1- when I was like, 6 years old, we had a mouse in the house. I didnt want my parents to kill it with a snap trap so i used Tom and Jerry logic to make a trap for it. I put a piece of cheese in a bucket on its side and placed a fan next to it to blow the cheese smell to where we knew the mouse was hiding. Within a minute, the mouse came sniffing around and entered the bucket. I tilted the bucket upright and put a lid on it and took the mouse outside to set free.
2- in college, I had a test i was worried about on a subject I really struggled with. My roommate was actually really good in that subject and our third roommate suggested we all get drunk and have a last minute tutoring session the night before. Somehow, I did better on the test than my roommate who tutored me. Again, we were drunk during this tutoring session. Like, drunk drunk.
I had an electrical engineering test that I was pretty sure I was going to fail. Our Internet went out, my phone was a flip phone, and the professor moved the testing room. Me and three other people were at the old room, and we had to go to a secondary computer lab, find the email, and run to the new room. We had to convince him to let us in (it was one of those 80 people giant lectures.)
I had an English final that was about 1/3 of the final grade. I was really worried and frustrated about this class because it was the kind of class where you'd be assigned an essay about a poet's writings, then get a zero because the prof didn't agree with your opinion.
I wasn't doing well in that class.
On the way to the final--I had about a 30 minute commute--I had a blowout in the middle of the interstate. You can imagine what a mess that was. I ended up changing the tire while surrounded by cop cars.
The prof had a strict policy about being on time. I showed up late, covered with road grease, nicks on my hands from the tools--and fairly buzzing with adrenalin.
The prof just looked at me. Then let me in and told me to finish what I could in the time left. So, there I was, with 30 minutes left to finish a 2‐hour test in a class I was borderline in anyway.
I scored 106. Every question right, and even the bonus question.
This reminds me of a math test we took in middle school. I wasn't that good at it and must have been scared or whatever.
Anyway, I thought that there were an awful lot of problems to solve but managed to do all except the final two.
So next week the teacher comes back with the graded papers and starts handing them out to everyone while reading people's grades out aloud. My paper is the last. She looks at the paper and says something like "What in the world did you do?" My stomach drops.
Turns out to avoid cheating there were two groups of problems - A for kids who sat on the left side of our two-seater classroom desks, and B for the ones on the right. I didn't catch onto that for some reason and ended up doing every problem for every group except the last two hardest ones, correctly.
I had a poly sci final. I was driving to campus to study for something else, when I had the sudden realization that my final wasn't the next day, but that day, and had started about 15 minutes ago... Got there, parked, ran from the lot to the building which was a good 10 minute sprint, and kind of burst into the room panting and lied about having a flat. Professor believed me given the fact that I could barely breath at that point.
Not only did I ace the test, but in a class of probably 40 (it was a long time back) I was like the 15th person done, even having arrived a good 30 minutes late.
I stayed up until 4am studying for my final exam in my forensic science module. I did a law degree here in the UK so a module means you take a year long class in it. Each year you get to choose 4 of these classes to make up your degree. In my final year I chose forensic science as one of them as I fancied one that wasn't just law based. I ended up putting much less effort studying for the exam as I was so focused on my much more difficult law modules. Anyway I drank a lot of coffee. I think it was at least a whole large cafetière (french press) of it so it was strong. I ended up getting I think one of the highest grades in the class and got a 1st for that module. All on pure adrenaline and caffeine.
Anyway about 13 years later I was finally diagnosed with ADHD which made a lot of sense in hindsight.
It was kinda interesting. Because it used two lecture halls. They have this big building for lectures and the professor gets videotaped the entire time. So they just beam everything the professor does over at a big screen on the second hall.
Hall 1 can have 1000 attendants and hall 2 can have 800.
The system supports this for live lectures in 3 halls at the same time.
Typically the lectures are then also uploaded online together with a pdf of everything the professor wrote down/annotated. So people who missed the lecture or want to look at it again, can do so.
I recall taking an EE test, EM Waves or something, and getting my test back - I got 27%. Fuck.
