Hmm. While Rat Snakes do indeed eat mice, I think the problem in my house was that the presence of the mice was the reason the snakes took up residence beneath me! I'd rather not have either!
strantor that's an interesting point you make. We do place different value on life depending on whether it is cute or nasty or whether it is useful or destructive, etc. I think, in taking any life, that we need to confirm that it doesn't diminish, in any way, our respect for human life. When we anthropomorphize an animal, we risk, especially if we are killing it, diminishing the value we place on human life. This doesn't, in any way, mean that I think MrAl is going to become a vicious serial killer, only that someone with a poor moral foundation might end up placing less value on his fellow humans and treating them as he would an animal.

There are cultures that will thank the animal for giving its life in order to sustain the life of the one who eats the animal.

 

Late to the conversation here but...

A few years ago when I just bought my house rata started to come in right at the beginning of October. My dog was scared of them (a pitbull/lab cross). Snap trap was a way to solve the problem. Live trap did not stop them from coming in (it was hard to plug all the holes and they are great at making new ones). Next year it repeated. I got a second dog. I helped her trap one rat at night. It was a blood bath. I never saw another rat after that.

I was told (and it seems to be true) that if a scout rat is killed, the family of rats will stop going to the site and look elsewhere so "humane" traps might not be the best way to solve the problem.

 

Kinda Cute huh!

If you ever touch one, you will never forget the immense burning pain from the experience. Never heard of anyone dying from it but the excruciating burning pain lasts for hours. Sometimes we would never even see them on the backside of a leaf while walking in the forest, but you immediately knew it when the back of your hand came in contact with one. I've been stung by several that I never even knew were there. The Packsaddle (or Saddleback) Caterpillar, cute but nasty business. How's that for cuteness...

@MrAl been out of the chicken business for a while. Critters ate em, all we ate were their eggs. Got to the point a few years back the feed cost more than the eggs were worth. Grandparents used to have a yard full and my dad and his sisters would sometimes be told to go and butcher one for dinner. Usually old hens that had quit laying. I don't ever remember having fresh chicken at my grandparents but I did go out and scrounge for their eggs the hens liked to hide.

 

Why is it "animal cruelty" to pierce a kitten through the face with a barbed hook and toss it into a pen of hungry dogs, but perfectly acceptable to do the same to a fish? Why is it ok to glue a mouse to cardboard but doing the same to a bunny would be inhumane? (But it's ok to bash in a bunny's head with a bat (so long as it's for the purpose of eating it)). Why is it ok to poison an entire colony, thousands of ants, but doing the same to a flock of birds would be a crime?

I think the rule-of-thumb answer is,
If 3- to 8-year-old children would voluntarily pet one of the listed animals, they are off limits. But if those kids are repulsed or afraid of the animal, you can put a fish-hook through its eye or glue it to a piece of cardboard.

 

I think the rule-of-thumb answer is,
If 3- to 8-year-old children would voluntarily pet one of the listed animals, they are off limits. But if those kids are repulsed or afraid of the animal, you can put a fish-hook through its eye or glue it to a piece of cardboard.

Not a bad thumb rule, but like most thumb rules, it could be characterized as easily by how many instances it doesn't address. For example:
Armadillos - pettable, with unacceptable risk of leprosy
Koalas - pettable, with unacceptable risk of chlamydia
Pugs & Nutsack cats - repulsive, but common household pets nonetheless
Badgers, raccoons, foxes, pikachu, Goats - gleeful evildoers with deceptively pettable appearance
Grubs, worms, maggots - gross but beneficial
Etc, etc, etc

 

Not a bad thumb rule, but like most thumb rules, it could be characterized as easily by how many instances it doesn't address. For example:
Armadillos - pettable, with unacceptable risk of leprosy
Koalas - pettable, with unacceptable risk of chlamydia
Pugs & Nutsack cats - repulsive, but common household pets nonetheless
Badgers, raccoons, foxes, pikachu, Goats - gleeful evildoers with deceptively pettable appearance
Grubs, worms, maggots - gross but beneficial
Etc, etc, etc

You missed the point. I didn't ask if a parent should let the kids let them, I said. If they would voluntarily let the, No matter how repulsed you are by any given animal, your kids will hate you forever if you put a fishhook in the eye of any one of the cut animals on your list (except grub worms). I don't think you found an exception to my rule of thumb - yet.

