitchen counter or from the lumber pile as if they expect me to feed them a little tidbit.
For the most part, I try to use live traps, and then I bicycle them down to the arroyo and release them. I read somewhere on the internet that doing so is stupid. House mice are house mice, and if you release them in the wild, they are going to be eaten by something or otherwise die some other wilderness related death.
But many times, they just don’t seem lured by the live traps. I have a feeling the captured mice must release some panic pheromone in the live traps that warn other mice off.
Every morning, I have to get up and sweep the mice droppings off the kitchen counters, and then I wipe them down with a bleach-based cleaner. Last year, (the issue is worse in the winter), I got so sick of cleaning the counter, I resorted to the traditional, smash-the-mouse-with-a-steel-wire trap. To me, it was horrible. It did, however, quickly take care of the problem, at least to the extent that there were not that many droppings, and I no longer heard the mice chewing in the walls. . . .
(Excerpt from website)
Tags: Paul Cooley on Meher Baba