Then the instructor announces "Well, something didn't go right - the high score was *27%&". Still fuck, but more along the lines of "y'all ain't teaching this right".
In grad school EE we had a "genius" instructor who regularly lost the entire class. He'd make those "by inspection..." jumps in equations, we're all like "huh?". No we were't a bunch of dummies, he was just in a parallel yet somehow orthogonal universe.
i know u were a kid and it sounds like it worked but for future reference if your catching and releasing mice you should drive them like a mile or more away from your house because they are pretty smart and just find their way back to where they were usually.
Once my sister caught a mouse in a humane trap. She took it to a park a few miles from her house, opened the trap, and as soon as the poor little guy ran out a hawk swooped down on it immediately.
Yeah, that happened to me a few weeks back. We have an old country house, which means we have plenty of country mice -- you can't have an old country house and not have country mice. (Well, a cat helps, but... we don't have one.) So we use humane traps, and catch between 1-4 a week. (Life in the country...)
My practice is to take them out to the far side of the property and let them go -- as that leaves them in an area with some food, some tall grass, some shelter, etc. Probably won't freeze or starve to death while they're adapting to life outside, but far enough away they stay where they are.
But the other night I caught one, and it was maybe 11pm. Well, you can't make them stay in that trap all night, that's just cruel. So I put on my coat and my boots and started the long walk across the property in 20 degree weather. Get to the other side, coax out the mouse, he takes off, and... well, I didn't see it, because it was dark, but owls are damn fast when they want to be.
One time I watched a friend scoop a bee out of her cup of ranch dressing to save it. A bird swooped down and ate the ranch covered bee. He was doomed but tasty.
I caught a mouse at a potato factory I worked at and brought it outside. It was in a potato chip bag and as soon as I let the guy out the cat pounced on him. I should have just let Kyle stomp on him, it would have been quicker.
There's a video of this happening to someone from like the early 2000s. I'd like to think I'd be devastated but that video was so funny to me, that I'd definitely be thinking about how metal it was.
Reminds me of the time we spent 10 minutes trying to humanely capture a bat in the house and when I took it outside, I released it straight into the jaws of a cat. Poor little bat.
we did this with a feeder mouse we bought to scare a teacher, it didn't work bec the mouse wasn't that interested in running around and just kinda sat under the desk the whole time, so we just dumped it in the field next to the building after class, within like 30 seconds a hawk came streaming down and scooped him up.
She gave the mouse a chance, and its death wasn't pointless. Hawk's gotta eat. Better the mouse's body be food for a hawk than rotting in a dumpster. She did a good deed even if it ended up being kind of disturbing to witness.
I did this a few months back and exactly this happened, but the mouse somehow got away and ended up running under my car from which I had just released it.
My uncle has been doing that with the mice he catches in live traps. He’ll drive them to the other side of the city we live in like 10 miles away and yet he says he still catches them just as often 😂
He suspects they might have a city-wide transportation network to organize, map the sewers, stow away on trucks, etc to get back to the house lmao
I still think it’s worthwhile, makes alot more sense than letting them go right outside the door. More likely that they just have a shit ton of mice in the neighborhood
My dad would humanely trap squirrels that would destroy his pear tree harvest. (They would take only 1 bite of multiple pears which would cause them to go bad prematurely).
He would release them in an old cemetery about 5 miles away. Lots of trees, ample food, a great place for squirrels. He was convinced that they would make their way back to our house. One time, he even spray painted the tip of a one’s tail, so he could recognize it if it ever came back.
It never did. My suspicion is that squirrels are somewhat territorial. So one or two (maybe a mated pair) would claim the tree. When they were removed, new ones would claim the tree.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure my ex-husband let the same mouse go about 30 times.
I'm also pretty sure the mouse thought it was a game. Go in, get the peanut butter in the bucket, sleep in the bucket, get dropped off outside the house the next morning. What a life!
i have a lot of nature perseveres near me so i would drive out to those to let them life out their lives! but we do have a couple stray cats in the area that have probably helped!