 

I took that shot of them coming out of the dens in spring to mate.
The males all gather at the entrance to the den waiting for a female to come out.
As to shooting game, my grandfather was a 'professional poacher', i would see all kinds of things on my plate as a kid!

Dont think i have ever seen that many in one place before except on TV.
Dont put your foot in there

 

Thank you for sharing your perspective. This topic is one that my mind gets drawn into from time to time and I spend an unreasonable amount of time pondering it each time. I find it curious the arbitrary value we humans place the lives of other creatures.

It all started several years ago, I started seeing pro-opossum posts on social media and then the next thing I know, opossums are no longer pests, and many people now even insist they are "cute." Their cause was taken up by SJWs same as disadvantaged human social group.

A few years later I posted a picture of a snake I had killed on Facebook, asking for help in identifying it. I was publicly and unceremoniously taken to task by an online mob of radical snake advocates. That blindsided me; prior to that experience my understanding of the world was that "the only good snake is a dead snake" was a perfectly valid and common sentiment, maybe even held by the majority. I think I was right in my understanding, but the world changed. Opossums and snakes came into vogue.

In my musings on the topic I came up with more questions than answers. Why is it "animal cruelty" to pierce a kitten through the face with a barbed hook and toss it into a pen of hungry dogs, but perfectly acceptable to do the same to a fish? Why is it ok to glue a mouse to cardboard but doing the same to a bunny would be inhumane? (But it's ok to bash in a bunny's head with a bat (so long as it's for the purpose of eating it)). Why is it ok to poison an entire colony, thousands of ants, but doing the same to a flock of birds would be a crime?

The tentative conclusion I've come to is that our perception of other creatures' value is just that, ours. It's totally subjective, inconsistent, and when you drill down to the foundation on a case-by-case basis, almost always totally selfish in nature. We almost exclusively assign value to animals proportional to the amount of utility they afford to us and/or the feelings they arouse in us. It has nothing to do with the actual animals; it, like most things, is all about us. So is it really just and right to criminally prosecute someone for punting a puppy when most of us have mouse traps set under our kitchen cabinets?

Just to clarify, I'm not pro-puppy-punting, nor am I anti-mouse-trap. I just find it intriguing to see an uncommon example of someone actually holding consistent views on this.

Yes you bring up the ol' debate about what constitutes animal cruelty and what doesnt.
It seems like it may be relative, relative to many things including culture. As you probably know, some Korean areas eat dogs but here in the US we would not dream of doing that.

My pet gripe was usually about boiling shellfish alive. I've seen the crabs writhe in a hideous fashion when dumped into boiling water. It is very nasty for them im sure. The relative factor creeps in again though because many people are not going to give up eating craps and lobsters and from what i have read there is no really humane way to kill them. So apparently unless you subscribe to the unreal rules of PETA, you may someday end up eating crab.
Which brings up another topic, PETA is unreal with their rules i think because they cant possibly expect all humans to stop using animals for food, eggs, etc., it's just an unreal goal. They should maybe create a sub organization, PPETA (Pseudo PETA) so that people may do some of those things but not all. Something like that anyway.

