Apparently oven manufacturers don't share this concern - I can put chicken in my oven and schedule it to turn on later that day, salmonella and all.
Maybe because ovens are hotter? Don't know. But I could see microbe growth as being path dependent. That is, if you let them get a start, it can take more heat to kill them than it would to keep them from getting a start.
Chuck in some hand sanitizer if you're worried.
1 seems right. Ovens are generally designed to cook things at 300+ degrees. Don't crock pots cook at something like 180?
I prefer my bacteria sous-vide. Adds more flavor.
Or it could just be that no one's tried suing the oven manufacturers about it yet.
Our oven has a self-cleaning feature that doesn't work. Which is to say we have a dirty oven.
I heard you're not supposed to use the self cleaning function if you have pet birds because the fumes can kill them. Even if the birds aren't in the oven.
3. Our oven can cook at anything from 120 to 525, if I've converted to your quaint Victorian temperature scale right. Crock pots, IME have rather more restrictive settings, but they're not absolutely lower.
7: I wouldn't clean the bird cage with Easy Off either.
Even if the birds aren't in the oven.
But especially if they are.
1 makes sense. Thread over, 40 comment hijacking rule lifted!
On cooking, I'm thinking of making my own backpacking stove using an Altoid tin or a tuna can. It remains to be seen if I'll go hiking.
7. makes me wonder about putting birds, or bits of mammals, in the oven if you use the self cleaner anyway.
I think if you put them in while the self clean cycle was running, you'd start a fire.
Roughly on topic: this guy is a genius and I want that rig.
But the fumes persist after it's finished. How long should you wait before putting your dead animal in?
Back when the feature worked, the oven door wouldn't open for a good long while after the clean cycle. Maybe that's why?
I had always assume it was merely because of the heat.
12: you can certainly do that (and lots of people do), but I'm not sure why you would since a trangia will only cost you $14, and has a screw on lid that seals so you don't have to burn off all of your fuel every time you use it.
Yes. And I won't be able to burn my Everclear in an emergency.
This is a pretty naive question, but is killing the salmonella enough? The outer membrane of some pathogens causes problems for the human immune system even if the bugs are dead. I could try looking this up, I guess.
Jammies has one of those jetboils. He and I disagree on whether gadgets undermine the spirit of camping. I sort of believe that camping means you, a can opener, some cans of beans, and some books.
This is a pretty naive question, but is killing the salmonella enough?
I like to make it suffer first.
24: If you are going to be hiking somewhere away from a water tap, you need to be able to boil water. Also, I want coffee.
A loaf of bread, a can of bean, and you.
One can boil water on a campfire. But yes, I like coffee, too, and I always end up using the jetboil to make it.
The disagreement is much more pervasive throughout the campsite than just the jetboil, though. Part of it is that I have no intention of hiking any distance whatsoever to camp, and so I feel like all those fancy REI lightweight toys should be the purview of those who are willing to work for it. OTOH, sometimes Jammies has done those hiking-camping trips, without me.
It's just one really big bean in a can.
you, a can opener, some cans of beans, and some books.
The Hitler Youth DIY cookstove?
One can boil water on a campfire.
It's not easy to do if you don't have some device in addition to a pot with a lid.
Our back room has a little counter where the kids eat breakfast. For various reasons (not related to radiator woes) it's cold as hell back there (great view of the bird feeder, though) and the kids hate it in the morning (when they're already cold from getting out of bed). I got a baking steel for Xmas, and had a brainstorm a couple weeks ago: I program the oven to turn on 30 minutes before they come downstairs, preheating the baking steel and old baking stone. Then, 5 minutes before they come down, I put the stone and steel on their seats, preheating them, and then move them to the floor by their feet for ongoing warmth during breakfast. Helps a lot.
Part of it is that I have no intention of hiking any distance whatsoever to camp, and so I feel like all those fancy REI lightweight toys should be the purview of those who are willing to work for it. OTOH, sometimes Jammies has done those hiking-camping trips, without me.
What's the point of camping without hiking (or being at a festival, etc)? Isn't that just sleeping uncomfortably for no reason?
Nature and/or drinking to heavily to be safe for the fixtures in the house.
This is a pretty naive question, but is killing the salmonella enough? The outer membrane of some pathogens causes problems for the human immune system even if the bugs are dead.
