Saving one life, taking another.

I was at the lake yesterday, (good thing too, because today is cold and wet), and I noticed something tiny flash and land on the water. As I tool up to it I see that it is a butterfly. I give it the palm of my hand and it climbs on. I set it on my leg where it hangs out for about half an hour, drying out while I paddle and fish. It's wings at first were pretty wet and stuck together, but they did dry out in the sunshine on my leg. I knew it was close to leaving when it got real active, moving the wings about. Sure enough, I got to see it fly off. It left a real smile on my face.
Last night I finally caught a mouse that must have been a direct descendent of Houdini. For a week now it has evaded, or escaped from sticky traps that I have been leaving out for it, all the while leaving his little calling cards all over my counters. It finally fell, (literally), for a morsel of peanut butter at the end of a paper tube from a toilet paper roll. I flattened one side of the roll so that it didn't roll, and set it balanced over the edge of a favorite counter. Below it I placed a 5 gallon bucket with a few inches of water in it. The mouse walked into the tube for the bait, tipped it over the edge and into the bucket of water. That one left a smile on my face as well.

giveth and taketh.....Man now that's a rube goldberg mouse trap

Beautiful butterfly. 

Humans are funny like that...saving things and killing things.  I'll kill mice in my house any way I can.

Mammals just don't have a chance around you

What, no pics of the trap or the aftermath? 

Saving butterflies is good karma. I saved one at Paradise a few years back and was promptly rewarded (after a long, dead day) a little striper and a nice halibut.

Below it I placed a 5 gallon bucket with a few inches of water in it. The mouse walked into the tube for the bait, tipped it over the edge and into the bucket of water.

Genius!

AWWWWWWWWWWW that's so sweet  How was the Fishing?

Sweet trap Juan! I love the feeling of winning a hard fought chess game with a rodent!!!

The mouse walked into the tube for the bait, tipped it over the edge and into the bucket of water.

Love the idea Juan. That would have been one for the records if you had your trail cam set up to catch the action!!!!!

Now what would have been real awakening was if a huge brown ate the butterfly and the mouse formed a paddle out of the cardboard and started fishing.

Nice, Jaun.

I killed a gopher that has evaded repeated flooding, traps, gassing, and attempts at digging him up.  I wish i could say it ended craftily and civilized like your encounter, but it came down to me bashing him to a pulp with a short stick. 

Guess I better go find a butterfly to save.

Eric, I think I might have to find a short stick of my own. There's more than one, and they've been coming back to the tube, but have not been falling in. I think I've got the tube on too much of a hair-trigger balance. I think they're knocking it over as soon as they touch it, and are able to back out in time.
I'm putting the critter-cam on them tonight.

I'm putting the critter-cam on them tonight.

SWEET!!!!!

 Butterflies are amazing insects. Rodents? They are cute but pests. We have Voles (they look like Gray Hamsters—the half acre was over grown for a year before we moved in) on our property but the Spaniels have been getting them one by one or scaring them off. Saves me trapping them. So now I dedicate my free time to Foxtail eradication—they are evil barbed terrorists for the Spaniels. It's always something.