But to expand on the relative factor and the idea of judging if an animal is fit to be kept alive or killed, there is an extremely good example from history. The famous (or infamous) naturalist Darwin when in South America at some time noted the wasps there and their predatory behavior. The certain species injects it's eggs into the hosts body and when they hatch the young eat the host from the inside out. Well Darwin said of that wasp, and i have to paraphrase there, "They are the most evel things on the planet, i cant see how any God would allow that, so there must be no God".
Now fast forward years later, and many areas in South America got infested with mealy worms. They ate 80 percent of the crops and actually put human lives in danger for lack of food that they depended on. You may guess what is coming next. The environmentalists realized that the mealy worms were a prey to that species of wasp, so they introduced that type of wasp into the ecosystem and so as they spread over the areas the mealy worms numbers dwindled and so they achieved very good control over the mealy worm problem. That actually saved millions of human lives.
So the point is, one guy judged the species as very bad and even evil so i imagine he would kill one every chance he got. But what he didnt know was that one day their presence would actually end up helping human lives in large numbers.
Amazing story and how we can judge incorrectly sometimes and that's what we base some animal killing on.

But the main argument i think is food source vs let live. Food source seems to outweigh everything else.

 

You missed the point. I didn't ask if a parent should let the kids let them, I said. If they would voluntarily let the, No matter how repulsed you are by any given animal, your kids will hate you forever if you put a fishhook in the eye of any one of the cut animals on your list (except grub worms). I don't think you found an exception to my rule of thumb - yet.

I thought about that too, a fish hook in a fishes gut, then gets ripped out. Nasty.
But try and stop people from fishing with fish hooks.

 

Dont think i have ever seen that many in one place before except on TV.
Dont put your foot in there

They are perfectly harmless to humans, The same time I took this pic, I have one of my grandson holding a big ball of them up in his hands!
The crows also wait for them to arrive and know exactly the spot to peck out their liver.!

 

Badgers, raccoons, foxes, pikachu, Goats - gleeful evildoers with deceptively pettable appearance

Never heard of it.What's a Pikachu?

 

Never heard of it.What's a Pikachu?

Is your googler broken?

 

Yes you bring up the ol' debate about what constitutes animal cruelty and what doesnt.
It seems like it may be relative, relative to many things including culture. As you probably know, some Korean areas eat dogs but here in the US we would not dream of doing that.

My pet gripe was usually about boiling shellfish alive. I've seen the crabs writhe in a hideous fashion when dumped into boiling water. It is very nasty for them im sure. The relative factor creeps in again though because many people are not going to give up eating craps and lobsters and from what i have read there is no really humane way to kill them. So apparently unless you subscribe to the unreal rules of PETA, you may someday end up eating crab.
Which brings up another topic, PETA is unreal with their rules i think because they cant possibly expect all humans to stop using animals for food, eggs, etc., it's just an unreal goal. They should maybe create a sub organization, PPETA (Pseudo PETA) so that people may do some of those things but not all. Something like that anyway.

But to expand on the relative factor and the idea of judging if an animal is fit to be kept alive or killed, there is an extremely good example from history. The famous (or infamous) naturalist Darwin when in South America at some time noted the wasps there and their predatory behavior. The certain species injects it's eggs into the hosts body and when they hatch the young eat the host from the inside out. Well Darwin said of that wasp, and i have to paraphrase there, "They are the most evel things on the planet, i cant see how any God would allow that, so there must be no God".
Now fast forward years later, and many areas in South America got infested with mealy worms. They ate 80 percent of the crops and actually put human lives in danger for lack of food that they depended on. You may guess what is coming next. The environmentalists realized that the mealy worms were a prey to that species of wasp, so they introduced that type of wasp into the ecosystem and so as they spread over the areas the mealy worms numbers dwindled and so they achieved very good control over the mealy worm problem. That actually saved millions of human lives.
So the point is, one guy judged the species as very bad and even evil so i imagine he would kill one every chance he got. But what he didnt know was that one day their presence would actually end up helping human lives in large numbers.
Amazing story and how we can judge incorrectly sometimes and that's what we base some animal killing on.

But the main argument i think is food source vs let live. Food source seems to outweigh everything else.

