GENEVA, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Kathrin Hirsbrunner is Switzerland's only professional mouse trapper with more than 90,000 dead rodents to her credit in nearly 12 years, and she is hunting more.
Her website says, "Professional, efficient and ecological with traps. I am willing to come to your field or your garden. I can help when it comes to mice and moles."
Hirsbrunner's targets are often voles that devastate farmers' vegetable and fruit crops, but she says her lethal skills are also in demand at airports, reported Swissinfo, the website of the national broadcaster.
A sculptor by trade employed as a social worker, she wanted a change in her way of life and was seeking to work outdoors.
In 2003 she saw a documentary about Switzerland's last mouse catcher which inspired her.
She taught herself and revived the trade, offering her services, making a modest living from her income.
Hirsbrunner says that the natural enemies of mice such as foxes, birds of prey like owls, stoats and weasels, are declining and not enough to regulate the population.
A female rodent can produce up to 20 offspring a year she says.
So, the mouse hunter sets traps in farmers' meadows and kills up to 200 mice a day with a further 50 caught in orchards, in doing so helping farmers to increase their yields.
And because mice can also indirectly cause problems for planes, her services are in demand at airports.
The rodents attract birds of prey which can be a threat to aircraft during take-off and landing.