That's not really a problem in the GI tract. Lots of dead bacteria in the blood or lungs or cerebrospinal fluid, yes.
What's the point of camping without hiking (or being at a festival, etc)?
The point is that trees and dappled light are pretty and no one gets any cell reception. Camping also doesn't count if you get cell reception.
I like to hike once I'm already at my camp -- i.e. without having tons of unpleasant shit to haul around.
I might be less anti-hiking with my big new crossfit muscles, but historically I don't like carrying heavy things.
Anyway, I was going to post this in the pig head thread, but since this is a food-related thread:
Can I treat pork tongue roughly like beef tongue? My friend and I are splitting a half Berkshire hog, and the tongue, liver, bones, and heart are optional. Not interested in the liver, won't use the bones, but maybe tongue and heart?
I got a baking steel for Xmas, and had a brainstorm a couple weeks ago: I program the oven to turn on 30 minutes before they come downstairs, preheating the baking steel and old baking stone. Then, 5 minutes before they come down, I put the stone and steel on their seats, preheating them, and then move them to the floor by their feet for ongoing warmth during breakfast. Helps a lot.
What a cinch.
Camping also doesn't count if you get cell reception.
I happen to completely agree with this, but goddamn has switching from Verizon to T-Mobile made it so much easier to camp authentically by this definition.
Speaking of T-Mobile and camping, if you don't get a cell signal, does your GPS still work. I don't want to get lost.
Heebie is looking for that very narrow slice of overlap between laziness and roughing-it.
does your GPS still work
Not on a phone, but yes on a dedicated GPS unit.
Actually, that might be wrong. Do you have an ios or android phone?
I suppose I could google around for an answer.
I feel that 42 may be sarcastic, but it is easier than installing an additional radiator back there.
We're going camping this weekend in NH if by camping you mean driving to a heated lodge maintained by the AMC where they provide food and you send your kids out to sled and ice skate.
It sounds harder than having them eat breakfast at the dinner table or something.
Heebie is looking for that very narrow slice of overlap between laziness and roughing-it.
I feel understood.
I feel that 42 may be sarcastic, but it is easier than installing an additional radiator back there.
If you used the time you now spend each day preheating stones to instead work on installing a radiator, within a few months you'd have a radiator installed, and then you'd have that time free again.
Yeah, googling shows a bunch of offline maps. You'll have to google some more for maps tailored to hikers and campers.
if by camping you mean
Driving through three feet of snow.
Our kitchen doesn't have proper heat so we mounted something like one of these on the wall. Probably uses a lot of electricity though.
Or what 38 said.
Oh, right, that makes more sense. I mean, if you just want trees and dappled light, you could go to the park.
The parks with the good trees are usually hundreds of miles from any population center. If you want dappled-light time, you drive to the trees and camp.
I've used GPS abroad with no data by predownloading maps. There an app to do it citymaps2go or a functionality in Google maps to let you cache maps. Then the GPS will still show your location on the map even when you have no network.
My parents, now that they've retired, enjoy driving around on camping trips in the summer. I have tried to point to them multiple times that if living out of the back of your car and sleeping on the ground in a park is more appealing than your home then maybe you should rethink where you're living, but they seem resistant to that reasoning.
Also pork tongue can be treated like beef tongue, except it's a little smaller usually so you'll need to adjust a bit. Also I think it isn't quite as good, but I eat it instead of beef tongue because I can get it (and pork heart*) for a lot less money.
*Highly recommended. Think: dense but not gristly (aside from the obvious bit), and with a rich meat-and-liver flavor. The liver flavor is mild, mostly, and compliments the meatyness of the whole thing.
If you cook your chicken in an autoclave you probably won't need to worry about salmonella.
Jammies would love an RV so much, and to me that is the epitome of bringing on awful work onto yourself. L-A-Z-Y, I ain't got no alibi.
the time you now spend each day preheating stones
You know it's the oven that preheats the stones, right? All I do is carry them a few steps to the counter. We're talking seconds. At some point it will add up to the installation time (a full workday, and that's ignoring the part where there's no valve on the manifold to attach the water line to), but even then it won't really add up to paying for the cost of a radiator and piping ($200). That room's temp doesn't matter any other time of the day.
It sounds harder than having them eat breakfast at the dinner table or something.
