Story of the Day 11/ 18/ 2011 #2

After waiting for two weeks, it is finally my son's turn to use the yeshivah's mouse trap.
This is not the kinder and gentler mouse trap, this is an actual "the metal bar snaps down and kills the damned rodent" kind of mouse trap.
Aaron had to wait until the other student was done catching his mouse.
Now, it is Aaron's turn.
He baited it with pistachio halvah.
The mouse wasn't interested.
He baited it with cheese crackers.
The mouse wasn't interested.
He baited it with peanut butter.
He went to the grocery store for this purpose, to buy peanut butter to bait the trap.
This is what I use , at home, except that our mice are picky, so I have to put a couple of chocolate chips from Trader Joe's on the peanut butter.
Of course, I have to go to Trader Joe's and buy the chocolate chips especially for this.
Oddly, we never seem to have any left in the house on the occasion that we get a mouse in the gragae. I wonder why that is?

Despite the fact that they come in a nice sized bag, and it usually takes two chocolate chips to catch the mouse that has decided our garage is warmer or drier than the outside.

I didn't ask Aaron if he used chocolate, I am assuming that the Israeli mice will be happy enough just to get peanut butter either that or the chocolate didn't' last long enough to make it into the trap.

I also was a bit surprised because the last time I was in Israel, you had to look a lot to buy peanut butter, which was a bit of a luxury.
Since Jimmy Carter , indubitably the best known of all the peanut farmers....well, maybe if we exclude his brother ,has fallen more out of favor since then, i am, actually, surprised that the stores still carry any.

Sicne he has been waiting while for his turn to use the trap, I decided to do a little math. There are a few hundred students in the yeshivah. His next door neighbor also has a mouse.
Let us assume that they are actually different mice. It is probably not fair to assume that every room is so blessed as to have its own mouse, though, so let us assume ( and this is a very low guesstimate) there are 40 mice for the entire yeshivah and one trap.
I calculate that this is a losing proposition.
There si no way they can trap even 10 mice, by sharing one trap, without having an ever growing mouse population.

So, what should they do?
They could buy some more traps.
Perhaps, however, that is not economical.

There is a solution that would not tax the yeshivah's resources.
They could get a cat.
Now, I wil assume you ae an American and are reading this.
In America, cats are loved and cared for. They have toys and special cat foods formulated for glossy coats and acid reflux.
they have cat psychologists, to take care of their anxieties and bipolar disorder.
Israeli cats are not like American cats.
This is because in israel, except for the rare , oddball, and there are a few, no one likes cats.
Cats are essentially treated as vermin. They live on the streets and fend for them selves and no one buys them toys or drugs or even cat food.
If one comes up to you when you are sitting at an outdoor cafe, you throw a bottle at it, or kick at it to make it go away.
As a result, the cats are hungry; and like most hungry stalking animals, they are incredibly good hunters and scavengers.
And they are more than happy to eat as many mice as the yeshivah has.
The only problem is that they are, because ether are used to being run off, almost as hard to catch as a rat...whoops, I mean a mouse.
In the meanwhile, however, we shall see how this mouse trap is working out, now that it has been baited with peanut butter.