Alan Holmes wrote:
[...]
I still don't understand how killing a piece of vermin in 10
seconds
could be considered to be inhumane, it would not surprise me if it
took a lot longer than that to kill the things by bashing them over
the head, if you could identify the head whilst it was in a sack.

The first blows would most certainly hit any other parts of the
body,
it would
require several blows, which would undoubtably take far longer that
the 10 seconds required to kill the thing by drowning, the traumer
caused to the vermin would be greater than drowning.

I must be mad to get into this mildly obscene thread. Leave aside for
the moment all the stuff about what actually constitutes suffering
for non-human species, and 10 seconds is still quite a long time. As
a kid, wing-forward not three-quarter, I'm sure I did 100 yards in
under 12. Even if you don't hit the head at the first swing,
something's amiss if you can't whack some unfortunate squirrel in a
bag awfully frequently in that length of time. I've no idea if it
holds any general validity, but when David Livingstone was attacked
by a lion, he said it didn't hurt at the time; and, much more
trivially, I know that any aches and pains caused by rugby didn't
start till after the game. So I reckon any reasonably quick death by
shovel or boot in air is going to be quicker and kinder than drowning
in cold water for a squirrel or a rat. The most distressing part, it
seems to me, is likely to be being in the sack at all.

But I'm for shooting if you really must; otherwise, and that's 9999
times out of ten thousand, leave 'em alone and take sensible
gardening precautions if it begins to look like a problem.

--
Mike.