Monday, November 16, 2009

Mouse In The House

The other day our cat left us a gift. When Troy went to let the dog out in the morning, he saw a dead mouse waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. Neat.

Fast forward a couple of days. Troy was up at men's retreat when I saw a mouse skitter across the floor and underneath my refrigerator. Double neat.

I shoveled the boys into the car and went straight to WalMart to get traps. I have a serious fear of setting those cheap wooden ones. It's not that I'm a total girl, it's just that I like all of my fingers and I don't really feel like losing one in the process of setting a trap. Oh, okay, I'm a total girl. So I splurged and got two slightly more expensive traps that advertised in big red letters that they were easy to set. The traps had teeth that resembled ferocious jaws. These will be effective, I thought.

I filled the food wells with peanut butter and I put one trap behind the refrigerator and the other on the floor of the pantry behind my big, heavy, wonderful KitchenAid mixer. You try finding two spots in your kitchen where it's safe to have a mouse trap. Two spots where your curiously stupid but lovable golden retriever won't wander for a tasty lick of peanut butter thus amputating a chunk of his tongue. Two spots where your cat won't reach his tiny little paw and retract it with a trap hanging off. Two spots where your eight month old won't grab at the interesting new toy thus losing a few digits in the process. And two spots where your three-year-old won't step for the sole purpose of getting a cool new shoe--and losing his big toe.

I checked the traps constantly. Nothing. Late that night, as I sat watching the end of a movie, I heard the snap of a trap. I waited several minutes and then checked the trap behind the refrigerator. It was still set. I opened the door to the pantry. The trap was sprung and lying on its side. Shining a flashlight into the small darkened area I saw a little mouse jerk its head.

It's not dead! I said, audibly. Loudly. Apparently, easy to set does not necessarily mean easy to kill.

Using tongs I pulled the trap out. The mouse was frantically thrusting its upper body around in an attempt to free itself. It was pinched in half but I couldn't detect any blood. It stared at me. "Help me!" It seemed to cry. And all I could think about--all I could think about--was Remy from Ratatouille. This wasn't a rat (thank heaven!) it was just a little mouse but still. When it looked at me with those little eyes and wriggled its nose it very well may have opened its mouth and whispered, "Why? Why have you done this to me?"

Again with the audible part, I said, You have to kill it. You have to end its suffering. And I began to sweat uncontrollably. I considered leaving it for my husband to deal with but then it wiggled its nose at me again. I used the tongs to carry the trap out to the garage and I got a gardening tool. Okay. You just have to hit it. Hard. And fast. You can do this. But then the logistics of the trap confused me. There was a big plastic piece in the way of my clean shot to the mouse's skull. I was afraid I'd hit the plastic piece and the trap would go flying with a live mouse still inside. I decided to take the trap outside, open it (with the gardening tool) and see what happened. If the mouse ran away I would just cross my fingers that it didn't end up back in my house. If it was paralyzed, I would have easy access to the entire mouse and I would hit it, quickly, with a hoe.

I released the trap. That mouse ran faster than a speeding bullet and I'm not even kidding you. It was as though those stupid jaws had somehow managed to miss its spinal column entirely and all it did was merely pinch the dumb mouse for awhile. Into the snow it ran and then disappeared into the dark. Au revoir, little mouse. Please don't come back into my house.

It's been two days and we haven't caught another one. But I think I'll let the cat take care of them in the future. He does a much better job than the traps.

17 comments:

  1. I was totally on the edge of my seat with suspense during your story! I'm glad that it was able to run away in the end... only because it seems like it would be hard (emotionally... and maybe also physically) to have to smash it. At least, it would be hard for me. So, I'm glad you got out of that messy task. And hopefully it tells all of its little mouse friends to stay away from your house!

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  2. Still laughing! How come I'm just now hearing about this?

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  3. I agree with Kelli! I held my breath the whole time reading.

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  4. Oh My Goodness! What a stress. Leave it to the cat I say!

