My humane mousetrap’s instructions tell me to release my visitor a mile away or it may find its way back. Can this be true?
Garry Trethewey
Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary, South Australia
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The idea of a humane mousetrap introduces some notion of ethics, which runs up against population dynamics and carrying capacity.
The mice living a mile away are using all the food and living space that is there. If they weren’t, then from the huge number of baby mice that are born, a few more would survive to fill up the space.
So adding another mouse from your house just means there is one more mouse than carrying capacity allows.
What happens then? Perhaps one more of the countless babies dies to accommodate your mouse. Or more likely, your mouse, not knowing the local resource base, dies. Or there is a shuffling – after all, now there is a spare space at your house for the mouse next door to move in, leaving another space, and so on.
Whether it is your original mouse, or another one, you can be sure the space will be filled.
Geoffrey Mann
Bookham, Surrey, UK
I construct my humane mousetrap by building a ladder of books up to a deep waste bin, the last book baited and balanced over the edge. Setting this in the garage for several nights, I caught a mouse every morning and freed it on the common about 100 metres away over a road. I forgot the next night – no books, no bait – but there was a mouse again in the bin. It must have been the same mouse climbing adjacent shelves and jumping in, expecting food and a convenient taxi home in the morning.
If you take a trapped mouse a mile away from your house, it means there is now a space for the mouse next door to move in
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