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[at-l] Mice

I grew up on a small farm and have no fondness for mice or rats, sorry.  I
never understood the reason to live trap mice - unless it was for mass burial
purposes.  We used to have a 55 gallon drum in the barn half full of a mix of
water and oil. There was a grain supply in a pan welded to a pipe laying
across the board. The pipe extended beyond the edge of the drum, and a board
was hung on the pipe in such a way that it reached the ground.  The mice would
go up the board, across the pipe, and eat the grain. The grain was soaked in
alcohol and the mice would literally lose their footing and fall off the pipe
and into the water. This "better mouse trap" was the design of a local
mechanic and most everyone in the town had one in the barn.

One of my jobs as a kid was emptying the barrel. There were a dozen or more
mice a week in that barrel during the course of my entire childhood. Never
seemed to run out of the little buggers. We had a healthy owl and cat
population on the farm but they were not enough to get rid of the little grain
spoilers. Mice and rats do millions of dollars in damage to crops every year.
In Russia last year, 30% of their grain crop was destroyed in storage, leading
to food shortages for much of the population. Much of this spoilage was due to
rodents (there's a Russian Assistance web site out there that details this -
I'll dig it up if anyone's intersted).

We humans build structures and bring food sources there, and the mouse
population expoldes. There is nothing "natural" about it. If we don't control
the population, soon we bring things like the hantavirus and lyme disease to
the general population. Remember the "black death?" It was spread by fleas
from mice and rats as well. Having something as frightening as hantavirus in
the mouse population - where all you have to do is stir up the dried feces by
walking into the room and breath the dust to contract it - may end our ability
to use shelters on the AT someday.

Extermination of the mouse population in a shelter will not affect the
ecosystem one bit. In fact, it will encourage the snakes to move elsewhere -
where there is a food supply for them. They don't want the shelter, snakes
have no problem finding shelter. They are simply there for the food - shelter mice!

If we are not careful, we'll soon be staying out of the shelters because of
the danger of being bitten by the resident snakes, who are there because of
the resident mice, who are there because we won't exterminate them.

OK, you can flame me now.

-Paddler
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