Well, the dining room is only marginally warmer than the back room (that I have plans to fix, maybe by the end of winter), but it's also twice as far from the kitchen, and I can't keep an eye on them (to monitor bickering and whether Iris is eating food to just reading a book while ignoring her plate). If the kitchen were toasty, we'd use that, but for the small gain in comfort, it's not worth the downside.
To be clear, I'm not denying it's a bit Rube Goldberg, but it's also not a big deal.
What awful work is entailed by an RV (other than working to earn gas money - holy shit are those things gas-guzzlers)?
Not that heebie was asking for a solution to the delay-start issue, but wouldn't it work to plug your crock pot into a lighting timer, set to switch on a few hours later? You'd have to remember to unplug it at the end (or else it would cut on again the next day), but otherwise I think that would work.
Oh, but that probably wouldn't work: most crock pots need to be set electronically, so that when the timer came on, you'd just have an off crock pot attached to it.
Oh my god, our entire house is run on lighting timers. I forget what exact complicated problem Jammies is solving by setting them all up. I'm surprised he didn't suggest that.
What awful work is entailed by an RV (other than working to earn gas money - holy shit are those things gas-guzzlers)?
Keeping it clean. I hate cleaning. I also hate tiny spaces. And movies and cuddling. Jammies may have married badly.
55: Yeah, I've thought about getting one of those for my office (my back is ~12" from a bricked-up chimney, so I spend all day with a cold mass right behind me), but I can't bear the thought of the electricity draw. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm significantly upgrading the radiator in here, so I think that wall won't matter so much anymore.
I have thought about getting some sort of heavy tapestry to hang on it, but I dunno.
I also imagine you have to do set-up to maintain electricity, plumbing and sewer, and possibly gas. You either have to haul cleaning supplies in from elsewhere to clean, or you have the hassle of maintaining yet another set of cleaning supplies which run low and need to be replaced. Linens must be changed occasionally and hauled in and out, and involve climbing and squeezing into small spaces to replace. Everything sounds like the type of shit I loathe.
We're supposed to have a high of 83° today. I'm actually fairly annoyed about this.
most crock pots need to be set electronically
Oh, well drat. I was thinking of my Cuisinart slow cooker, which has physical knobs on the front (High, Low, Warm; and a second knob that's a timer). But it looks like all the new ones are fancy digital jobs.
I also imagine you have to do set-up to maintain electricity, plumbing and sewer, and possibly gas.
Yep. There's a poop-pumping process.
An RV is very low on my list of desiderata, but wouldn't it almost always be cheaper and easier to rent one, unless you're going full senior and cruising the country for like a year?
72: You just use the timer to start a magnet that attracts a metal bearing so that it falls from a high shelf and hits the button.
OP. Definite synergies with the free-range kids thing. Why won't slow cooker makers let us do what we want, even if it might be dangerous?
37. I've been surprised during hiking trips by how much more cell coverage there is in the Whites just in the last few years. My wife was x-country skiing recently in NH and never out of cell range, so she kept sending me pix of what I was missing. (She wasn't really back-country skiing though.)
I don't want delay-start on my slow cooker but I do want its "keep warm" temperature at the end of the cooking cycle to be lower - when I use it food is still bubbling at the end of the day, when it's been on "keep warm" for hours.
(The Anova sous vide setup ogged linked to is nice. I have one of the cookers, and the cooler I used for the first time was definitely too small.)
a heated lodge maintained by the AMC
I'm trying to imagine a lodge in the form of a huge Pacer or Gremlin. Weird.
Looks like it would cost us $1K to rent an RV to drive to Florida this summer, plus gas.
JR, take the pork liver! You can make pâté with it (, he said, remembering that he has a pork liver in the freezer he hasn't gotten around to turning into pâté yet).
79 -- yeah but that's way cheaper than buying one (or, I'd guess, than any other family mode of transport besides family car plus very cheap motels/car camping). To be clear I'm not recommending doing that because personally almost nothing is less appealing than spending time in a RV.
81: Ooh, good point - totally forgot about pâté, and I don't like liver qua liver. But I'll absolutely make a pâté.
Depends how often you'd use an RV. You can buy a decent used one for around $40k. 4 trips a year; 10 years to break even (give or take). Certainly within the life of a typical RV, and long enough for the prime family RV-ing years of kids around 4-5 years old to 14-15 years old.
