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Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

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Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#71

I'm a meat eater with a clear conscience and I don't count myself as an animal lover, but, man, those traps are horrible. Last summer, someone placed one in the house I was staying. We had a plumber over to fix the kitchen sink and as he was working on it, a little country mouse poked its head out of a hole on the side. The lady of the house freaked out and the plumber advised her to get a couple of "glues" to trap i…

And I don't think rat poison is any better. Another time I was outside my work building and I saw a mouse just standing there in the middle of the driveway. I walked right up to it and it didn't run. I squatted down next to it and I saw it was heaving and shivering, like it was trying to regurgitate something. All the time I sat there and watched it, it didn't once seemed to acknowledge me.

Sometimes they only eat a bit of the poison and then they die even more slowly and painfully. That just sucks. There must be a better way to kill them off, than to subject them to this kind of cruelty.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#72
post #22
post #7

Who leaves a mouse on a glue trap until it dies? That's messed up! I can hear when a mouse is on those things and at that point I carry the frightened mouse outside, pour a cap full of vegetable oil around it's feet and it frees itself, running off into the yard, then the trap goes in the trash. Heinously cruel? Only if you're a lazy shit.

First off, they are sold to glue a mouse, then toss the whole thing, mouse and all. They don't market it as a catch-and-release. And because they don't only get stuck by their feet, like their face, for example. If you're only planning on catch-and-release, then use a trap made for that. How silly do you have to be to glue them to a piece of paper, just to intend to un-glue them later?? That alone is cruel.

They don't get gore in my house like a snap trap does yet fit in the same places where a catch-and-release trap would not. The mouse still lives and I get maybe two of them a year, in the fall as the temps cool. I really don't think it's a big deal.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#73

Nice to see some sane, compassionate comments here to balance out the psychopaths who can't even empathize with a mouse. Weird how people always seem to brag about how little empathy they have for animals whether it's a submission about glue traps or Beyond Meat. Though you usually need showdead=true to see them.

Meh, it's all a matter of perspective and understanding the circle of life. Having grown up in a rural area, most city-born people would have the vapors if they knew how the food they eat was produced. That includes even the vegans; agricultural pest animals need to be controlled in order to avoid damage and contamination of produce and grain. Unless you're planning on living on veggies grown in a hermetically sealed…

As someone who grew up in the country where all of my neighbours were farmers: there's a huge difference between killing an animal and killing an animal in a cruel (ie unnecessary suffering) manner. Killing a mouse with a trap that does the killing quickly, I don't have any problem with, but these traps just pin the creature in place so that it cannot get away and slowly dehydrates to death.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#74
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in the ecosystem has value, that’s why it exists. Many creatures eat mosquitos and ants and the like. They also help to spread disease that keeps the population of the species they, in turn, prey on in check.

The problem is when the species they spread diseases to are human. And "being useless" doesn't mean mosquitoes don't have a place in the ecosystem. Everything does. What it means is that other species don't rely mosquitoes exclusively. For example, birds that feed on mosquitoes can also eat other insects, and these insects are likely to become more prolific to fill the void created by the destruction of mosquitoes. I…

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the intersection of the set of people who are at risk of dying of malaria and the set of people who make that second argument is very small. It’s a pretty easy argument to make from your armchair in London or New York, and a harder one to make in Bangui or Kinshasa.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, it's all a matter of perspective and understanding the circle of life. Having grown up in a rural area, most city-born people would have the vapors if they knew how the food they eat was produced. That includes even the vegans; agricultural pest animals need to be controlled in order to avoid damage and contamination of produce and grain. Unless you're planning on living on veggies grown in a hermetically sealed…

As someone who grew up in the country where all of my neighbours were farmers: there's a huge difference between killing an animal and killing an animal in a cruel (ie unnecessary suffering) manner. Killing a mouse with a trap that does the killing quickly, I don't have any problem with, but these traps just pin the creature in place so that it cannot get away and slowly dehydrates to death.

I empathize but how's that better than an old cow being slowly eaten alive by coyotes when it gets into the wrong pasture? Or a horse breaking a leg and... I mean it's nasty. Or a chicken dying of infection because it's getting pecked by other chickens? Or hell, a mouse being poisoned and eaten by a snake or other creature?

I feel like growing up next to a farm vs working on a farm is a big difference and there's a lot of torturous death you didn't see. It's death. It sucks by nature.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#76
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the mosquitos will be replaced in their environment by other bugs that are equally tasty and don’t also kill humans in such massive numbers.

I agree with what you said (as far as I know) but that isn't exactly what the comment that the GP replied to was saying. > However, mosquitos have absolutely no value and can be exterminated to extinction.

I'll issue a correction: as mass murderers they have negative value. Their lives must be extinguished.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 flies = 1 mouse. However, mosquitos have absolutely no value and can be exterminated to extinction. We could even make it a holiday.

Everything in the ecosystem has value, that’s why it exists. Many creatures eat mosquitos and ants and the like. They also help to spread disease that keeps the population of the species they, in turn, prey on in check.

Mosquitoes are so value-less that scientists are working on extinction methods.

Re: Glue traps are cruel, and retailers should be banned from selling them

#78

Not the kind of link I’d expect on hacker news. I’ve used glue traps once, wouldn’t use it again after seeing what happened to the mouse. I went back to the old school spring traps, which are also cheap.

I prefer my cats, which are more cruel than any of the mouse trap styles sold here.

Don't mice just avoid houses with cat smell? I used to have cats and I don't remember them catching any mice, we just didn't have them anymore.
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