No good deed goes unpunished! Really!

If some of y'all remember a while back my mentioning giving a new neighbor a firewood rack, a 6th of a cord of prime 4 year mostly oak firewood to fill the rack (MC no more than 12%) a True Temper Splitting Axe, and a bit later gave my General MMD4 moisture meter, all as a house warming gift.

Over the holidays they stopped by for a whopping 2 minutes and gave me a tin of home made Nutella Fudge after which they left. However, I have a rule about any consumables that might be given to me from anyone. It goes in quarantine until it is tested which might be in a week to three weeks and stored at room temperature. Needless to say a lot of food items will rot during that time so it tends to get pitched in the trash anyway. But I do try to test those food items without dragging my feet, because I like to know if they would pass the testing.

The testing consists of my capturing at least two mice in a live trap from different locations on my property. Then add bedding to the bottom of a clean 5 gallon bucket. I'll add a container of water and a container for the consumable I want to test. Then deposit the mice and look in on them several times a day to note their progress for a week. IF they survive, I'll take them across and down the road a bit and release them. After all, they did provide a service.

This time around the test was for the Nutella Fudge. I should also mention I had pinched off a small piece, maybe an eighth inch square and held in in my cheek for a few minutes. The flavor was odd, but then I had never had that kind of fudge. It also left my cheek feeling what could best be described as kind of numb. Anyways, I deposited two one inch square chunks of the fudge in a container to feed the mice. That is the only thing they would be allowed to eat for the duration of the test. The reason I use two mice instead of one is to be sure of the results and since they were deposited in the bucket about 24 hours apart, this should yield a fairly accurate result.

After a little better than two days the consumption of the fudge started dropping off and after 3 days it completely stopped. By end of day 5 the first mouse was dead. The second died by the end of day 6. These results are indicative of being poisoned by some kind of rodentcide.

My Theory: Since I am extremely independent and stronger than most women in this area (from processing firewood among other things) and keep to myself, my gossipy busybody neighbors who have been persistent in spreading smack about me (you should hear some of the stuff ) have this new neighbor believing it's gospel.

But here is another little tidbit before I go on. One of the previous owners, the male, wasn't all that likable. He just keeled over on the porch from what they figured was a heart attack. So when they did the autopsy, they just figured due to his age it was natural causes, and wrote him off as that. But now I wonder if maybe he was poisoned with some kind of Rodentcide. The results would have been the same!

Okay, so my neighbors hate campaign got to the new neighbor, and my other neighbors indicated they should try the poison because it worked before and no one suspected anything. Why else would some people that I thought were nice lace fudge with rodentcide?

Another little tidbit: From various conversations with these gossipy busybody neighbors, I discovered they had access to my email because the things they mentioned were only in my email to one person. I'm also sure they have managed to follow me to this forum since there has been mention of some things I had posted here. I'm not sure if they became registered users or not though. Undoubtedly they will be reading this and really, I don't care. As for their actions over the years and their latest, well, I have news for them. I'm not moving! I own this place, have put too much work into it, to just walk away. (I own it lock stock and barrel as in no loans or mortgage to pay off) My only regret is that I ever helped or done for any of them. As I said, "No good deed goes unpunished! Really!"

Sorry for the long post, but I needed to get this off my chest!

 

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Wow, that must really suck to have to live like that.....and I wonder if you're being just a touch paranoid?

 

A touch? Lol

 

Well, since chocolate kills mice, I wouldn't say its been poisoned. Get 2 more mice, and do the same with store bought nutella and see if Im right.

 

From what I've been able to learn on the fly via Google, it seems that chocolate is less toxic to mice than it is to dogs, but more than it is to humans. If I've got my math right, the lethal dose for a common house mouse can easily be less than a third of an ounce, i.e. a couple of teaspoons.

 

^ Bingo! Store bought nutella would do the same thing.

 

Paranoid? No! I'm just extremely cautious. And really, I think the DEAD mice from the test show evidence that I do need to be cautious.

Sorry, but chocolate DOES NOT kill mice. Scientist the world over have given mice chocolate in experiments and there were no reported deaths (mice) due to the constant diet. But it is an alternate bait for catching them though.
Is Chocolate Poisonous to Mice?

Alternative baits: Mice. Peanut butter, cream cheeses, chocolate fudge, marshmallow, jam, Vanilla extract, cotton wool, paper, wood shavings.
Quoted from: What Is The Best Bait To Use For Catching Mice? :: pest-control-products.net

After three days of study, we found Nutella to be the most effective bait for mouse traps. Nutella caught approximately 45% of the catch total. It was followed by bird seed with approximately 30% and peanut butter with 25% of the catch total.
Quoted from: Pest Control Blog: The Best Bait For Mouse Traps

 

Post a link to those facts!

And you too. Post a link to those facts and I'll quit being PARANOID as you say!

 

As far as I can tell, the only way chocolate or nutella will kill a mouse is if it is used as bait in a snap (kill) trap.

 

Next time I go into town I will pick up some of that Nutella stuff, and then catch some more mice and see what happens and post the results. It might be a few days before I need to go into town though.

 

If a person was paranoid would they know they were paranoid?

 

Never can tell!

I have questioned myself about the possibility of my being paranoid on a few occasions. But to date I'm not answering!

 

Cautious would just throw the food out.

It’s a bit of a leap to conclude the food is laced with poison.

 

There, I fixed your comment for you!

So is it really?

 

Theobromine poisoning - Wikipedia

This is the component of chocolate that is toxic to dogs. Different chocolates have higher concentrations, a golden retriever I had as a kid ate an entire chocolate cake and he was fine, but if he had eaten an entire bar of baking chocolate it may have been a different story as it has a higher concentration of theobromine.

Also, my dogs were still eating normal dog food and table scraps. Those mice only had the nutella to eat, which would have led to higher concentrations of theobromine in their system.


I think this was just neighbors being neighborly. Not many people are bold enough to poison somebody else and risk getting caught, especially based on rumors they hear. You may have made a friend and they were returning the favor, don't ruin the relationship because some mice died!

 

Well, okay.

Published LD50 oral dose for theobromine in mice is 837 mg/kg, which means a dose of 837 milligrams of theobromine per kilogram of mouse body weight kills half of test subjects.

Average weight of a house mouse is .68 ounces. (That's 19.28 grams)

So, the LD50 for your average-weight house mouse is (837/1000000)*19.28=.016g of theobromine.

From that first link, chocolate candies and sweets have typical theobromine contents of 1.4-2.1g/kg. Of course, we can't know what the theobromine content of your neighbor's concoction might be.

At 2g/kg theobromine content, the LD50 is 1/125 of a kg, or 0.28 ounces.

The specific gravity of chocolate apparently averages around 1.28. Using that figure (because, again, I don't know the specific gravity of your neighbor's fudge), there are 4.69 teaspoons of chocolate per ounce. 4.69*.28=1.31, meaning LD50 using the above assumptions is 1.31 teaspoons of chocolate.

(Edited to add that if we use the more average theobromine content of 1.75g/kg rather than the 2g/kg I used above, LD50 is still only 1.51 teaspoons.)

 

Just.........WOW

 

Thanks for the link. It is interesting, but I will run another test on some other mice with just them consuming Nutella. If after 6 days they are dead, then I'll know for sure one way or another.