The Only Good Mouse...

I’ve talked about pests here before, namely bunnies and voles, but today I have another pest to talk about…mice.

We live in the country and mice are not unusual to have around.  We occasionally get one in the house and keep a trap or two in the basement to catch any that come wandering in.  We haven’t had one in the house itself for a couple of years, I think.  The more finish work that gets done, the fewer places there are for any critters to creep in. 

However, yesterday was a new experience altogether.  Paul was gone and Peter and I were sitting at the table, finishing up homework when Peter looked up and suddenly yelled, “There’s a mouse!”  “Where?” I shouted.  “On the counter by Daddy’s glass.”  I look over and, sure enough, there is a little brown mouse running across MY KITCHEN COUNTER!!!

I ran over to watch where it was going and couldn’t find it anywhere.  I got the flashlight to get a better look and still couldn’t see the little rascal.  I put a small block of wood at the end of the counter to stop any further progress and kept looking around.  I couldn’t see anything moving at all.  Suddenly the block of wood went over the edge and the mouse took off running down a power cord that happened to be right there.  Under the stove it went.  By the way, it was pretty impressive to watch it run down the power cord you see in the picture!

 I put Peter on mouse watch while I got a couple of big towels and blocked off as much of the exit as I could, hoping to keep it from heading out to other parts of the house.  We put a mousetrap in the area left open and waited.  Then we got the bright idea to turn on the oven to warm things up and, maybe, flush it out.  We waited quite a while but nothing happened.  Peter went to his room and put a barrier up at the base of his door.  After about 10 minutes, I heard the trap snap and quickly headed toward the kitchen, just in time to see our house mouse head into a space at the bottom of the dishwasher.  I stuffed one of the towels in front of it to block egress and moved the trap to the area under the sink, next to the dishwasher.  And there it sits. 

In the meantime, I had to remove everything from the countertop and disinfect the whole area. 

The trap was snapped this morning but nothing was in it…must be a quick little bugger.  We put a couple more traps around in hopes of nailing the invader.  I’m sorry but, at our house, the only good mouse is a dead one!