I have never in my life considered it cruel to boil shellfish alive. I was brought up with that being "just how things are done." Maybe if I were raised several hundred years earlier as a viking, I wouldn't consider it cruel to flay humans alive either. I agree with your suggestion that it's relative and cultural; close enough to my suggestion that it's subjective/arbitrary and more about us than the animals.

Previously this left me in a torn state. Not just the animal cruelty thing, but almost all laws and rules. All of them at one point or another started out as someone's arbitrary moral judgment, and then got crammed down the throats of everyone around them in the form of law. Fast forward a generation or two, and nobody questions it any more; that's just "how it's always been."

So what is one to do after making that realization? Start assaulting cats, taking illegal drugs, etc? The conclusion I came to is that, yes, all these things are arbitrary, some of them make no sense, some of them taken alone may actually be damaging, but they are crucial to our advancement as a species. I witnessed the elevation of opossums and snakes from the category of pests to a more protected category. There is no benefit to fighting it; better to get with the program. But when there is a codified stance for which there is benefit to fighting it, we have a duty to do so. And that (what is beneficial to fight) is itself also subjective, so ... to each his own.

I found peace in the conclusion that the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I don't share your concerns about animal cruelty with regards to mice or shellfish, at least not to the extent that you do, and I am well aware that this is totally inconsistent with my views on dogs and cats, and that no longer troubles me. While I don't agree, I think it is good that we are talking about it, and if you manage to sway public opinion in favor of mice, I won't try to fight it.

 

Which brings up another topic, PETA

Do you mean, People Eating Tasty Animals, or the other one? :0

 

I have never in my life considered it cruel to boil shellfish alive. I was brought up with that being "just how things are done." Maybe if I were raised several hundred years earlier as a viking, I wouldn't consider it cruel to flay humans alive either. I agree with your suggestion that it's relative and cultural; close enough to my suggestion that it's subjective/arbitrary and more about us than the animals.

Previously this left me in a torn state. Not just the animal cruelty thing, but almost all laws and rules. All of them at one point or another started out as someone's arbitrary moral judgment, and then got crammed down the throats of everyone around them in the form of law. Fast forward a generation or two, and nobody questions it any more; that's just "how it's always been."

So what is one to do after making that realization? Start assaulting cats, taking illegal drugs, etc? The conclusion I came to is that, yes, all these things are arbitrary, some of them make no sense, some of them taken alone may actually be damaging, but they are crucial to our advancement as a species. I witnessed the elevation of opossums and snakes from the category of pests to a more protected category. There is no benefit to fighting it; better to get with the program. But when there is a codified stance for which there is benefit to fighting it, we have a duty to do so. And that (what is beneficial to fight) is itself also subjective, so ... to each his own.

I found peace in the conclusion that the only thing that stays the same is that everything changes, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I don't share your concerns about animal cruelty with regards to mice or shellfish, at least not to the extent that you do, and I am well aware that this is totally inconsistent with my views on dogs and cats, and that no longer troubles me. While I don't agree, I think it is good that we are talking about it, and if you manage to sway public opinion in favor of mice, I won't try to fight it.

Well i have seen how shellfish act when placed into boiling water. It can not be pleasant at all.

Interesting about "all laws" being somewhat arbitrary. That's too true and a shame.
Brings me to a saying i once made up i think i may include in my sig line:
"The only thing that parallels man's incredible intellect is man's incredible stupidity".
I might pretty up the wording a bit more first though.

This also makes me think about the topic of broadcasting our presence to possible alien worlds we know nothing about. If they are too advanced they might view us as shellfish. I've complained about this long time ago but then some years later Stephen Hawking said the same thing

 

They are perfectly harmless to humans, The same time I took this pic, I have one of my grandson holding a big ball of them up in his hands!
The crows also wait for them to arrive and know exactly the spot to peck out their liver.!

Wow amazing, i wonder what their teeth look like.
Maybe i just keep thinking about those eels.

