Show your wounds, I'm bored with mine. dxh.

Matt and I talked about it, and decided that instead of killing it, we would catch it and release it into a nearby field.  Matt devised a contraption to catch the animal. The photo you see above is not the first contraption he conceived of. We tried a few modifications which all centered around the idea that the mouse would be lured to the end of a precariously balanced object and fall into a bucket where it would not be able to escape until we freed it.

Several nights passed during which the mouse, whom we named “Dinky,” succeeded in eating the bait, but not tipping the piece of wood into the bucket.  Matt thought the mouse must be outwitting us.  But I thought that it was probably so full from eating the trail of chocolate Matt had left, that it didn’t even bother eating the last piece of chocolate.

Whatever the explanation was, it seemed that Dinky was not to be caught in Matt’s con-trap-tions.   A local hardware store recommended the Havahart trap, a humane way to catch animals.  They come in all sizes, whether your quarry is a dog, an armadillo or a chipmunk.

Early the next morning, before I opened my eyes, I became aware of a soft, metallic rattling sound coming from the closet. Sure enough, Dinky was in the trap, trying to find a way out. We all trooped over to a field about a mile away and released it. (It ran away so fast, there was no chance of getting a photo.)

Ironically enough, Dinky has none other than Ozzy, the hamster to thank for its freedom.  Before we adopted Ozzy, we  might not have thought twice about using the old-fashioned killing trap.  Having Ozzy in our family has made us more sympathetic to the small animal kingdom.

Who knew that hamsters could save lives?