This is why when we sentenced a mouse to transportation we make it a significant distance. One winter we had several get inside, enough that the cats actually grew bored with hunting them and would often ignore them even when they were hanging out in plain sight on the hearth of our fireplace! (“Yeah, I see it. Look, I’m napping; I’ll get it later.”)
So I put on a pair of gloves and caught the mouse myself – just grabbed it right off the bricks before it could move. I knew not to just toss it out in the yard and I didn’t have the heart to kill it by hand, so we popped it into a box and took it for a drive.
We released it about six miles direct distance from our house in a field along the road about 200 yards away from Tim and Tom’s Cheese Shop. We encouraged it as it scampered into the weeds, “Go live that dream little mouse. More cheese and crackers than a hundred mice could eat in a lifetime.” I seriously doubt it made it, but at least it had the possibility.
