Published February 24, 2022
We live in an old farmhouse, and in the winter the white-bellied deer mice come into the house from the fields and woods. Here and there—even here on my desk—they leave tiny scat. The exterminator has come several times this winter, but it seems to be a losing battle. The mice find their way in.
A couple of days ago, the exterminator came again, put fresh baits in the basement, and even placed two traps—black plastic trays covered with a sort of superglue—under the kitchen sink. I looked in the morning and saw that one of the traps had caught a vole (which was already dead) and the other a deer mouse, still alive and struggling against the superglue, which held its feet fast.
I carried the two glue trays outside to the edge of the pine woods. It was bitterly cold, wind blowing hard down the valley. During the night, it had rained on top of old snow, and then the temperature had fallen steeply, leaving everything frozen hard. The trees were covered with a silver enamel, and the ground was glazed. I walked gingerly, carrying the glue trays, afraid that I might slip on the ice, accidentally put my hand into the glue, and get stuck myself.
Click here to read the rest of this piece at the Wall Street Journal‘s website.
Mr. Morrow is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His latest book is God and Mammon: Chronicles of American Money.
Photo by David Bartus from Pexels
Lance Morrow is the Henry Grunwald Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. His work focuses on the moral and ethical dimensions of public events, including developments in regard to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and political correctness on American campuses, with a view to the future consequences of such suppressions.
