Somewhere, there's a man whose path to his front door must be a six-lane highway, because there's a mousetrap to suit the preference of even the most fastidious rodent assassin. There are two major brands in the mouse-and-rat trap biz, Victor and d-Con. Both offer a wide line of killing tools, from baits that poison the little critters to traps ranging in sophistication from the classic snap trap ("proof of rodent death" being the major selling point here) to the slightly more upscale glue traps (ditto) and the d-Con "no see-a da mousie, no touch-a da mousie" disposable trap (bait it with peanut butter, rotate the top, set in place, and when the indicator on the top says "bingo!" (or something to that effect), you simply pick it up and throw it in the Dumpster) to the truly high-tech electronic mouse trap, which uses four AA batteries to electrocute the invaders.
I don't want to use poison (the victims die who knows where and then putrify) and spring traps are out of the question (the chances of simply maiming the poor beast by catching a foot or nose makes me weep), and even the "quick kill" feature of the electrocution method arouse the humanitarian in me. I don't want to kill the little guys; they're just trying to make a living like everybody else. I just don't want them doing it in my house.
Luckily, for the softies in the crowd, there is the Victor Sonic Pest Chaser, which uses high-frequency sound to repel them. (N.B.: Unless you want your gerbil to suffer a psychotic break, do not use this method.) Plug it into a wall socket and the rodents go elsewhere. That, anyway, is the idea. I bought a twin pack and put one in the kitchen and one in the living room. I have no idea if this will work, or, since it's high frequency, even if they're emitting anything at all, except perhaps a high-frequency laugh.
4 comments:
We bought one of those things once when we lived in a permeable cabin above Santa Barbara and had multiple rodents. It was at the end of our stay, though, so I don't know if it worked or not.
Definitely don't get the sticky kind: you catch lizards and then have to extract them painfully. (For you and the lizard.)
Um. How about, Miz Babs, a cat??
Lizards?! No lizards in here that I know of . . . And yes, I did think of the feline solution. These things didn't come around when Ernie lived here (except for the rats he brought in alive).
Trust me, Babz. The sonic vibration does NOT work. We are plagued by nocturnal visitors of the rat type. We have tried solutions kind and unkind. The unkind works best; baited traps that go "Snap!" in the night. You do have to "dispose" of the corpse in the morning but it is an efficient dispatch.
So far, I haven't seen any signs that the little buggers have returned, but they may just have gone out for earplugs and will be back. So it may come down to the Big Bang eventually. But why do the trap people continue to sell the vibratos if they really don't work? Wouldn't bad reviews kill the produc? Or do they rely on us first-timers to keep the sales stats up?
Post a Comment