 

Do you mean, People Eating Tasty Animals, or the other one? :0

Yeah ha ha, they would love to hear that one
I was very surprised to read about their rules though i thought they were just super vegetarians. Wow was i wrong. But do they know that plants are the result of fertilizer that might come from an animals butt? Ha ha, dont tell them that they wont be eating anything, which i guess will solve the problem

 

When I moved into my brick home, I inspected it for vulnerability from invaders, the bank owned property did a good job of cleaning up manicuring flora, but my wife noticed mouse droppings in the linen drawers but, no recent evidence so, the first thing I did was cover return air vents in the foundation near the ground, ornamental metal coverings, 6”x 6” I placed wire mesh, the type used to stucco, heavy sharp on the edges, bugs could creep through but mice wouldn’t be able to easily chew threw, once securing the ground level the second was to cover the roof vents, same strategy, here we have flying mice lol bats, they take up residency and when they do you have little choice but to wait for them to leave as they migrate south, protected species.

I learned this when we lived in a 4 plex which was home to several thousand, they also will return year after year to the same location, only thing you can do is wait until they fly out at night, then cover your roof vents. My home was an old farm house, had a giant Pine Tree in the back lots of birds but once I covered the roof vents became the bats favorite spot in the Pine Tree, you knew by the ticking sounds as they locate food at night or while resting in the Tree communicating with each other.

For those with an interest this is for you. lol

Bats communicate and fight over a range of things such as mating, food, sleeping position, and just for the sake of fighting. The researchers said that bats produce different and specific sound for each squabbles and they were even able to identify the sounds that the animals used as greeting for "friends" and "foes."

The large pine tree in the back of the house was removed about 4 years ago, and I’ve since removed the flora, game over for the small Mosquito’s holding up in the shade of all the plants in my backyard, the small ones known for carrying west nile virus,\ large ones usually are near the lake about 15 minutes from my house, so once the flora was removed, it couldn’t harbor them and last year was so dry, didn’t see many if non at all. I chose the brick home for several reasons, difficulty for vermin to gain entry. My friend lives in SLC near the mountains has issues with squirrels, those things are devastating, had some issue with birds, there is a type of black bird that was taking up residency in my eve’s where a creeping vine split some wood and damaged the gutter, was perfect for the birds to build a nest. I stopped that issue as well. Removing all the vines on my property near my home Eradicate them, not a fan of creeping vines.

Now I have zero scape in mind since the water is in short supply and we live in a desert, but don’t tell that to my neighbors who hate my property because of the lack of foliage or flora now, devoid of such I will replace it with natural plants, and they can suck eggs, they all come from different parts of the country to Utah, transplanting themselves, sometimes to be near their children going to University we have 2 Utah Valley and BYU, these lilly loving folks gain positions in local .gov and dictate to me how or what I will do with my property, just got a notice last month I can’t have my shipping container for my tools on my property anymore, they said I couldn’t park my truck on the dirt near my home, that it had to be on cement, once I spoke to the property manager in charge of Orem‘s beautify regulations, I told him I refuse to plant lawn and zero scape is all I will do, then I’ll put in the cement next year for a dual entry exit driveway, and park my Truck on the side of the house behind a 6’ fence. In due time, I won’t go barrow against my property to satisfy people in the neighborhood who will put themselves into debt and expect the same from me.

My charge is to fight and kick against the pricks of such ignorance, defy their passive aggressions and polarize the subject, you can’t have water if you use loose it to landscape, justify it saying, oh but it’s more appealing. I say take your Lilly loving lifestyle and move somewhere like florida, plenty of water to go around. Leave me alone, you small minded simpletons, you have nothing better to do than make others unhappy, you smelling pieces of excrement, in my world I would flush you down along with your small minded friends and ideas. They will have to deal with me on my level, I have some aces up my sleeve, I say come at me and see what you get, I am retired now, and own my property, every nail and stick of it, defending it is my rights is to me, God given and they are nothing more than small terrorist with an axe to grind.