We've long talked about the idea of renting an RV for a putative future cross-country drive*, basically so the kids would have the freedom to roam about the cabin, and so we wouldn't have to pack quite so tightly. It occurs to me, though, that with devices, the kids probably mind being stuck in a car seat for 8 hours less than they did/would have.
*twice now we've driven Iris out to Boulder to stay with her aunties, taking our Passat wagon, 1 week out and 3-4 days return (we camp every night). It's not too grueling, but it's not luxurious travel either
Thank god ogged is not my financial adviser. Maintenance? WTF is that?
My brother bought a used one for a trip around the US. Now most of the time it sits in a friend's driveway, his isn't big enough to store it.
What is the law about people roaming the cabin when driving? Does that depend on whether it's a trailer-style vs. motorhome?
I had a cousin who ran an RV storage parking lot. Fenced in a field, put up some lights, and rented ground to people who were in denial about the benefits of ownership.
86: not to mention the time value of money.
RVs seem like a hellscape to me.
One underappreciated benefit of RV ownership is that most Walmart stores offer free overnight RV parking in their parking lots.
I had a cousin who ran an RV storage parking lot. Fenced in a field, put up some lights, and rented ground to people who were in denial about the benefits of ownership.
Or cooking meth, if TV has taught me anything.
Nobody is in denial about the benefits of that.
I still remember the case in Nebraska where a couple high on meth froze to death despite being on the phone with 911. This was maybe before phones had GPS. At least, the police couldn't track them and they didn't know where they were.
It occurs to me, though, that with devices, the kids probably mind being stuck in a car seat for 8 hours less than they did/would have.
This. Tablets have revolutionized travelling with anyone older than a toddler-age.
Heebie, get Jammies to write a guest post on the manifold uses of lighting timers. Also organizational tips.
He's got the porch lights on timers, our living room pit on a timer, more timers for when we're on vacation that have a "random" setting (and a fake-TV that just projects TV-esque lights on a timer for vacation. I don't know why we don't just put the TV on a timer, but Jammies will have a thoughtful reason, possibly involving whether the catsitter might want to watch the TV),...
Organizational tips, he wouldn't even know where to start. He's just extremely clear-headed about how to arrange things, and can't fathom why someone would find it baffling to stare at a pile of papers or junk and not know how to start dealing with it. "Are you done with this manual for the crock pot? I want to put it away. It's in the folder marked 'small kitchen appliances'." Me: "That makes sense. Where do we keep such a sensible folder?"
My sister tried a timer with hers and it worked well except for the bit where they screwed up the timer. But in theory!
Those timers only keep time when receiving power, right? So if you plugged a timer into a timer you could do things like keep time synchronous with other planets' rotational speeds. It would take a very long extension cord to control your lights on Mars though.
Timers only love you when you're playing.
I use the Dorkfood tempertaure controller and an old non-digital slow cooker to do sous vide and it is easy and cheap ($115 total). It doesn't have a circulator, but it doesn't need one either.
and a fake-TV that just projects TV-esque lights on a timer for vacation
Wait, for reals?
Maintenance? WTF is that?
Yeah yeah, I said "give or take," because you should also factor in getting to an RV rental place (there aren't that many of them) and the various conveniences of having your own, and, of course, being ripped off, because RV rental places are also known for that. Plus, a rented RV has the gross-motel factor times about 3.8. We were just about convinced to get a Class B, but then we had another kid, and while I think a Class B would be awesome with one kid, it would be rough with two.
What is the law about people roaming the cabin when driving?
Pretty sure everyone has to be belted when the vehicle is in motion. But they have belts around the tables and such.
And maybe belts in the beds, if you're into that kind of thing.
I always thought these looked cool but holy shit they're expensive considering they're just trailers. Although one of the problems with an RV is if you get to a city you want to explore it's impractical to drive around with the whole RV so you either need to rent a smaller vehicle or tow one to use during stops or use a trailer you leave at a campsite.
That's one benefit of a class B. I guess we could just tell the kids that whichever one doesn't behave gets left behind.
103.last: Yeah, I don't literally need (or want) the kids doing laps, just able to rearrange (and separate).
24: cans of beans are way too heavy to take backpacking, and if you're doing anything else, what are you doing complaining about gadgets?
fuckfuckfuck. Earlier today I saw a mouse in the kitchen for the first time in ages. Saw where it disappeared, set a trap, and just now heard a snap. Caught, didn't kill, so now I get to (artisinally hand-)kill this poor thing. Dammit.