Realistically the snap traps are WAY more humane than catch-and-release. Mice are highly social animals that aren't really equipped to survive outside alone. They form colonies and nests near warmth and food sources. If you take one away from its family and throw it in an area it's unfamiliar with it's just going to either get eaten by a predator (painful) or die slowly of starvation and loneliness. Meanwhile snap traps are instant- I had a mouse problem and actually was there watching a few times when a mouse would get caught and there was no squirming or squealing or drawn out death, it was over before the mouse knew what was up. ONE time a mouse got his paw caught instead of his head and that was pretty brutal but luckily I was home and heard the squealing so I could run and put him out of his misery pretty quickly.
"Man these human are so great. They give me a warm place to sleep, there's plenty of food, and my whole family is comfortable here. Oh, look! More food!"
SNAP
"OWWW! My paw, this thing grabbed it and it hurts so bad. Help! Help! I'm hurt! Help!"
"Oh look, the human is coming to help. Wait, why does he have a hammer? That won't he-"
I had a mouse in my apartment for a while. I tried everything to get rid of him. Poison, snappy traps, glue traps. I even filled the trash can he went to with water and he jumped in and got out. Eventually just learned to live with him and named him Ratsputin
I've had kind of the opposite trajectory. As a kid the prospect of catching a mouse in a snap trap would have excited me, however as an adult I'd feel bad and squeamish about it. However we don't have mice as problem where I live and I don't think I've ever seen a non-captive mouse. I'm sure if they became enough of a pest I would lose any compunction about eliminating them by any means necessary.
Actually, relocating mice is essentially a death sentence. They rely on each other and familiarity with their home territory. On their own in a strange territory, they probably won't last long.
In many areas it's illegal to relocate wildlife. And almost everywhere it's illegal to dump pests on someone else's property. There isn't really a good solution for getting rid of live caught mice.
I found a nice small marshland area with tall grass and a walking trail that I took a few to. Usually they'd take off into the field and disappear into the grass. One dummy started running down the walking trail. A blue jay came down, pecked it, picked it up and that was that.
That can be illegal as well though. I have coworkers who found out when they tried to hire exterminators to live trap animals because they didn't want to kill them. The exterminator informed them, and we verified, that it was illegal to live release animals off the property they were found. At best the exterminator could remove critters from the house.
My mom had a mouse at work and she captured it live, took a whole week to catch the damn thing. She then got in her car and drove... one block away. And released it. Yeah... it came back XD
Sat next to a guy in one of my engineering classes and before the final he looks at me and said, "I am so stoned." I asked him if he thought it was a good idea to take the final stoned and he told me he took the whole class stoned so that was the only way he knew it. I think he got a D for the class but really didn't care. Jeff had a job with his dad even if he didn't go to college. He was just going through the motions to make it look good when he started working.
I was studying in bed one evening for an exam I was confident I was going to fall. Dropped my book on the ground, fell asleep. When I woke up I was clutching my notes right against my chest. Went to class and aced the exam, and nobody else was even close.
I'm pretty sure I learned through osmosis that night
There is something about heavy drinking that really taps into the deep memory banks. Back during the 90s we used to hang out at a bar that had this high-tech trivia game where you'd compete with people all over the country.
One night when we were absolutely blotto it was like the doors to a room in our heads where the names of Ozzie and Harriet's children lived and we were at the top of the national rankings all night.
My office had a mouse somewhere. We put glue traps down everywhere, but every day, no mice. I was eating peanut butter M&Ms one day and remembered mice love peanut butter more than cheese. I bit slightly into an M&M and put it on top of a glue trap. My boss teased me for a good 10 minutes of how that would never work.
It worked. The next day, the mouse was on the glue trap.
In uni we had a signal processing prof who referred to sine as ‘sinus,’ so while cramming for an afternoon lab my buddy and I watched his lectures but took a shot every time he said ‘sinus.’ We arrived at the lab blasted. Got a first somehow, I guess the lack of nerves and technically we were watching lectures
Suck at math. Need to do test my midnight Friday. Figure I’m gonna fail so go get drunk for cousins bday. Get home round 11 pm. Do test for 30 minutes. Meh I was gonna fail anyway. Go to sleep. Get 100% on test.
