The Mouscepade

A few years ago not long after moving into our house we had noticed that we weren't the only ones living in our house. Some mice had decided it was a good idea to move in with us. They hadn't been paying us rent so we got some exterminators to give them an eviction notice for us. It seemed to work quite well. We stuffed steel wool in the holes that they had created and called it at that.

Just this last week we noticed that a hole had been chewed in a bag. We started seeing signs of the return of the rodent. This time we decided to go with a home brewed remedy. Last time we had gotten some things before the exterminator, but nothing really seemed to catch their attention. I had caught a few mice on my mission with a good old fashion wooden trap. We got a handful of those and some of the sticky variety as well. We cleaned out the floor of the pantry and set up the traps. Top tip: Caramel doesn't seem to be a big winner with the mice. I don't think it's very potent. We ran and got a small jar of peanut butter and smeared that on the wooden traps. I thought for sure that would do the trick. I didn't think the sticky ones would do much good because there really wasn't anything to lure them to them. We have had the traps set up for days without much luck. We hadn't thought about it for a day or two.

This morning when we got up and went to look in the pantry and lo and behold we had one of the little ninjas at last. It was on one of the sticky traps and it was struggling to get loose. The trap had fallen down a step or two from where we had originally placed it. In a mad struggle to escape it probably moved around enough to move the trap and get itself stuck even more. I don't know how long the poor thing had been there. Enough that it only twitched every now and again to try and get loose. My wife was getting exited wondering what to do with the poor thing and how to put it out of its misery. She wanted to let loose the hounds and let one of the dogs at it. I've seen what he does to chew toys and leaving Mouse entrails all over the house didn't seem like the best option to me. She called her parents and they suggested drowning it. That seemed better than the hammer I was considering.

I filled up a bucket of water and as I got the trap to dunk the feller in it started squeaking in it's panic. I dropped the trap it and it was floating. I think it was submerged enough that it drowned but I got a stick and submerged it to make sure. I am hoping that there is only the one. There hasn't been a lot of evidence of a lot of them. Just maybe one or two. Hopefully there aren't anymore.

R.I.P. Ninja Mouse #1