Despite all my rage...

Despite all my rage..., originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

"We have a mouse," Abigail announces one morning.

"Uh, really? How do you know."

"Something ate some of the cat food last night, and the cats were locked out of here." Yes, that would be a sign that either we have a mouse, or a collection of hungry ghosts who really like canned Venison single-source-protein cat food.

"We'll just put out the traps," I say as I try to remember where the hell they are. Years ago we had hamsters, and the hamsters got out occasionally. We'd purchased a few small-sized Hav-A-Hart traps for them, and I couldn't quite place mentally where they went.

A search of the attic and the garage turned up only the medium-sized traps, good for chipmunks. It occurred to me that we probably got rid of the smaller ones after the hamsters moved on to the great big Habatrail in the sky, as they were a bit, well, yucky.

I figured we could put out the medium-sized one in the basement and see if something set it off. Remembering how much our hamsters liked peanut butter in the traps, I slathered some Jiff (Choosy Rodents Choose Jiff) all over the pivoting bait trap.

Thus began a several-day game of "moron and mouse" where I'd find the trap closed, with something having taken the peanut butter and most likely then just squeezed out of the squirrel-proof-sized holes on the side of the trap.

The local hardware store no longer carries Hav-A-Hart and Home Despot only has the medium and large sizes. Seems people only like to kill mice. I'm not going to feel comfortable gluing a mouse's feet to a trap or snapping its neck. In my plan, Mickey could go live outside in the garage, where it's relatively warm and cozy, and is not my house.

Luckily Amazon carries the smaller traps and so I ordered one. Again, I set it up in the basement and the next morning I went downstairs to find the trap had sprung, but again no mouse. Seems on side of the unit I got is a bit bent, so the latching spring doesn't fall into place. We had essentially just created a pantry for the mouse.

This was the point at which Abby and I begun to discuss the occasional noises we heard in the bedroom, which I always just took to be in my mind. Neither of our cats seemed to notice at all, and surely if we had a mouse in our bedroom either of the carnivorous pets would be all over that, after all they chase laser pointers like there's no tomorrow.

But if Abby had heard them too, well then there must be something to that. Being a handy fellow I took a screwdriver and wedged it into the broken side of the trap to hold that door closed, set it with peanut butter, and we turned off the lights.

About twenty minutes later we awoke to the metallic thump of the trap closing. Mickey had been caught.

Mice, I must add here, are adorable. They're teeny, fragile and cute, and they have big Disney-esque eyes that make them enchanting. I took Mickey to the garage with a pile of corn chips, some walnuts and some apples. I opened the trap and let him out.

Since mice often come in bunches, I brought the trap back up and reset it in the bedroom. Lights out again, twenty minutes go by, thump. Mickey #2 (pictured here) is caught. Looks identical to the first mouse. (In fact I think "did he just come back inside?)

Out to the garage in the lightly falling snow, open the trap, watch mouse run for cover. Inside, more peanut butter, lights out, twenty minutes, thump. Mouse #3.

Okay, this is just getting silly. Quick segue here to the game Rainbow 6, a first-person shooter I play often on Xbox. One of the things that always strikes me as funny with that game is the way the computer controls the badguys. If you position yourself so that there's an entryway where the terrorist must enter, and you shoot one of them, another evil-doer will just come up to the same place and try to enter the doorway, despite the fact that his buddy's body is laying there. This can happen over and over again, in stark contrast to the way this would work in reality. I mean really, anyone seeing four or five dead comrades is likely to think "maybe I'll go in another door."

Back to the bedroom now I reset the trap, turn off the lights, wait twenty minutes and thump. This time though when the lights come on I see that the trap's empty—the mouse must have just brushed against the trigger mechanism on the outside. As it was now about 3 a.m., we decided not to reset the trap.

Today we set the trap, go out for dinner, come home and find identical mouse number four in the trap. He has been brought to the mouse rave in the garage as well.

Trap's reset, we're not exactly looking forward to catching more, but now we've go some spring loaded traps on order that can do ten mice a night without any bait.

And if you're looking for a good mouse wrangler, let me know, I'm an expert at this point.

Comments

[Jenni]

Wow, that's just crazy. Those little mice sure are squirrely.