Additionally, i have to kill a mouse.
There is no saving it or setting it free; it's gone beyond all that. Buddhist principles and all just no longer apply. It's me or it. It's survival. it has absolutely no fear of me and openly mocks me but it's fast and insidious.
I didn't want to use poison as the idea of dead hidden rotting moouse never appealed to me in any way, but now i'm willing to try anything.
i just want it gone.
In the next few days i'm going to be moivng and cleaning everything possible if possible and as i can not stop new ones from coming in from wherever, i need this one to go away.
i think i hear it and i'm grabbing a skillet but this is not going to work.
It's currently in the oven, i suspect, poking at sealed in glass cake remains.
I am willing to entertain tag team ambush or whatever it takes.

Glue traps, unfortunately, are the only things that worked for us.

And I have no advice on the bread.

It's me or it.

*It* probably thinks likewise.

Sticky traps (that's the best description or name brand I can come up, sorry) are working wonders for the mice in my place. They shriek when caught so you can very gently throw them out of the window. (Buddhist approach, but it works).

As per your bread request, no clue, the corner bakery solves all my questions before I have them.

We use the reusable snap traps.

We've only caught 2 mice in 6 months though, due to mr. gaspode's obsession with cleaning up every. crumb. in. existence. (then leaving a pop-tart out in the cupboard...oops, mouseparty!)

Use the dough as a hat. Or a spermicide.

As for the mouse, I wouldn't advice poison. It'll take the bait then wander off somewhere and die in a wall. It takes a few weeks for the carcass to stop stinking.

I'd just go with traditional snapping mousetraps with a little peanut butter on the end. Rodents love that shit. Or you could try one of those glue traps. The downside to that is after you catch the thing you have to drop it upside down in the toilet to kill it. Not a lot of people can handle that.

Live catch traps work the best of them all but if you don't have any interest in keeping the thing alive their pointless.

It maybe be using your powers for evil, but please, metachat, focus all your energy on leading it to the trap i just placed by where i think it is.
it will be gross and horrible but if you help me deal with this one thing i will give you something at least as equal in return.

If not, what about the bread, man?

oh geez, it just took the bait out of the trap and stared at me.

Ok. I just walked up to it and it just came up to me staring with it's incredibly black round bug eyes.
i think i can possibly go up to it and catch it because my not wanting to kill it has kept it alive this long. i've set up a bugs bunny contraption with a large yogurt container and a drop of honey at the bottom--
FUCK I JUST WANT THIS TO BE OVER--

Anything sticky and sweet makes a good bait. Actually honey would work pretty well.

IT THINKS WE ARE FRIENDS.
i swear this could be all Little Prince and the fox if i wanted to but I AM SO OVER IT.
It is not Gene Wilder and FRIENDS DO NOT POOP IN YOUR KITCHEN WITHOUT SOME WARNING.

It has escaped from a snap trap before and i'm not sure how but it was chewed and there wa a little blood and fur.
This all started with (i FINALLY found out) a package of Swiss Miss cocoa i found ripped open.
I DON'T BUY SWISS MISS COCOA.
IT'S SITTING ON MY TOASTER WATCHING ME TYPE.

It has licked peanut butter clean off traps i can't breathe around.

"What you cannot kill, live with it"

It is not a chinese proverb, I made it up. Making things up always helps in times of difficulty.

If you are moving why do you want it gone first? Is this some kind of vendetta? You, ethylene, you?

Plain cake flour should be fine for dough-lube and turning, but including it in the dough itself or kneading it in would require an adjustment in the liquids I'd reckon.


True fact: Mice are attracted by elaborate, complicated cake-making. Experimental baking drives 'em wild.

Ok, gently engage the mouse as if you want to be friends with it. Then when it gets close enough, smash it with a hammer.

Also, you should be able to adjust the sensitivity of the snap trap release but you could also shut the thing on your hand.

ok. i put some premium rasberry honey on the snap trap it just foiled because there is no way it can get that off without springing it and it was sniffing it while pleading at me with its bug eyes as i was mere inches from it and it almost walked into my hand.
They look like the mammal version of bug, these mice.
Fuck. it just went off.

I'm not moving, i'm moving the furniture and i actually stage gasped when it snapped. It is panting its last pants, i think.
Can i help it die faster?
What what?
it's storming outside so releasing an injured mouse in ice rain isn't gonna work.