Apropos 105, t@bs are totes adorbs and relatively inexpensive (especially on Craigslist), but suboptimal for big families. I suppose one parent and the smaller kids could share the bed and the rest could sleep in a tent.
Feed it some cheese so it dies happy.
I once threw a live mouse in a trap into the dumpster because I was too squeamish to kill it by stomping and didn't have a gun at that time.
109, if you can hold the mouse down by the neck and then pull the tail horizontally to break the neck, that will kill it quickly. Look up "cervical dislocation". It works for lab mice anyway.
Or something else that involves picking it up by the tail. The tail is useful.
111: I don't entirely recommend my family's solutions to small mobile sleeping spaces. First, when we just had a normal VW bus, they had me sleeping on a board over the front seats. Great, but I fell out a lot. Then, we got a pop-top .... and a little sister. So I got ejected to my own tent (which, honestly, since I like my space, and always have), aged 10, while the rest of the family got to sleep in comfort. I used to imagine some VERY large animals out there, when I think they were generally squirrels or something.
114.1 sounds gruesome (in that I'd be holding the head).
I ended up with an equally gruesome, but hands-off method involving a roofing trowel.
I've caught quite a few mice in traps over the years; IIRC, this is only the second that needed to be finished off.
IIRC, this is only the second that needed to be finished off.
Traditionally we're interested in rat orgasms here, not mouse.
Drown it? Borrow a cat from a neighbor? Drop a large book on it? Cervical dislocation is considered the most humane, but there are many options to avoid touching it if you care more about your feelings than the pain of the mouse.
OK, just watched a video of dislocation, less alarming that I imagined. There's the complication that the mouse still had a foot in the trap (and I'd be wary of it escaping if released), but that looks no more unpleasant than what I had to do.
hands-off method involving a roofing trowel
Back when I was manually dispatching mice stuck in glue traps, I used a horseshoe.
If you borrow the book from a neighbor, you don't have a bloody book.
The Supreme Court is going to tell us whether midazolam is cruel and unusual, so maybe follow Oklahoma's noble lead and hold off on the midazolam for now.
avoid touching it if you care more about your feelings than the pain of the mouse.
I'm sure this will sound defensive, but I should add that part of my fear is that I'd let go, and the thing would scamper off. That is, I know holding it would make me feel squeamish (which I should obviously get over), which could well result in a bad outcome (grievously injured mouse escaping into the snow*).
But as I said, watching the video makes me think I could do it.
*took it outside to kill it
121: first time I ever caught a mouse, it was in a glue trap, and it was horrible*, but I couldn't bring myself to stomp it, and I don't think I really owned any tools (this was in college), so I ended up rolling my car over it. Talk about overkill.
*in a way too gross to describe
It's like the taxidermist version of the peanut butter on the roof of your mouth problem.
How did the taxidermist get stuck in the peanut butter?
It's not polite to imply that an elephant has junk in its trunk.
I heard a recommendation recently to put mouse in freezer and it's not long before hypothermia sets in.
I've recently discovered that I have a mouse in the house, but the thought of having to deal with a half dead one has been enough for me to procrastinate on getting traps. The last mouse was caught by my pets (a combined dog/cat/and me adventure) and was injured, so I just trapped it in a glass, got it into a grocery bag, took it outside and stepped on it. So clearly I'm capable of doing it, even if I don't like it.
I was cleaning out the basement after a sewer backup a couple years ago and a garbage bag of clothes had some holes in the side and started squeaking when I picked it up. I took it outside and dumped it and it was a rat nest with 5 or 6 pink babies in it, must have been days old at most. They pretty much died on their own within a few minutes once they had been dumped out of the nest.
Still, driving it out into the country and shooting it seems cleaner.
I've definitely known people who just released the mice outside (in MN, in the winter), which would be about the same as the freezer. You could also construct a makeshift gas chamber by putting the mouse in a seltzer bottle (without anything else in there) and releasing a CO2 cartridge in there.
There was a dead rat upstairs in the house at another time, had eaten poison I had left out. Don't know if it was the mother, I think that might have been before I found the babies. I found where the rats had been coming in, a hole in the rubble around where the water supply pipe comes into the basement. I stuffed packs of rat poison down the hole and sealed it with expanding spray foam, haven't had signs of rats since.