Ok, I’m done (Rant)

kv

 

When I moved into my brick home, I inspected it for vulnerability from invaders, the bank owned property did a good job of cleaning up manicuring flora, but my wife noticed mouse droppings in the linen drawers but, no recent evidence so, the first thing I did was cover return air vents in the foundation near the ground, ornamental metal coverings, 6”x 6” I placed wire mesh, the type used to stucco, heavy sharp on the edges, bugs could creep through but mice wouldn’t be able to easily chew threw, once securing the ground level the second was to cover the roof vents, same strategy, here we have flying mice lol bats, they take up residency and when they do you have little choice but to wait for them to leave as they migrate south, protected species.

I learned this when we lived in a 4 plex which was home to several thousand, they also will return year after year to the same location, only thing you can do is wait until they fly out at night, then cover your roof vents. My home was an old farm house, had a giant Pine Tree in the back lots of birds but once I covered the roof vents became the bats favorite spot in the Pine Tree, you knew by the ticking sounds as they locate food at night or while resting in the Tree communicating with each other.

For those with an interest this is for you. lol



The large pine tree in the back of the house was removed about 4 years ago, and I’ve since removed the flora, game over for the small Mosquito’s holding up in the shade of all the plants in my backyard, the small ones known for carrying west nile virus,\ large ones usually are near the lake about 15 minutes from my house, so once the flora was removed, it couldn’t harbor them and last year was so dry, didn’t see many if non at all. I chose the brick home for several reasons, difficulty for vermin to gain entry. My friend lives in SLC near the mountains has issues with squirrels, those things are devastating, had some issue with birds, there is a type of black bird that was taking up residency in my eve’s where a creeping vine split some wood and damaged the gutter, was perfect for the birds to build a nest. I stopped that issue as well. Removing all the vines on my property near my home Eradicate them, not a fan of creeping vines.

Now I have zero scape in mind since the water is in short supply and we live in a desert, but don’t tell that to my neighbors who hate my property because of the lack of foliage or flora now, devoid of such I will replace it with natural plants, and they can suck eggs, they all come from different parts of the country to Utah, transplanting themselves, sometimes to be near their children going to University we have 2 Utah Valley and BYU, these lilly loving folks gain positions in local .gov and dictate to me how or what I will do with my property, just got a notice last month I can’t have my shipping container for my tools on my property anymore, they said I couldn’t park my truck on the dirt near my home, that it had to be on cement, once I spoke to the property manager in charge of Orem‘s beautify regulations, I told him I refuse to plant lawn and zero scape is all I will do, then I’ll put in the cement next year for a dual entry exit driveway, and park my Truck on the side of the house behind a 6’ fence. In due time, I won’t go barrow against my property to satisfy people in the neighborhood who will put themselves into debt and expect the same from me.

My charge is to fight and kick against the pricks of such ignorance, defy their passive aggressions and polarize the subject, you can’t have water if you use loose it to landscape, justify it saying, oh but it’s more appealing. I say take your Lilly loving lifestyle and move somewhere like florida, plenty of water to go around. Leave me alone, you small minded simpletons, you have nothing better to do than make others unhappy, you smelling pieces of excrement, in my world I would flush you down along with your small minded friends and ideas. They will have to deal with me on my level, I have some aces up my sleeve, I say come at me and see what you get, I am retired now, and own my property, every nail and stick of it, defending it is my rights is to me, God given and they are nothing more than small terrorist with an axe to grind.

Ok, I’m done (Rant)

kv

Sounds like you have some human invaders as well as plenty of critters to deal with.
I have a little of that too here, and the only way to deal with them is to give them something unexpected now and then. Changes their whole attitude and makes for better neighbors.
I have some great neighbors too though, would not have to give them anything and yet they give us so much without wanting any return. Those kind are really golden and giving to them is more a pleasure than a task.

I've known others who cant park their truck on their own property. We let them park on ours for a while for some time as we were in a little more of a secluded area than they were.

 

Good news...they are all gone now. What a relief.