mouse! mouse!

my parents are divorced now. have been for a while. so every other weekend my brother comes over to visit and he sleeps on the sofa from Friday to Saturday. Last night he says he saw a mouse run through the living room. he's 14 so I don't see why he'd make it up, but at the same time he does play a lot of practical jokes all the time so it's hard to know when he's being serious. but, my mom and him went out today and bought a mouse trap. I wanted one that would just catch him so we could let him go outside in the morning, but it was cheeper so they got those evil ones that just snap back and break their little necks. I'm upset. I don't want a mouse roaming around the house at night but I sure don't want to wake up tomorrow and find a dead mouse in the living room. they've already got it set up with peanut butter on it - ready to kill it. I almost want to take it in the middle of the night and release the latch so it won't kill anything and just have them think the mouse got the peanut butter and didn't get snapped in half. I don't know why. I guess I just have a soft spot for little animals. is it fair to just let it die? I just really, really don't want to see or even know that we killed a mouse tonight. what should I DO????

Updated On: 5/8/05 at 12:45 AM

I say set the trap off yourself and toss the peanut butter out. That's what I do. Insist on the catch-traps rather than the kill-traps, citing that you'll have to deal with severed mouse parts if you keep snapping mice.

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