If a teenager did that last one and mentioned it at school, they'd get to take a special test.
You could also tie the mouse to the CO2 chamber and launch it.
In a vertebrate anatomy course I took in university we had to kill lab rats before dissecting them, by swinging them around by the tail and hitting their heads hard against the bench. The first time I tried it took three attempts. I switched my degree from Zoology to Human Sciences halfway through that year.
139: I'm not sure that was a good move. It's way harder to swing a human head into a bench.
140: And you'd have to use something else to swing them instead of the tail. Hmm.
Good lord, another one caught. Let's hope it's properly done for.
143: So.. am I dead? The suspense is killing me.
Us too. We'll send one more of us in if we don't hear from you in ten more minutes.
The Instant Pot has a delay start timer and Keep Warm is 170°F.
The mouse valiantly committed seppuku before you had to do anything?
Heebie is looking for that very narrow slice of overlap between laziness and roughing-it.
Yellowstone is great for this. You can reserve your campsite online and drive up to do the tent camp thing and do a bunch of hiking and other stuff but still have access to the general store, coin showers, etc.
The problem with Yellowstone is somebody sees a bear and there's a traffic jam. Also, it's a volcano.
Depends how often you'd use an RV. You can buy a decent used one for around $40k. 4 trips a year; 10 years to break even (give or take).
Sure, but aside from retirees how many people will actually pull that off? My wife and I have thought about getting a little pop up we could tow with a minivan but we have a ton of pretty spectacular camping areas under a day's drive away and have more free time than most.
If cost wasn't a worry I'd probably look at a Roadtrek but I don't anticipate having 100K for an RV anytime soon.
Yellowstone is great, and everyone should go there. There are some other places though that I'd send someone looking for some good car camping. Blodgett Canyon, for example, or the Missions over here. The Front. Pintlers. Pioneers. Even right by Yellowstone, you can camp at Tom Miner and have a nice hike over to the Gallatin Petrified Forest, and miss a whole lot of traffic
The areas around McCall and the the Sawtooth are also really nice. Lots of wildflowers in June in the Sawtooth.
Does anyone know if Amherst is in the Berkshires, strictly speaking? I'm asking for a friend.
OT: If I do get a Trangia stove, is it worth $40 to get the set with pots and windscreens? If yes, is it worth a bit more to get anodized aluminum. It appears to be cheaper to get the pots in a set than to buy camping pots.
No idea, but I do like the DIY under $100 camping blogging. If you tear up used kids clothes that they're too big for, you have DIY camping toilet paper.
152: *Super*volcano, thank you very much
I've recently discovered that I have a mouse in the house
You don't have "a" mouse, at least for more than a day or so. They are party animals par excellence. If you've delayed putting a trap down, you now have mice.
I'd probably look at a Roadtrek but I don't anticipate having 100K for an RV
Roadtrek is also what we looked at. At the time, with one kid, we were considering my wife doing something like a 6 months on / 6 months off schedule, and homeschooling. Would have been pretty sweet. And dude, nobody but well-heeled retirees buys an RV new. They buy it, drive it around for a couple of years, die, and then you buy it for half what they paid.
Or less, depending on where they were when they died and how long it took somebody to find them.
Anyway, I'm still wondering if I want to go hiking and cook like a Swedish solider. The kit seems so very Nordic.
If I do get a Trangia stove, is it worth $40 to get the set with pots and windscreens?
I've never used whatever is the official trangia pot set, although I think I've seen it before and it seemed basically as good as any comparable pot set. Note that there are tons of pot sets from other companies that are specifically designed for trangia stoves (many that can even be purchased with an included trangia stove). I'm not sure exactly which trangia set you're talking about, especially when you mention spending "a little more" for the anodized aluminum. This looks great, but that's pretty pricey unless you're going to be using it pretty often. Personally I like the ones that have a skillet, but then I like to be able to fry things in a skillet and not just boil water.
That's it. The one I was looking at is a bit cheaper and only the pots (not the wind screen) are anodized.