I'm so glad I'm not eth right now.

(I hate to say it, but the humane thing to do is put it in a bag and smash it. It's the quickest.)

You will miss it when it is gone.

it's over.

What now? You want pictures?
What does this animal sacrifice offer us?
What do we do as we have shared in the death of this single morsel of vermin that used my lazy susan as its toilet basin?

This may not be over.
Since it has come here just before the discovery of the offending cocoa packet, a bigger blacker creature was briefly spotted, and i hoped it was a figment of the same mouse and not a compatriot of it who i did not name.
i think i touched its suspiciously healthy and clean looking fur with my finger and touch my tongue when i gasped. But i don't fear disease. It was shiny and healthy on my food and i finish my glass of wine to rinse the lingering worry from my mouth.

aaigh.

No, carmina. No, i won't.
When i heard it walking crunchily on my tissue papers and caught it staring at me on this computer, i briefly entertained the notion of keeping it as a contained pet, before i dismissed it as cruel and unseemly if not just insanely poor judgement.
At most it would have lived a few months more, and, frankly, an internet requiem or jewelry with it's bones or a picture you all made into group art, hell, this post as my many tortured hours thinking about it--
--this mouse has inspired a novella, and even just this post is more than any of its ilk will likely ever inspire.

And i never even named it.
Let's name it and i'll give it last rites.
Unless you all want a desicration of images.

i would have drown it in bread dough if that would have helped.

Sweet and sticky wins again.

With a good dose of quick and snappy.
A deadly combination.

This is the only shot the camera let me get off. (power cord, battery problem)
Seems fitting.
Use it. Make it into more.

No, i didn't have to smash it. After it snapped, i ran over and adjusted it to maximum throttle. i saw it pant and kick twice before it started to still, with a useless pan in my hand. It didn't seem smashing it would necessarily help as i'd have to flip it over and take it out to make it most effective. Note the three minute lag. i typed to take time before i check again and it was in the same position i left it in.
i dunno, the melodrama helped me vent.
After this last glass of wine, i'm done for.

So what will happen if i refridgerate the dough?
life goes on, unless i freeze the dough, then its dead, too.

There was an industrial warehouse I once lived in, which had a pretty formidable mices problem. They mainly stayed out of the way and out of the offices, which was good, but then we picked up a bold one that made a mockery of daylight itself and roamed anywhere.

After a few days it was a bit much, so I set about to trap it and catch it and release it in the huge vacant field about a quarter of a mile down the street.

I spent about 8 hours off and on chasing that thing. So fast and tiny. I finally had it pinned into a corner with a few large, heavy cardboard boxes - save for one last box. Which I leapt to close.

The mouse knew it, too, and leapt for the closing exit like furry, bionic popcorn, but not quite fast enough. It went squish behind the box. All I heard was one mighty squeek, and then nothing. It was quite instantly dead. I remember being pissed at the mouse. I really didn't want to kill it, but I did.

For such a hard fought and worthy battle I gave that poor mouse a well deserved Vikings funeral - with plenty of liquor and on a little mouse-sized pyre.

Yeah, I'm a weirdo. I didn't really have anywhere to bury it, and I couldn't see myself just tossing it in the trash after all that, but small fires were safe and unnoticable where I was at, so fire it was.

Just punch the bread down, and let it rise some more, until morning, when you can obtain and add some flour. The whole point of no knead is that the process is glacially slow. A full punch down, removing all the CO2 built up in fermentation so far, will probably buy you 8 to 10 hours of time, and just make a bread with a more pronounced yeast taste, and more pronounced "tooth."

Putting it in cool, not freezing place, will slow things down quite a bit, too. Fridge below 38 degrees F is too cold though.

No fires in an ice storm.
i'll spare you how it was dispatched, but if i hadn't been writing and thinking and so very aware of everything involved it all could have been dispatched in a far more easily dismissable way.
But i suppose i deserved to be all skeeved out about handling the body, etc.

i'm gonna refridgerate the dough and see what happens. Thanks, paul.

Garbage disposal?

Maybe in the morning (i know what you meant) but i am letting an avocado ripen on the counter without fear!
Take that, Proof!