T1 vs. a mouse :)

"It was a dark and stormy night"...nope, I'm kidding. It was a very nice night. Great weather we are having here in Fayetteville, NC.
My brother and his family are visiting for the weekend, so we were sitting around my Mom's house talking and carrying on when this wee little mouse darts out from behind the funiture. My wife, brother, and his wife all scream. The mouse runs back to where he came from, since everyone was screaming at him. So they jump up, pull the funiture out, no mouse. Oh well, back to sitting around. 20 minutes later here comes the mouse again. I see him first, tell everyone one not to freak out again, just relax. The mouse runs past us heading for the kitchen, so we jump up to get it. It is hiding under some boxes, so I whip out my Inova T1 and spotlight him. The mouse freezes, my brother moves the box out of the way, mouse is sitting there, I tell my brother to whack it, he says "what??", and the mouse takes off straight for him. It seems that he didn't want to kill it, just catch it. So now we have three grown men trying to catch a little mouse. We chased him under the stove, hit him with the T1 again, he freezes again. I said give me a stick, I'll "poke" him till he passes out. No, no, no, we want to catch him and release him outside. Whatever, so we flush him out from under the stove, he gets under the fridge, and "POOF" he's gone. We lost him after the that. We decided to call him "Victor" since he won our battle. 3 grown men, 4 kids(13 to 6), and 3 women doing nothing. Defeated by a wee little mouse. Oh well, at least my T1 came in useful, and I got to give my brother a hard time(his light was in the car). /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif



Blades

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crackup.gif Thanks for sharing!

Larry

That's interesting that the light caused the mouse to freeze. It's probably outside of their evolutionary experience to know what to do when suddenly blinded by a bright light! BTW, I would've tried to catch and release him also. Just because he's ugly doesn't mean he deserves to die. If that was true, I would've been dead a long time ago! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif

Sounds like fun, and something that would have won you $10,000 on Americas' Funniest Videos /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Mike

It's more "interesting" when, as happened to me once in as similar chase, the mouse is trapped with you in the bathroom.




And runs up the inside of your pants leg.

Fantastic story!

Rabbits must have a similar reflex system, as I've spotlighted several in our backyard with my T3. They froze as well, and most of them allowed me to get as close as 2 feet before they scampered away.

It was a very cute mouse, but it still needed to be dead. If there is one, there is two. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif



Blades

[ QUOTE ]
Mike Painter said:
It's more "interesting" when, as happened to me once in as similar chase, the mouse is trapped with you in the bathroom.

And runs up the inside of your pants leg.

[/ QUOTE ]

Aigh! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/aaa.gif

If you just set him outside he'll be back inside within 10 minutes /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif You have to drive them some distance away.

The same effect doesn't work on possums. Had one in my backyard once, shined my 5 watt Mr Bulk NextNeedle at it and nothing. It didn't seem to notice. Walked right at me until it got so close that I started to run away. Stupid thing.

Reminds me of my U2's encounter with a lizard. While raiding the kitchen at night (completely dark) I flicked the U2 upwards to get a little bit of light reflected off the ceiling (area flood), not realizing there was a normal small house lizard in the spot. The shock power of an X-bin LuxV gave the lizard such a scare it fell off the ceiling....

Onto me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/str.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

(yes really, I felt something hit my left shoulder and that's when I realized there was a lizard)

PS: The lizard subsequently jumped off and ran away to live and light another day. They aren't really pests so we don't kill them. I wonder if it's still around, but for its own sake, it had better not try that when my 3000+ lumen USL arrives.... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif *sizzle*

[ QUOTE ]
Blades said:
I said gve me a stick, I'll "poke" him till he passes out.

[/ QUOTE ]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crackup.gif

My cat used to catch mice and bring them into our bed to "play with" in the middle of the night. He would play "catch and release" until we threw him out.

Since our house seems to be cronically infested with mice, I'll have to remember to use my T1 to stun them to make capture easier. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ QUOTE ]
bobspel said:
Since our house seems to be cronically infested with mice, I'll have to remember to use my T1 to stun them to make capture easier. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I was to side of the mouse each time and my brother could have "whacked" it easy the first time, but he didn't. The second time would have been harder since he was under the stove, that's when the stick would have worked. Oh well, if you can catch them running across the floor, a broom makes a great "mouse swatter" /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif



Blades

Another story... this time involving insects.

I used to have a chronic moth problem. Moths, attracted by lights (hmmmm..... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thinking.gif) fly into my place and make a nuisance of themselves flapping around all evening. Very irritating. This was many years ago, so I got out my silver MiniMag on tightest focus, turned out all the lights before 'painting' the moth. I discovered it would follow the beam whereever it went, so I would guide it down to the floor, turn off the light, and one quick *ZAP* with the vacuum cleaner - problem solved /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

These days, I'll just use a focusing lens and my Mag85 for in-flight BBQ /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crackup.gif

This is what you need for any mice problems, where you don't want to whack the furry critters with a broom-

Ketch-all Mouse Trap

Description

It's amazingly effective; even the craftiest of mice end up in there in short order. If it's a brown and white field mouse, you can release it somewhere away from your house, but if it's one of the grey commensal mice, you really shouldn't, because it'll end up being someone else's problem.

My record is 23 mice in one night in a building at a high school.
Cut a square out of a piece of cardboard, cut a cross into a piece of paper. Tape the paper over the hole. Put teh cardboard on top of a waste paper basket and stack things up to make the top reachable. Hang a piece of cheeze or peanut butter over the paper.
The same book I got that from had a balanced, hinged, smooth board on the edge of a barrel partially filled with water. The bait was hung over the end.

A modern note consists of a board with a zig- zag line of peanut butter on it. On either side is a bare wire fastened to the board. The rest is left as is and plugged into a 110 volt outlet. Rats tend to hit both sides...

Neat idea! It'd have to be a metal can, because they can gnaw right through the plastic ones with little trouble. The paper sounds better than the board because I'd think it pretty hard to make the board type sensitive enough to tip on the weight of a mouse. I've tried some Victor cantilever traps that are supposed to tilt when the mouse enters the box and then close the door on them, but they've never worked- the mouse just laughted, stole the peanut butter and thanked me for the meal.
Got the last laugh when I evicted him, though. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Kill them, make them as dead as you can.
I have been in the business of removing mice from peoples homes and businesses for many years, when there is a mouse there are many many mice. Typically they start in the attic, eventually making their way down the walls to the basement ceiling, from there they follow hot water lines till they get to the kitchen sink. Boom, mouse in the kitchen.
Mice are fairly harmless, the days of "wire chewing" are almost over, now their droppings on the other hand if left untreated are deadly to people. Severe respitory problems are associated to mice, children and seniors being the most susceptible. People with pre-existing respitory problems like asema find that it is hugely accelerated.
Kill them, keep your family safe. Hire a pro if you need to, or PM me and I will guide you.

Walmart has some mice traps - glue board that smells like peanut butter and is non-toxic. They work very well - better than spring traps. You have a choice with them of removing them with vegetable oil and releasing them or sending them to their final resting place. Very sticky stuff...