I am a horrible, evil, awful and irresponsible human being.
I was just in the kitchen, where I had gone to get a glass of water when I smelled something bad. I tracked the source of the smell to under the sink, and made a hideous discovery.
We have occasional mouse issues under our sink. After one very upsetting episode where we left the cabinet door open (thinking that the smell of our inept cats would scare the mouse away) and E-twink actually behaved like a cat is supposed to and got the mouse, I purchased a "humane" trap, the kind shaped like a little green house that lets you catch them and release them somewhere else. The last time we used it was, for those of you who remember the tale, the time one of our previous hamsters got out and escaped into the ventilation system. This was well over a year ago. It had never previously worked to catch an actual mouse...
But apparently I was a complete idiot, and not only had left the peanut butter cracker I used to catch the hamster in the trap, but I RESET IT and put it back under the cabinet. I hadn't checked it since that episode, and in fact I had kind of forgotten we had it. When I was looking around to try and locate the source of the smell, I saw the trap and figured maybe I had left some rodent food in it that had gone bad. But when I picked it up, curled in one corner near the trap door was a pathetic tiny dead little mouse.
The poor little thing died a horrible extended death--much worse than if it had actually been a regular mousetrap, since it slowly starved to death with food right there behind 3 millimeters of plastic.
I can't believe I was so irresponsible, that I left the trap baited and set and forgot about it. While I was shaking the poor little mouse out into a bag and bleaching it out, I kept reading the words "safe and humane!" that were etched into the side of the trap and hating myself.
I don't know whether to keep the trap in case we have more rodent problems or to just throw it away.
I know it's stupid to be so upset over something so little, but I just can't stop crying. I can't believe I killed a little animal so horribly and irresponsibly.