It's Fall, the most beautiful time of year in my opinion. The leaves are changing creating a landscape full of red and gold hues everywhere you look. But it also means that little nasty creatures come crawling in from their dirty little holes outside into my nice, warm home inside. It's funny, we didn't have a rodent problem when our street was populated....now that we're a ghost town it's an annual event. Last week I found mouse droppings near my dry goods so I knew it was time to put out the traps again. The traps I bought last year were pretty nifty - they are marketed as "clean, reusable traps" in that they don't squish the mouse flat, it's more like a giant opaque clip....as seen below:
All last week I had the traps set around where I found the droppings (on top of my fridge of all places...yuck!). Every morning I would wake to find new droppings and no mouse....so I would go through my cleaning ritual (BLEACH BLEACH BLEACH!!!) and set them again. After a few days of this, I called my friend Sophia who has a husband at home (husbands are great things to have in times like these) and they brought me over the old school "jaws of life" traps. Nick suggested I put peanut butter on the traps to lure the mouse to its untimely end - so I pulled out my favorite peanut butter and loaded all the traps.
The next morning I entered the kitchen apprehensively expecting to see a tiny corpse crushed in one of the traps....but no - it couldn't be - the mouse had actually eaten the peanut butter off one of the "jaws of life traps" and left MORE poop! For three consecutive mornings each of the traps, one by one, were getting cleared of their peanut butter bait without actually catching the mouse. I began to theorize that this mouse had seen a few of his friends, maybe even his parents, get whacked by traps and had thereby, learned the tricks of the trade....that, or he was a crazy ninja mouse.
Or he could be doing this
This morning, though, I saw the last trap...my "clean" trap" closed and a little leg sticking out of the side. I felt a mixture of triumph and guilt....mice may be disgusting, dirty and disease ridden, but they are kind of cute in their own little way. I put my thick yellow kitchen gloves on and grabbed the empty bag of dog food from the trash and prepared to remove the newly deceased from off the top of my fridge. As I lifted my trembling arm to the trap, the "dead" mouse lifted its head and sniffed the air....I screamed like the little pansy girl that I am and scampered up the stairs. I have not re-entered my kitchen - the mouse, as far as I know is still in the trap. I am now at work fearing that I will come home to an empty trap, save the leg that remains trapped in the "jaws" of this so called "clean trap" leaving me to deal with a three-legged, peanut-butter loving, rodent hell bent on revenge.
9 comments:
Yuck is all I can say. It's hilarious but I'm very grateful we have not had to deal with mice yet. Good luck and I hope that he doesn't have friends!
oh my gosh! You are so brave! I could never deal with that alone...I would move out, set the place on fire...haha, jk...that's a little extreme. Once there was a mouse in my sister's apartment (right next door to mine) when I was over there one night it run across the kitchen floor over my toe...I screamed so loud, jumped on the kitchen table, and continued screaming! HAHA! I guess what I'm trying to say is you're my hero Gretchen;)
Thanks you guys -- seriously it was the grossest thing I think I ever had to deal with. A co-worker of mine came over to "take care of the mouse" and she picked up the trap -- it's little tail was moving -- I almost threw up -- it still gives me shivers -- YUCK!!!! I'm going to buy mouse poison this weekend just in case he does have friends.
Don't buy the poison! Didn't we tell you about the mouse at Fort Meade that ate the poison and then proceeded to rot in between the counter and the top of the dishwasher? It was DISGUSTING! Don't buy the poison.
Your housing in privatized now, call them in to dispose of your problems. Give 'em the sob story about your husband being gone and how your house could be disease ridden and they should get you a new one.
Yes, but my housing office sucks. Did I tell you about the time I locked myself out of my house and they told me they were coming right over.....an hour later after three phone calls they finally came. It was a very hot day and I had groceries in the car....and they basically yelled at me on the phone when I called, so yeah -- not a big fan.
If you want, Gretchen, I can ship my boa constrictor to you. :) He never leaves a mess, but he can get a little grouchy right after he has a snack. :)
AHHHH!!! Even worse!!! If there's anything I fear more than creepy crawly little things like bugs and mice -- it's snakes!!! I'm so excited you have a blog too by the way -- I'm totally bookmarking you!!
I had to kill a baby mouse at chick-fil-a once... I probably shouldn't say that we had mice problems.
Anyways someone was able to trap it, and they made me, the only guy at work, kill it by squashing it with a garbage can really hard. I almost cried. I felt bad for the baby mouse. Hopefully it doesn't testify against me in heaven :(
And the old-school mouse traps worked great for us.
You killed a mouse with a trash can?????? That has got to be the most awful thing I ever heard. Of course, my mouse is probably still clinging to life in the trap - in the garbage outside - so I guess I'm not much better.
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