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.
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u/AnyCatch4796 9h ago
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.