Wednesday, 20 March 2024

Why should I care if a mouse has hay fever?


Observing the above at a pharmacist's, I was struck by the question of why on earth the manufacturers would suppose that I, or anybody else, would care enough about mice with hayfever to buy this product? 

And then - presumably - we are supposed to go to the immense trouble and inconvenience - even danger - of capturing and treating these unfortunate rodents? Pah!

You probably think me callous. But, for my part, any such mice can just shelter in their burrows and endure their "itchy, sore and watery eyes" - I do not intend to do anything whatsoever to resolve their problem. 

On this matter, I am unrepentant. 


8 comments:

Francis Berger said...

Ha! This will probably fly over some heads, for sure.

Anyway, I recently discovered I have rats in the chicken coop. Two of them, both the size of Greyhound buses. They have thus far scoffed at the traps I have set for them. And in all honesty, I don't give a rat's you-know-what if they suffer from itchy eyes, either.



Bruce Charlton said...

@Frank "fly over some heads". My excuse is a laboratory training in immunology, hence automatic knowledge of the scientific terms for antibody animal-sources.

Hagel said...

People who have pet rodents would be interested

William Wright (WW) said...

I just wrote about my own issues with mice today.


https://coatofskins.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-pi-ed-piper.html


Don't forget the itching ears, but these eye drops don't seem to do anything for that. Some other cure would be required.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Hagel - "People who have pet rodents would be interested".

Very true, but such esoteric products should be confined to pet shops.

a_probst said...

I wonder how the manufacturer came up with that name. Probably tested it on murinae.

(BlogSpot's spell checker doesn't recognize the word.)

Michael Baron said...

This is a truly shameful post. Dismiss your critics as you like. Those of us who have eyes for the lesser beings among us are full of sorrow upon seeing this. I will start with a Tolkien quote and then I will post a Savitri Devi quote to follow it to illustrate the true life of animals:
Frodo feared no danger yet, for they were still in the heart of the Shire. A few creatures came and looked at them when the fire had died away. A fox passing through the wood on business of his own stopped several minutes and sniffed.

‘Hobbits!’ he thought. ‘Well, what next? I have heard of strange doings in this land, but I have seldom heard of a hobbit sleeping out of doors under a tree. Three of them! There’s something mighty queer behind this.’ He was quite right, but he never found out any more about it.


Yet mice have life and sensitiveness; and beauty also. But those men — “kind to animals” as they might think themselves to be — seem to forget it. They seem never to have known it; never to have thought of it. Others, who vehemently stand up against scientific experimentation upon animals, do not object to fox hunting or to tiger hunting, or to the hunting or trapping of those equally beautiful animals whose skin goes to make fur coats and muffs. And many of those who protest against these and other forms of cruelty, and who would never dream of drowning a mouse — who would perhaps also refuse to join in a tiger hunt on the grounds that they feel for the splendid stripy felines — are still not consistent enough to give up eating meat and fish.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Michael - I do feel ashamed... Although I understand that Tolkien did excise the passage in an earlier draft where which Sam carried a small bottle of antihistamines throughout the Ring Quest, just in case he came across distressed rodents with pollen allergies.