As misanthropic as Berlin may seem at times, this habitat is extremely animal-friendly. But every hospitality has its limits.
A cute guestPatrick Pleul/dpa
On the way to the publishing house on Alte Jakobstrasse, which we are about to move out of, I always pay particular attention to the last few meters. It is important not to roll your bike over the rats that scamper across the path between the prefabricated buildings on Kommandantenstraße and Waldeckpark.
It’s not my love of animals that’s holding me back, I have to admit, it’s more the fear of falling. An eggplant-sized obstacle can throw you off balance. If, on the other hand, I see rats run over by cars on the street, pity is not the first emotion to be felt.
With other four-legged friends, I am fundamentally against any confrontation. I respect the fox like the street cat, embrace daring squirrel leaps, laugh at the little dogs barking at my big one, and don’t judge the dachshund who dumps his poop on the sidewalk, but the man on his leash who doesn’t pick it up (or to used for wrong purposes).
At the subway station and in the street café
I never thought that I would ever have problems with mice. In John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men, I lost my heart to the old dog, but I didn’t care about the dead mouse. In Berlin, the cute creatures are at least as common as the nightingales and sparrows. In the Yorckstraße subway station, they don’t shyly walk across the platform, whereas they usually dance on the tracks. In the warm months, they feed on what is crumbled onto the sidewalks in front of the cafés or raked into the corner in the beer garden. Dogs dig their passages on the Tempelhofer Feld, which is why you have to be a little careful when walking, mouse holes dug out the size of a foot are treacherous.
I don’t like them in the apartment. After the first traces in the garbage can under the sink (I can still understand that they could climb in there, but how did they find out again?) I tried a few things to make the apartment as mouse-unattractive as possible. In hardware stores there are mouse items next to “Dogs & Cats Ex” or “Dog Fright” and “Wasp KO Spray”. When the woman at the checkout says that there is no shame in having mice (“How many traps do I sell here every day?”), then she sounds as unconvincing as the man from the health department with the lice once did. Half the school class was affected, but the affected mother blamed oneself.
Maybe the mice didn’t find anything to eat with me, only the comfort. My dog made no effort against them, perhaps accepting them as visitors. Or Aesop’s fable about the country mouse and the town mouse, according to which one should appreciate the diligently collecting country mice and despise the lazy town mice.
The live trap has its pitfalls
But what should you do with your love for animals if you don’t want to poison the unwelcome visitors or execute them with the guillotine-like snapper? That’s where the “Motel Mouse” or “Super Cat” come into play. Both devices are live traps in which the prisoner has enough space to survive for several hours. Food is already available in the form of bait. Not only numerous reviews on the relevant internet platforms, but also my personal experience proves: These devices work. However, an unfortunate cycle occurs, a kind of perpetuum mobile. The creature taken from the kitchen into the bushes uses the next opportunity to come back into the house.