Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/15/a-large-bowl-and-some-peanut-o.html
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But not if the peanut oil is at 400F.
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He built a better mousetrap, and didn’t even bother to kill them? Of course, doing so doesn’t make for a very happy YouTube video. It’s probably pretty easy, though. Drop in a couple of mothballs and put a lid on top.
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Crisp Rat
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the term “food grade” so close to “mice” makes me wonder what additional steps should be taken prior to introducing said mice to a reptile. Is there a quarantine period? Would the mice eventually de-oil themselves (without the detergent treatment)?
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What a cruel cat toy.
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I have a chipmunk problem in my yard. While adorable little creatures, we sometimes get infested with them.
Large bucket, flat long piece of wood as a ramp to said bucket. Fill bucket half way with water. Top the water with whole sunflower seeds…leave some seeds as a trail up the ramp.
Chipmunks cannot swim.
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A biologist doing field work counting mice also relied on a live mousetrap. He baited it with peanut butter because it worked way better than cheese. He recalled that at some point he released a mouse, put new peanut butter in and while he walked away he already heard the door of the mouse trap slam shut. Mice really like peanut butter, apparently.
Bert
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A new furry fetish?
Crisco parties for mice?
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Just fill it enough to keep them from jumping, not enough to drown them, and you can dump the buckets out in my yard. I’ve got room for them and enough local predators that they won’t overpopulate.
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It’s generally recommended to not feed wild mice to pet reptiles because of diseases etc. I don’t think any quarantine period would make a difference. Whether its a real danger or not, I can’t say. Things like parasites (skin or internal) could be nasty though.
The mice would probably de-oil themselves eventually, though I can’t say how quickly. My pet mice used to get grungy when I gave them larger bits of human food (like peanut butter jars with some stuck in the bottom), and they loved cleaning it off, but were never soaked head to tail like that. It would go quicker if you had a large group of (normal, clean) mice to house the oily ones with, because they will groom each other.
You might end up with fat mice with loose stools, and I’m not sure what being THAT oily might do to their skin, but I doubt there would be any substantial harm or distress. Given how much they crawl around on their food, I don’t think being slathered in delicious smelling sauce (or just edible oil) bothers them.
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I’m glad that I’m mature enough to not mention any childish, oblique references to Mr. Gere.
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I do appreciate the sentiment here…but I drown them. I am the local predator for them. I did it of the course of 3 summers at random times and it curbed the population growth. We still have some, but not nearly the insane numbers previously mating in my stone wall.
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“Food grade” mice for feeding reptiles in captivity are themselves bred in captivity to ensure they are disease- and parasite-free and haven’t ingested any chemicals that could harm the reptiles when consumed. You also don’t want to use live mice–oiled up or not–for feeding a captive reptile at all because of the risk of injury from prey fighting back. (The oil would probably also make them more difficult to subdue, so even riskier. Possible YouTube fodder, though.)
Basically, the bill from a good reptile vet is going to cost way more than you’d likely be able to save by feeding your snake wild mice instead of purchased frozen ones. And that’s if it doesn’t die, which presumably you don’t want.
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Would this scale up for raccoons?
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We started having a problem with rats in the yard, and it was apparent that their population was getting a bit too successful, so I had to be the predator. I used the Tomcat Snap Trap and have to say, it was easy to load and easy to dispose of the carcass too. Little or no mess of bodily fluids. Apple pie filling and crust did the trick quite nicely.
Would the bucket of water work for rats, too?
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That’s called “Mouse’s Papa Stew”.
I was thinking squirrels, and maybe a five-gallon bucket with squirrel-sized hole in the lid.
Perhaps for raccoons, one of their favorite 95-gallon trash cans with wheels. But if you catch more than one, they would work together and form a human chain…oops…raccoon chain and escape…then tag your house for recrimination…
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Rats, unfortunately, are EXCELLENT swimmers.
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I was thinking this too. If you’re a reptile owner, it’d be a great way to feed them.
From what I recall, it’s risky:
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?31691-Feeding-my-python-wild-field-mice
Another source suggests that snakes don’t deal well with parasites in captivity, and there’s a risk of tapeworms, trichinosis, etc. in eating wild mice.
Is it possible to cook the mice and feed them to the snake?
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