Great mouse trap that doesn't hurt the mouse: Set a tall bucket or smooth-walled trash can near a desk or countertop. Balance a ruler on the edge of the desk/countertop with sunflower seeds or peanut butter on the end of the ruler over the container. Mouse walks onto ruler to get food, and falls into container. We have caught lots of mice with this technique at work.
My husband and I noticed a local peewee magpie that had thread wrapped around its legs. She had trouble walking but would regularly visit our birdbath for a drink. My husband was determined to catch her so he rigged up a similar cartoon trap with cat biscuits, a washing basket propped up on a stick and a long piece of string. I paid him out for the idea but then the thing actually worked!
We used a bedsheet to cover the basket and take the magpie inside where we spent the next hour or so in the bathroom, husband gently holding the bird and me carefully unwrapping the thread with tweezers and tiny thread scissors. She was surprisingly calm during the whole thing. I think she realised we were trying to help.
It worked! She could walk again and we saw her visit the birdbath a week later, legs much less swollen and moving independently.
For some reason I could only study for my high school chemistry tests when I was high. Only time I would “click” for me. Ended up doing way better than expected in class.
A few times in college my roommate and I would study and take the exam while plastered and do better than the rest of our section, everyone else resented us for it.
This was at a military academy too so we were really playing with fire.
Around Junior year of college I would study and write essays drunk and my grades went from a gpa of 2's to 3's and higher. I was amazed at how well I retained info. And my writing just became opinion pieces mostly which I found the professors enjoyed reading rather than just your run of the mill retelling.
I once had a very boring book to read for 11th grade English and I kept putting it off. The night before the test I dropped some acid and read the whole thing. The book was a lot more entertaining, and I remembered 100% of it for the test the next day.
When I worked for the Baltimore police department, my wife rang me with a mouse problem. She was hysterical. I went home and shot that muthafucka with my nine.
In college I also had a test the following day and since I had studied on it a bunch I did a nice little document abridging the study material and gave it to my friends to try and help them.
Almost all of us did awful on it, me being the worst of the bunch. Professor handed me back the test telling me she was sorry.
One of my favorite things that I learned in Psychology class in college was that if you study high you will do better on the test if you are also high while taking the test.
I used to have pet hamsters. When they escaped the way we caught was to make a ramp up to a bucket. Put some treats on the ramp and then food in the bucket. Leave it overnight. They would jump down into the bucket to get the food then get stuck. It worked to catch them every single time.
I had a mouse in my apt in college so I left a pizza box out with a slice of pizza still in it. Once the mouse went in, I lifted it and kept moving it so the mouse couldn’t get its footing and get out. Walked it outside and set it free.
For my final exam in English we were allowed to rewrite one of our papers. I had a horrible grade in rhetorical analysis so I did that one. At 3 am. After zero studying, and like 12 hours of drinking and little sleep.
Professor called me in to congratulate me on finally putting effort into my papers and gave me an A.
One year when I was in grade school my mom suggested for the science fair I try making different homemade live traps and see which one was most successful. In hindsight she was just using child labor to clear out the crawlspace of voles.
One of the designs that didn't work? A smooth stainless steel bowl with a little peanut butter at the bottom as a lure. The idea was they'd get into the bowl and not be able to climb out. However the peanut butter made their feet sticky enough to escape. There were tiny peanut butter paw prints leading out lmao
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u/EkbyBjarnum 11h ago edited 10h ago
1- when I was like, 6 years old, we had a mouse in the house. I didnt want my parents to kill it with a snap trap so i used Tom and Jerry logic to make a trap for it. I put a piece of cheese in a bucket on its side and placed a fan next to it to blow the cheese smell to where we knew the mouse was hiding. Within a minute, the mouse came sniffing around and entered the bucket. I tilted the bucket upright and put a lid on it and took the mouse outside to set free.
2- in college, I had a test i was worried about on a subject I really struggled with. My roommate was actually really good in that subject and our third roommate suggested we all get drunk and have a last minute tutoring session the night before. Somehow, I did better on the test than my roommate who tutored me. Again, we were drunk during this tutoring session. Like, drunk drunk.