Of Trolleys and Mice

The trolley problem is one of the most famous thought experiments in ethics. You are asked to imagine that there’s a runaway trolley racing down the line. It’s headed toward a group of five people who are tied to the tracks with no prospect of escape. From your vantage point in the trolly yard you have access to a lever that can divert the trolley onto another set of tracks, on which a single person is tied. The question is, would you pull the lever? Numerous surveys have found that about 90% of people would do so.

In a variant of the trolly problem, you’re on a bridge watching the trolley barrel down toward those five tied-up people. Standing next to you is a man. You know that if you push him off the bridge, his bulk will stop the trolley, saving the people bound to the tracks. Not surprisingly, even though the outcome is identical to the first instance–sacrificing one life to save five others–far fewer people would push the man off the bridge.

We’ve got mice in our garage. Lots of them. They gnaw into bags of stored food, poop everywhere, and for all I know promiscuously spread hantavirus. They’ve got to go. But the idea of poisoning them, or even setting up kill traps, is abhorrent to me—they’re simply cute, furry innocents doing what mice are supposed to do. So, I’m using a “live trap.” The critters are lured by peanut butter into a little plastic cage, which captures them without harm. Each morning I check the trap. If a mouse has been caught, I drive it to a nearby forest and release it beside a decaying tree stump. Most often, little Mickey frisks out of the trap, sniffs the air right and left, then rushes right into a hole in the base of the stump. I’ve been very pleased with myself for this arrangement.

For confirmation that I was doing the right thing, I Googled ‘the most humane way to rid your house of mice’. I was startled to read that, overwhelmingly, the advice from animal advocacy groups is that quick and certain death with an old-fashioned snap trap was the way to go. How could that be? Well, it turns out that the kind of mice that end up infesting houses don’t do well in the wild, especially when transplanted far from where they were trapped. They can’t adapt to the new environment and perish due to starvation, disease, or predation. Yikes!

Even so, after reading this thoughtful advice I’ve persisted in “humanely” trapping the mice and transporting them to what is apparently certain sylvan death. In other words, I’ve continued to pull the lever rather than push the man off the bridge, thus distancing myself from directly causing their demise. Even worse, as opposed to the trolley problem, where the two modes of death are equally sudden, it appears that out of cowardice I’m opting for the more inhumane mode of exit.

Well, of course, the rationalizations came flooding in: Maybe the forest wasn’t all that far from our house, or maybe these particular woods harbored plenty of rodent-friendly food and water. Maybe the previous releasees had been able to set up house in the hole in the stump, so the new arrivals would be welcomed into a thriving colony of their former housemates. Maybe these environs weren’t rife with rodential predators. But on the other hand, if there were predators, and the mouse was going to die anyway, wouldn’t it be better that it served as nourishment for the resident eagles and foxes and owls rather than being thrown in the trash after getting whacked by a snap trap? Finally, in any case, even if the released mice had only a slim chance of living a full woodsy life, wouldn’t that be a better alternative than certain death in our garage?

And yet… All the organizations associated with animal welfare were clear: they strongly advocate a quick and painless death as the most humane alternative–my rationalizations were fooling only me. But, I must admit, I still haven’t changed my practice. The fact is, it’s so much easier to pull a lever than to push someone off a bridge. So, so sorry, my little furry friends.