Tuesday, December 04, 2007

d-Con 'No view, No Touch' Mouse Trap: Sterile Inhumanity

The plight of the Galgo dogs - tortured and abused by Spanish hunters - is a grisly insight into just how vile humanity can knowingly be.

But on the other end of the spectrum, it's remarkable how humanity can sanitise doing 'inhumane' things. Call me old fashioned, but I believe mankind should only be allowed to do the dirty jobs if they're willing to get their hands dirty.

Take, for example, the d-Con 'No View, No Touch' mouse trap.

It's a little black disk - about the size of a hockey puck - that you place in your home or garage. Delicious bait attracts a curious mouse and then 'snap!'

Off goes mouse to the heavenly hereafter and into the bin goes the 'No View, No Touch' mouse trap. The homeowner never needs to see or touch the victim of their trap.

Which to me, seems abhorrent.

Not the killing of the mouse - not by any means. Mice are pesky little things that spread disease and nibble through your grain sacks. If you've got a mouse-in-the-house, killing it is a lot more effective than sending it an eviction notice.

But if you're willing to muster up the courage to kill another living creature, for God's sake take responsibility for it. Be willing to look your crushed prey in the eye as you prise it's mangled corpse out of the mousetrap. Understand that you're responsible when your tomcat goes slinking past with a muffled 'mrrreeeeooow' and a length of tail hanging from between it's chops.


There's something intrinsically wrong about killing another living creature without ever having to see it or touch it. If the thought of a mouse-corpse makes you so squeamish, you've got no right killing them.

It's this 'sanitised' inhumanity that's behind a lot of life's problems at the moment.

Like how we all gaily munch our chicken nuggets, neatly ignoring the battery farming process that supplies us with our meat. Or how we feed our cows reconstituted beef-products, covering our eyes and pretending we're not really forcing herbivores into cannibalism.

Humanity has removed itself so far from the grisly realities of life that we can no longer truly accept responsibility for what we do. We can commit atrocities, but remain blissfully, deliberately detached from them so we don't have to deal with the moral consequences of our actions.

Which is totally, horribly wrong.

It's this kind of thinking that led the Nazi's to the 'final solution.' All those cheerful Germans wanted to end the 'Jewish problem,' so they handed it over to Adolf Hitler. He started the death camps and gas ovens and began the most horrific genocide in human history.

And the people of Germany, who knew nothing of the death camps and tactfully didn't ask what happened to their Jewish neighbours, reaped the benefits of their 'solution' without having to deal with the grisly fact that they were complicit in the greatest mass murder ever.

If every German civilian had been handed a shovel and a gas-mask and told to 'do their bit,' then the Holocaust would never have happened. The essential goodness of humanity would have won out and people would have been disgusted with what they were being asked to do.

But if you don't ask - and nobody tells you - it's remarkable how much inhumanity an essentially 'good' person can play their part in.

Maybe it's a long shot, trying to connect a 'No View, No Touch' mouse trap to the Holocaust - but it's the same mentality behind them both. Exercising control over life and death is a responsibility - and unless we're willing to get our hands dirty, we shouldn't have that right.

If you're going to go head-to-snout with an errant mouse - at least be a man about it. The 'No-View, No Touch' mousetrap is just cowardly.

9 comments:

cdub said...

I caught one in a glue trap last week, I bashed his head in with a stool. This week I caught one in no view no touch. Does that exempt me from bieng a Nazi?

Roland Hulme said...

Why a stool?

Anonymous said...

1. bat doing laps in dining room
2. baseball swing with broom
3. attempt to release bat from a box
4. wing is broken

had to make the tough decision to finish the bat off lest it come to a miserable starving death, or a grisly death at the hands of a neighborhood cat or bird of prey. my roommate's replica civil war sword was handy. a well-aimed stab through the heart pinned the animal to the lawn. i could feel my elevated heart rate as the bat let out a hiss of pure hate at me with all it's might, clawing the air in my direction. finished it off with the heel of my shoe. quite the ordeal.

Roland Hulme said...

You should have thrown a towel over the bat and released it fromn a window unharmed. Bats are an endangered species (in England at least) and stabbing it through the heart with a civil war sword is a criminal offence.

But ignoring that...

Stabbing it through the heart with a civil war sword????!!!!?!?!?!?!

Anonymous said...

Wow....is all I can say...do you even have little children? Ones who cannot comprehend what disease, lice and fleas can be brought in on those "cute lil furry creatures" ? I think this mouse trap is the best thing EVER...

Anonymous said...

Sterile inhumanity? Please. If you want to get all sentimental, find something other than vermin to waste it on.

Anonymous said...

And "Maybe it's a long shot, trying to connect a 'No View, No Touch' mouse trap to the Holocaust"

Long shot? More like extremist lunacy and a blatant example of Godwin's law in action. Fail.

Bogus said...

You are a fool!

Unknown said...

Yes I stopped reading when I saw the words "Nazi" and "holocaust". Ridiculous.
I use these traps, not because I can't stand seeing the little bastards that can chew up my prized electronics or urinate and shit on my counter tops... I use them because they WORK! I've tried bait in a box, wooden spring traps etc... the mice eat the bait on the wooden traps and live to see another day. The bait kills them in a place where I can't find them but can smell them rotting. Thats always nice. Use them because they work. Not because you're a closet Nazi with ethnic cleansing in mind. Get a grip on reality.