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| Moral trappings .. | |
It is not often that I ask moral advice on this forum, but I will make an
exception in this case. Something has been scratching around in my ceiling at night, and I am worried
about rats and mice eating through my cables (alarm system, phone, internet/LAN,
electricity, TV, and CCTV **). Previously a simple mouse trap deployment has
resulted in a dead mouse and an unpleasant, but mercifully brief, disposal task. This time however the mouse-trap has caught something much bigger, which
refuses to die. It has fallen into the little pit over the man-hole and keeps
scratching around trying to escape. It surely couldn't be as big as a possum
because it would simply run away, avec piege de souris. It's presumably a
rat or a bird. So I have started sleeping in the guest quarters to get away from the outbursts
of noise - the pitter patter of tiny feet dragging a mousetrap round and round,
amplified by the sound-board of the man-hole cover, and I have started having
nightmares and reliving the worst scenes from horror movies - Willard (ie The
Rats), Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds', and that series of Alien movies.
Fantasizing about Sigourney Weaver is no longer a pleasant experience. So the issue is what should I do? Unfortunately, if I lift the man-hole cover, it will fall into the hallway and
start running around, and find somewhere to hide (eg in the wife's underwear
drawer). I can leave it there for a few days let it die of thirst, and get it
out before it becomes stinky, but that would be quite inhumane. Does anyone have any suggestions? Damn -- there it goes again! ------- ** Yes, the cabling is quite a mess up there.
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