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  5. Reminds me of my "mice in the garage" story. We discovered that we had A LOT of mice in our garage years ago before we moved to Ramona. We set traps, and snap, snap, snap, we caught a ridiculous number of mice (more than 20, but I can't remember the exact number). The next day, Jason leaves for work. I hear "snap - SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK!!!!". All of the other mice had died, but as soon as the husband was gone, the next one lives. Great. I went out there, put on garden gloves, and picked up the trap. It was caught above its legs. I walked out into the backyard, opened the trap, grabbed the mouse by the tail, and let it go over the back fence. I told the little mouse that if it came back to my garage it was free game. I called my extremely Christian friend Suzanne, who doesn't believe in capital punishment even if someone killed one of her kids, and her response was "I would have hit it over the head with a hammer!".

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  6. I don't really find any of this humorous. I just don't think God would want us to be so cruel to any of his creatures.

    This trap is a much better option:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YFA7HW

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  7. I agree that killing unwanted mice seems cruel. However, the alternatives of capturing and spaying all the females doesn't seem possible or cost effective and they do take over very quickly, unfortunately bringing filth and sometimes disease ala the Bubonic plague.

    Then again sometimes an infestation of mice leads to an infestation of cats . . . and that doesn't end well for the mice either.

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  8. I really think if people are going to slam you for trying to remove rodents from a house with two small children they should at least be brave enough to sign their name.

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  9. You should compare mouse stories with Michelle. They've had a mouse problem for weeks now. J (I've always had cats. The closest mice get to my house is dead on the back step.)

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  10. so Kazi the cat used to bring birds into the house to play with. one time she brought a maimed one in and wasn't entertained enough and forgot about it. I had to go through a similar experience. Only I couldn't kill it. I wrapped in a towel (I knew it would die eventually) and laid it ever so gently in the top of the garbage can outside. Plan was to forget about it.....ya I check on the poor thing all day waiting for it to die. I finally went and got it out - thinking maybe I could nurse it back to health and it died in my hands.....I cried. I make steve do all of that stuff now.

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  11. OH man I got the shivers in my spine. The old fashion wood ones kill all the "new" easier ones not so much. My mom used to get mice all the time. I have heard that you need to cut back on your cat's food intake for them to hunt. Who knows. And I would tell you what I might have done in this situation but I'm afraid I would get hate mail. ;-)

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  12. I was also holding my breath during that whole post and even squirming in my seat a little. You're a braver woman than I am.

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  13. Next time fill up your sink and throw the whole trap in. Cut back your dog and cats diet, that will encourage them a bit.

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  14. I was on the edge of my seat through most of it then in stitches for the rest! My partner at work had a similar experience at her house so I read this to her. I'm such a girl too. I don't know what I would do if I had a mouse in my house.
    And really.. to the people slamming you.. give it a rest. Each person is entitled to handle things in their own way and run their home in the way they seem fit. Rat and mouse poo carry all sorts of nastiness. Not good in any home let alone a home w/ small children.

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  15. Oh my godness, that's the funniest story I'v heard in a long time!!! :) What a great way to start my day!

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  16. I also think that anonymous is very often synonymous with TOTAL WIMP.

    That said: as much as I scream bloody murder when I see one in the apartment (...yeah...) I could never handle a trap and I was horrified when one of my roomates informed me that she'd trapped a mouse in the sink and BROUGHT THE CAT OVER TO IT. Like a gladiator-type-situation. Nobody liked my suggestion of herding future mice into a box, or a bag, or something, and then taking them to the park around the corner and setting them free.

    I've heard of some kind of...substance that you can purchase that's a mild enough form of poison, or at least repellent, that it drives the visitors outside for fresh air but doesn't kill them. Yay for peaceful co-existence?

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  17. Oh, and obviously not everybody who is anonymous is wimping out, just maybe people who are bringing deities into the issue of pest control...I'm going to stop. It's late. And my foot tastes really good. In my mouth.

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