We have a mouse in our house. It's so super gross to admit it, but there it is. The little creature came in on the first cool day of the season, about a week and half ago, on a day when we happened to have some contractors working on our bedroom wall. Since they were walking in and out of the house and up and down the basement stairs, I blame them for letting the little mousie in. That first day, just after we finished eating dinner, it scuttled across our kitchen floor and ran into a crack between the cabinets and the dishwasher. I was so grossed out I couldn't step foot in the kitchen for the rest of the evening. Spiff thinks I overreacted. Gunner now walks around periodically scolding the mouse, "No, No, Mouse is yutty!"
Spiff found it several days later scurrying around the drawer under our stove among the baking dishes. I can assure you that we have washed those dishes several times! I can also assure you that if it had been me who had found him there, I would have had a heart attack, and then run screaming from the house, just before moving into a hotel for the rest of the winter.
Later that night, our bold little mouse scurried into our living room. Spiff saw it run behind the couch. He got all excited by the thrill of the hunt, handed me a work boot and said, "Okay, when I move the couch, it's going to come running your way. Stand on that vent and smash it before it gets away! Great. Ready.......Go!!!" He practically picked up the couch and threw it two feet into the room, leaned over it and yelled, "Ha!", while I squealed "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" from my post on the vent with the boot dangling tentatively from my girlie little fist. The mouse must have found another exit because I thankfully didn't have to try my hand at boot-mouse bashing!
A couple nights later, we watched him scuttle around the house. He appeared at random places without any kind of indication as to how he got there. We'd see him at the stove, then by the TV in the living room, then scurrying under the baseboard across the room, without having run across the room. It was like a gross version of Jack Jack Attack, when Jack Jack is floating around the house through walls, while Kari was chasing him from room to room, never quite knowing where he is going to surface. Spiff occasionally tried to "catch" him by waiting stealthily on a kitchen chair with a small frying pan in hand. He never did.
We have set all kinds of traps around the house. Sticky traps, snap traps baited with peanut butter, and mouse poison. I have had dreams of catching him. One night in particular, I woke up and heard noises in the kitchen, which I then convinced myself were the sounds of the mouse getting caught by the snap trap behind the fridge. I even thought that I posted "Got Him!" as my facebook status. I couldn't quite believe that the trap was still empty in the morning. Even more unbelievable was the fact that the peanut butter on the trap had been licked clean, and the trap was still set.
We haven't seen him for a few days. We're hoping he got some of the poison and has now gone somewhere to die quietly. But if he's still around next weekend while Spiff is away, I'm borrowing a cat.
5 comments:
Mindy...you're a fabulous writer.
Ditto to Linds. And I have two cats you can borrow any time - but I can't guarantee they will be less annoying than the mouse =).
Dan's dad has been known to live catch mice by hand with a garden glove but usually Lacey, the kitty, has slowed them down by playing with them for awhile first. The sad truth is that there may be more than one mouse- Be sure to pick up all poison traps several days before borrowing a kitty - you would hate to poison someone's cat secondarily by having it eat a poisoned mouse.
Mice are the WORST. Chris won my heart by stopping by every day after work to check our traps, dump the mice in the trash, rebait and reset them. You know you have a keeper if he will dispose of dead rodents for you.
Thank for for my first good laugh of the day! Here is another way to trap mice: Get a 5 gallon bucket and drill two holes near the top edge big enough for a wooden dowel or something else to go through. Then take a plastic pop bottle or something similar, drill a hole in the bottom and put the dowel through it. Put peanut butter on the pop bottle and put water in the bottom of the bucket. Put a ramp up towards the bucket so the mouse can get up. The idea is that the mouse can get up, cross the dowel to the pop bottle but when they get on the bottle, it will spin and dump them down into the water and they drown.
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