According to the authoritative text on the subject,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
humans are the 3rd most intelligent species on Earth, superceded not only by dolphins but
also by mice. This page provides evidence supporting that hypothesis, although it can
be debated whether it mainly demonstrates the intelligence of mice or my
own lack thereof.
Here's our little friend posing for my surveillance camera,
enjoying a piece of cheese while evading two mouse traps.
It is standing right in front of its house, the empty space behind the baseboard under
a cabinet in our kitchen in Winchester, Massachusetts.
Philip, Alexander and I think it's cute, but Angelica has given me a grim ultimatum:
catch it my way or she'll deal with it her way - Brazilian women aren't known for their
compassionate love of furry little rodents...
In the past, the kids and I have successfully caught mice with
the Victor Tin Cat trap
(the one our friend is standing on in the picture)
and let them loose in a far-away forest (the mouse equivalent of being deported to Siberia).
But this time, no luck. The trap remained empty every morning even though the
mouse was clearly around (a piece of cheese on top of the trap would invariably disappear and Angelica would curse over mouse droppings
in the pantry, in the sink, etc.).
First deployment of the mousecam. As we all gather around the breakfast table to
inspect the findings, I'm the laughing stock, publically humiliated by the mouse.
It appears to be either too large or too smart to enter the trap.
As you can see in the
movie,
it's figured out that it can lie on its side and help itself to the peanut butter
by sticking its right paw through the air vent, without ever entering the trap.
So all these nights, I've simply been feeding it!
In desperation, I order a larger trap: the
Ranger rat/squirrel trap,
after a friendly sales rep named Kevin told me he thought the wire grid was fine enough to keep our mouse
inside.
We're back from vacation in Sweden and Iceland, and the new trap has arrived.
It's now or never! Tonight's menu: a cheese aperetif followed by peanut butter for the main course
and an Atkins chocolate bar for desert - something Angelica discovered he'd secretely feasted on in the pantry.
I cover the new trap with cloth to make it look more cozy and mouse-friendly - something Kevin had suggested.
I wake up early the next morning, full of anticipation. The cheese is gone and the
trap door is down! I remove the cloth and my heart sinks: no mouse.
I check the surveillance results.
Here is a movie of the appetizer being eaten.
Houdini looks like he's slimmed down while we were away!
The motion sensor missed the main action, but the second-by-second time lapse movie didn't
(left). The mouse enters, heads for the peanut butter on the trigger and the chocolate on
the far side and the trap door slams shut.
But not many seconds later, Houdini the Mouse is seen leaving again!
How on Earth could he get out?
After once again being ridiculed at the breakfast table, it was back to work. I bent the trap frame to
shrink the opening around the trap door, and closed off a slight gap with steel wire.
I pulled back the cloth a bit so that if Houdini did another breakout stunt, at least I'd be able
to see where and how. I sat in the living room reading for an hour, prepared to rapidly place the whole
trap in a more Houdini-proof container as soon as I heard the trap door close.
But no luck. When I peered into the kitchen, Houdini had announced his arrival by eating the
cheese aperetif, but s/he cleverly stayed out of the trap itself until I'd gone to bed.
I wake up at 5AM and fail to fall back a sleep since I'm wondering whether I've caught Houdini. I get up and find ... another fiasco. The trap door is closed, the peanut butter is all gone, the chocolate bar is full of tooth marks - and the trap is empty. My only consolation is a movie with the full Houdini breakout routine. I'm amazed that someone so large-looking can squeeze through such a narrow opening, but a website I should have read before buying this trap claims that some mice can get through cracks as narrow as a quarter of an inch. Which would explain how Houdini gets under the pantry door.
But that wasn't all. Houdini didn't want to miss an opportunity to humiliate me further:
he was so confident in his talents as escape artist that he
reentered the closed trap to finish off the peanut butter and have more chocolate dessert!
And he did it twice! Here are two movies of Houdini reentering through the rectangular
openings in the side grid,
near the front
and
near the back.
Crisis. Angelica is now threatening to take matters into her own hands on Tuesday, the day after tomorrow. And my mother-in-law Dulce has arrived from Brazil, so the feel-sorry-for-the-mouse percentage of the voices in the household has shrunk. Philip suggests we should feed the mouse until it's too fat to be able to escape from the trap... Alexander says that we need to buy a medium-sized trap. Indeed, in desperation I've ordered a Havahart ``Small Live Trap trap'' which looks like it has smaller openings, paying $31.50 for shipping just to get it here asap. I've also ordered this cutesy trap as backup. To be continued...
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