Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Houdini Mice

If you live in an old house, you probably have mice. And since our house is almost 100 years old, this equals lots of mice. I promise we are not gross people; we don't leave food randomly about the house. Actually, that would be impossible because Chompy would get to it before any mouse. Anyway, we do, in fact, keep the house clean (messy, but clean).

At first, I thought the mice were cute, and I was rather upset when I came home one day to find a dead mouse floating in a bowl in the sink. Once I got over the sadness/grossed-out-ness, I disposed of the mouse using a glove, several paper towels, and two plastic bags. But how on earth did the mouse get into the bowl in the first place?

At first, I wanted to find a humane way of getting the mice out of our house. We tried these traps that just catch the mice but don't kill them. But then I realized that I would have to drive a ways away from the house in order to let the mouse go. Otherwise they would just come back. Plus, the day I brought the no-kill traps home, Chompy caught one in his mouth and squished it enough that I had to put the thing out of its misery. No-kill, not so much.

Once I stopped finding the mice cute (because they are hanta-virus-carrying little bastards that poop on my kitchen counter), we moved on to more serious methods of extermination. We tried the snap traps, but the results were just gross. Then Slim suggested the use of sticky traps, as he had had some success with them in his childhood. The problem is, the mice just stick to them; they don't die. So that means you have to pick up a trap with a still-wriggling mouse attached to it. And sometimes the mouse has managed to drag itself several feet while still attached to the trap, which makes the whole situation even more grim.

Even though I find the sticky traps unbearable to dispose of, I will admit that they work. So I put a couple in the basement to catch the mice that are too chicken to venture out on the kitchen counter. When I went to check on them the next day, I found one trap full. One. The other one had disappeared. Seriously. I looked everywhere - under piles of clothes, behind boxes, underneath the furnace. Nothing. I have no idea where the thing could have gone.

So we probably have a dead mouse rotting away in our basement. Awesome. Could explain the smell...

No comments: