I'm all for genetics, or jeanetique as we say in France. While certain ethicists, retards, Luddites, and Shakers shun the nascent but remarkable branch of biotechnology, branding it a "slippery slope," "smelly," a "corrupting force," and "evil," respectively, I embrace the potential to perfect what The Lord Our God so badly fucked up the first time around.

Still, I find the idea of mice that can run 1,800 meters without rest disconcerting for two reasons: 1,800 meters is much longer than a football field, which is the largest span I can conceive of running without a nap, beer, and some tapas; and mice are already troublesome, so further improvement is not needed.

Of course, this all reminds me of a conversation I had with a gentleman working in my local hardware store. Upon moving into my new home, I discovered mice shit. As I am a man of science, I concluded mice might be present and I set about destroying them.

I had mice in my old place in Chicago. During that experience I experimented with various methods and settled on what is now my preferred implement of mouse extermination: the glue trap. This is, essentially, a piece of cardboard covered with very sticky shit. Bait is placed in the center of the trap. The foolish mouse, driven by greed and gluttony, goes for it and is foiled.

They did not appear to carry glue traps in my local hardware store, so I asked the gentleman if perhaps they might soon receive a shipment. "No," he said. "We don't carry those. You know, some say those are even more cruel than the other traps."

The hardware store carried the spring-loaded trap that breaks the mouse's back, that is if it's lucky enough to avoid slower death from a crushed head or broken limbs. They carried a number of poisons, some of which dehydrate the mouse to the point of death, others liquify its organs and cause them to bleed out of every orafice. But they drew an ethical line at the glue traps.

In the end, I bought them at Home Depot.


Mice, seen here in some kind of metallic chute, are creepy and must be stopped.

Analogcabin @ 5:28 PM
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