Schrodinger's mouse trap.

A few months back we discovered we have mice living under our house and from time to time the occasional Aeon Flux type rodent somehow manages to bypass and allude the gambit that is our "Robotic laser, pressure sensor SOTA megamouse security system series IV (beta)".
Which sounds really flash but is really just a matter of making sure the hotwater cupboard door remains shut.

Which means that with the onset of winter and finding a mouse recently in our 'better mouse trap', (which seems to be the new standard for mouse dispatching) it's my 1st job in the morning to go downstairs and inspect said trap and either dispose of any unlucky vermin/and or reapply my winning combination bait, (6 mice thus far) which is a small square of colby cheese smeared with a liberal amount of marmite.

It occurred to me today as I was about to open the hot watercupboard door and thereby discover what lay behind it, that the situation was much like the famous paradoxical Schrodinger's cat thought experiment.
Until I open the door, assess the situation and thereby confirm a valid intelligent observation, behind the door a very messy quantum scenario is being played out for 'our mouse'.
Perhaps until the probability wave can be allowed to collaspe into a single state and spread out in all directions, the mouse, like the cat, is existing in a quantum state being both in the trap and not in the trap at the same instant. With that in mind I opened the hotwater cupboard door half expecting to catch the universe out and perhaps share in some great cosmic joke.

So what was it? Half live half dead mouse? Some kind of trap wormhole space vortex, or miniature elephants wearing sunglasses with butter on their feet?
No, sadly none of the above. No mouse either dead or alive. The trap was still exactly where I had set it 'suspiously undisturbed' (LOL) bait intact.

What presented itself was an outcome I hadn't anticipated.
A giant pile of mouse sh-it.

By Erueti Brown with No comments