Adventures in Mice Catching

This all started a couple of weeks ago. I was up with the baby around 3:00 in the morning and I saw something run across the dining room floor. It was right by the doorway to the living room where I was sitting. My first thought was...hmmm.....that was awful big to be a waterbug. We have waterbug issues because we live in a house that is over 120 years old and we have a basement that is not finished. I had sprayed, which unfortunately makes them come out in droves so that they can die where I have to clean them up. Haha. Anyway. I kept watching the doorway while feeding Ben and sure enough....about 5 minutes after the first time...I saw it run back the other way. It was a freaking mouse!! Now I don't have a fear of mice but I also do not want them in my HOUSE! Especially not running back and forth on the floor where Ben has his floor time. I went and told David (he does have a fear of mice) and he got up to see it. It just kept running back and forth until almost 6:00. David ran to the store and got some traps. I baited them up with peanut butter and placed them where the mouse had come out of and where it had been running to. We didn't catch it. The next morning when I checked the traps...the peanut butter had been licked cleanly off of the traps! David then got a different brand of springy death traps. I did less peanut butter on these thinking that maybe the mouse would have to get closer and spring the trap to get the treat. Next morning.....same thing. No peanut butter but no mouse either. The next night we were both up with Ben at around 4:00 in the morning and we saw that there wasn't 1 mouse! There were 2!! It was a freaking family! David had found one a few days before this started in the bucket of catfood that we keep in the back entryway but we had assumed that it got in just to get the catfood and then got stuck. We now had to assume that it had been part of this mouse family. David went out that day and got a live trap and the sticky glue traps. I'm not a big fan of the glue traps because they seem so mean but David was beyond the point of mercy with these mice. He even slept with his shoes on one night because they were freaking him out so much. The first night with the new traps.....nada. The second day, I moved them. I wedged them in between the wall and the cabinet that they were getting behind. Early nightime, we heard a scratching noise. I thought it was the live trap but I checked it and it was empty. So I checked the glue traps and sure enough we had the young mouse on it. The scratching sound was the plastic trap scraping against the wall. It didn't squeak at all though. Speaking of which....the one that David found in the catfood didn't squeak either.....we have never heard a squeak out of any of these mice! Anyway......I picked up the trap with tongs and we put it in a WalMart bag and David threw it in the outside trash can. We moved one of the other traps to the same spot that we caught the little one and hoped that the mama would come out and get caught too. NOPE. The next morning I heard the scratching again and looked over at the trap to see it standing straight up in the space between the wall and the cabinet. I grabbed it with the tongs but the mouse had escaped! This mouse was too dang smart! I got online and looked up how to catch a mouse that avoided the traps. I learned that if you wedge a nut down in the trap, they couldn't help but spring it while trying to get the nut out. I set up one trap with an almond shoved in it and hoped to hear a snap during the night. We saw and heard nothing of the mouse for DAYS! I was almost convinced that it had gotten glue in it's mouth and died behind the cabinet. Not a pleasant prospect for me. We left the traps out anyway. This morning, as I sat down Mathew's scrambled eggs and toast....he looks over and says....."Oh. You caught the mouse!" "Cool!" I looked over and sure enough....the trap with the almond was flipped over on top of a dead mouse. EW. I called David and told the kids not to look..which of course prompted them to stare at it as hard as they could. I threw it in the trash.....trap and all which prompted a call from David saying "AW! I wanted to see it!" Hahahahha. Well, thus ends my two week adventure in mice catching. I feel much better. Now I can do picking up at night when I'm up and not have to fear the mouse. hahahahha.
Well, hopefully the next entry will be more entertaining. LOL.

Andrea