If it were me I would probably start with something cheaper until you go hiking at least once and start to have a better sense of what you need. (A pot or skillet from your house would be fine at first. If you use it a lot you will probably want something else (and especially something lighter and easier to pack), but after a few uses you might have a better sense of what features would be important to you. But if you'd rather get all your gear lined up first, that's probably a perfectly fine set. I have no sense of the comparative value of the $40 set vs. this anodized aluminum one. What is the other set made from? How much heavier is the anodized aluminum?
Unanodized aluminum. About 3 ounces.
You don't have "a" mouse, at least for more than a day or so. They are party animals par excellence. If you've delayed putting a trap down, you now have mice.
Indeed. Kill #3 happened overnight.
By pure happenstance, I think I've discovered the setup, and why there's been no evidence before yesterday: there's a woodpile adjacent to the neighboring house, a couple feet from mine (city living). Across from the pile is a hole in our foundation*, and in the snow I saw tiny tracks. So the mice seem to live in the pile and visit our kitchen for treats**. How Beatrix Potter!
I'm contemplating a big winter bonfire to take care of the woodpile. Oh, and I've just now realized that the neighbors have (I think?) a compost pile directly on the other side of a fence from the woodpile. So maybe the mice are nesting in the toasty compost and merely using the wood for cover? I can't imagine it's dense enough to keep them warm enough to live - it's been in single digits a few times of late, including yesterday morning.
*well, in the walk along the foundation, but I've no doubt a mouse can find its way through 110 year old mortar and sandstone
**the spot where they're coming up is right beside our compost, which has been in an open bowl since our closed container broke a month or two ago. I'm 95% certain they just poke their heads out, grab an apple peel, and dash back out - no paw prints, no turds in sight
And #4. Criminy.
The last time there were signs, I caught maybe 1 or 2, despite leaving traps out for weeks (months?). Maybe this is a new group that's never known anything but plenty, and can't imagine anything bad would come of this particular bounty.
Are you using the same bait? Maybe it works better.
174: I think I liveblogged an evening a few years ago where I caught three (maybe it was just two) in short order. Long dry periods before and after.
We had one die in our furnace. I did not find the guy until he was a husk. I still don't know how he got in there.
135 - helium is a pleasanter death than CO2 supposedly.
And more comical to sadists listening in the next room.
Extra squeaky mice! Who wouldn't want that?
OK, just watched a video of dislocation, less alarming that I imagined.
Yeah, unless the mouse has some sort of congenital skin disorder you're not going to pull off the head (or the tail) with your bare hands.
182: My taxidermist friend has started doing a podcast I could link you to if you thought it would help, but I wouldn't know because I'm not even listening to my friend's podcast....
I have to imagine there aren't very many taxidermy podcasts. That's pretty niche.
If it weren't for imagination, a man would rather watch a taxidermy podcast than embalm the arms of a duchess.
Ben franklin says you should taxidermy old birds rather than young ones.
153: Not many. When Angus King stepped down as governor of Maine, he took is family on a tour of the country in an RV--chronicled by Marketplace. I believe that he was able to get a mortgage to buy one.
Trapped but not dead mice: Drop trap with mouse into pail of water. Walk away for a few minutes. Return to release dead mouse from trap. Works well even for those of us who are squeamish.
Yellowstone is great for this. You can reserve your campsite online and drive up to do the tent camp thing and do a bunch of hiking and other stuff but still have access to the general store, coin showers, etc.
And we drive right by it, every summer.
From talking to other families, it seems clear that it's better to camp along a road trip than get hotel rooms, just because the hotel is torture with the kids bouncing off the walls, whereas at a campsite they can go nuts and burn off all that energy and it's fine.
Well what are you waiting for? Get yourself a badass geodesic tent and go let those kids bounce around the woods.
All you need is a tarp and some twine.
188 works well if you have a trap that's guaranteed to sink in water - otherwise that mouse is going to try really hard to stay above water and it'll be a pretty awful way for it to go. Of course, depending on what they've been up to in your kitchen that may be a positive feature, not a negative one.
188 is horrific. Your personal squeamishness is not a good reason to torture an animal.
A lot of poisonings are painless deaths.
Anyway, what ever happened to the simple things in life, like using a wood chipper as a means of animal euthanasia.
The trash bag & tailpipe technique has been mentioned numerous times on the blog.
I thought that was dating advice.
Different bag, different tailpipe.
Don't worry Moby - it lives on in the magical world of farming.
The link in 202 is an ocean of children's tears.